AAFES Spring Bazaar

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I did spend a little bit of time in my craft room over the weekend, got a couple of layouts finished up and started on another one.  I also took pictures of a big stack of finished layouts, but for some reason Blogger won't let me upload pictures.  Don't know what the deal is.

So here's a layout blast from the past!

These pics are from 2009, see 'em up close here.  I've traveled from one end of the galaxy to the other, I've seen a lot of strange stuff.  But I've never seen anything...like VENDING MACHINE HOT DOGS.  Amber had to try one (for SCIENCE) and I got one too and we didn't die so that's a plus.  I used the fun Broadsheet Alphabet for part of the title and a couple of Kettos (the little girl fairies) for accents.  Kettos were a big thing from Stamping Bella years ago and I have quite a few of them, they're darling.  I try to use them on my scrapbook pages from time to time.

The orange and yellow on my layout were inspired by the hot dog machine :D  And I just picked some other colors to round out the palette:  Coastal Cabana, Tangelo Twist, Pineapple Punch, Pacific Point, Basic Black, and Whisper White.

And so we begin Week 2 of the Great Quarantine.  So far we've done okay, here's hoping we keep it up.  Good luck to all of you out there!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Broadsheet Alphabet, Back to Basics Alphabet; Maisy Ketto, Anise Ketto, Kenya's Sparkle, Anise's Flowers from Stamping Bella
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Coastal Cabana, Pacific Point, Pineapple Punch, Tangelo Twist, Granny Apple Green, Petal Pink Stampin' Blend, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Pacific Point, Pineapple Punch, Thick Whisper White, Confetti Celebration DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes Framelits

National Zoo

Scrappy Monday y'all!  I didn't get as much scrapping done this weekend as I wanted to...I've got one layout that still needs journaling, and another one is about 75% done but I'm kinda stuck on it for accents.  I thought it was going to be a really quick one to finish, too.

But anyway!  Today I have two layouts from when we visited the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. when Ryan was tiny (I think he was 2 months old when we did this).

I think I bought the Animal Expedition DSP months before I got the Animal Outing stamp set and dies :)  But that paper was perfect for zoo pages!  I chose the Berry Burst background because my honorary niece Emma helpfully wore a bright pink sweater, and happily that's one of the colors in this particular pack of DSP.  It seems like I don't use the really bright, saturated pinks for page bases very often, so I'm excited when I do it and I like how it turns out.

So here's the color palette for the first layout:  Berry Burst, Call Me Clover, Pool Party, Crushed Curry, and Whisper White.

For the second layout, I used the same pack of DSP, but I swapped the Crushed Curry for Lemon Lime Twist (which I hope will make a reappearance in a few years when they do another color refresh, I love that color).  Honorary niece Abby helpfully wore a lime green shirt, so this really worked out perfectly for my scrapbook pages :)

And there's the second color palette:  Call Me Clover, Berry Burst, Lemon Lime Twist, Pool Party, and Whisper White.

Despite not making as much progress as I wanted to over the weekend, I still have a stack of 20+ layouts that I need to take pictures of so I can share on here.  Maybe I'll get that done before the next scrappy Monday...

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, first layout:
Stamps:  Calendar Alphabet & Numbers, Broadsheet Alphabet, A Little Wild
Ink:  Berry Burst, Call Me Clover, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Berry Burst, Pool Party, Crushed Curry, Thick Whisper White, Animal Expedition DSP
Accessories:  Hexagon punch, Lots of Labels Framelits

Supplies, second layout:
Stamps:  Tropical Chic
Ink:  Call Me Clover, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Call Me Clover, Pool Party, Lemon Lime Twist, Thick Whisper White, Animal Expedition DSP
Accessories:  Tropical Thinlits

Cocok's Toes 2009

Scrappy Monday!  Well, now that it's June I thought it was going to be really sunny and warm...nope, lots of clouds and it's actually pretty cool outside right now.  As someone who hates the heat and humidity that come with summer in the South, I'll take this :D  But I do have a summery layout to share today, and it's all about TOES!

When we lived in (on?) Okinawa, about every six weeks or so I'd go to a place called Cocok's (the K is silent, I know it's weird) for a pedicure.  For about $40, you could get an hour long massage and then whatever intricate design you could think up painted on your toes.  It was pretty awesome.  So of course I always took pictures of my toes, and this is the kind of thing you do with friends so I took pictures of my friends' toes too and here are all the Cocok's toes for 2009.

Ya know I love my mixed font titles.

If you click the picture of the whole layout to see it bigger, you'll see I modeled my scrapbook pages after my favorite toe design with the green stripes and bright yellow flowers.

We've got three long-retired colors as part of the palette today.  The page base is Green Galore, the stripes are Glorious Green, and Pink Passion for the flowers.  The other three colors are Daffodil Delight, Basic Gray, and Whisper White.

Time to feed the kiddo and then get going to the gym.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Back to Basics Alphabet, Broadsheet Alphabet, Flower Patch, Island Blossoms
Ink:  Gable Green, Glorious Green, Daffodil Delight, Pink Passion, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Green Galore, Glorious Green, Pink Passion, Whisper White, Beyond the Garden DSP
Accessories: none

Carousel

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Hope your week is off to a good start.  I like starting the week with some scrapbook pages.  Already I'm having my MOST productive year ever when it comes to scrapbook pages...and I haven't even started Ryan's baby book.  But I'm excited to make progress on my scrapbook pages!  How many times can I say "scrapbook pages" in one little paragraph?  Scrapbook pages!!!

...Though I think this one I did last year?

Oddly enough, I don't think I ever blogged about this one after we took the pictures, but it was the last thing we did on a trip to Cornwall.  It was at this place where they collect and refurbish old rides from things like traveling fairs, and they had a whole bunch of carousel horses which of course I loved taking pictures of.  I kept the layout pretty simple to keep the focus on the photos.

There's a closeup of one and the title.  I love the mixed-font-yness of the Broadsheet Alphabet; I figured even split onto three lines you could figure out pretty easily what the title says.  And that mixed font look just seemed to go well with my vintage carousel horses.

Today's rather summery color palette:  Bermuda Bay, Daffodil Delight, Real Red, Night of Navy, and Whisper White.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Broadsheet Alphabet, Wanted
Ink:  Bermuda Bay, Night of Navy
Paper:  Bermuda Bay textured, Night of Navy, Whisper White, Real Red DSP
Accessories:  None

Cocok's With the Silent K

Happy Thursday, y'all!  Apparently I'm doing an international scrap week, my scrapbook pages every day feature photos from a different country.  So let's go to Japan!

Ahh, Cocok's with the Silent K.  I miss that place.  For about $40, you could get an hour-long leg and foot massage and then get your toes painted with any one of hundreds of designs.  And it was always fabulous to go with friends.  I always took pictures of our toes and for a while I could tell who was who just by their feet.  Which is weird, I admit.

My page title today is mixed font with the Broadsheet Alphabet and Retro Alphabet, but the lower one this time (I used the uppercase one on Monday's page).

I think I should have made my colors a little more saturated on Agnes Ketto here, and the little sparkles came out a little lighter than I might have liked.  AND I had completely finished coloring in Agnes when I got some kind of schmutz on the cardstock, see the speck to the right of her?  Argh.  But I didn't want to redo it.

Today's cheery color palette is Pretty in Pink, Coastal Cabana, Brilliant Blue, and Cucumber Crush.  Maybe not something I would have put together for a card, but it seems to work for my photos today.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Broadsheet Alphabet, Retro Alphabet, non-SU stamps
Ink:  Pretty in Pink, Brilliant Blue, Coastal Cabana, Cucumber Crush, Basic Black
Paper:  Pretty in Pink, Brilliant Blue, Cucumber Crush, Thick Whisper White, Coastal Cabana DSP
Accessories:  Circles Framelits, Prismacolor Pencils

Alabama National Fair

Ok, this week is getting busy with preparing for the garage sale on Saturday, so I'm choosing another scrapbook layout to share today!

Whaddya know, this one is actually from our time in Alabama.  Oh, if you're wondering, a friend of ours doesn't share his kids' pictures online so I censored to protect the innocent (and checked with said friend before posting this, to boot).

So let's take a closer look at the title!

It really was called the Alabama *National* Fair, and I have no idea why that instead of state fair.  Maybe they're trying to sound more important.  Anyway, I used a couple different alphabets on here and that fantastic Ferris wheel from Feeling Sentimental.  Side note:  I had to use a Taken with Teal marker to ink up "Fair"; for some reason, my TWT ink pad comes off looking like a much dustier version of teal rather than a nice vibrant color.  I don't know if it's age or what...I really should try to hit it with an ink refill and see how it looks then, but for this project the marker worked fine.

My color palette:  Poppy Parade, Peach Parfait, Taken with Teal, Basic Black, and Whisper White.  When I first get out a set of photos to scrap, I like to pull colors I think will work, but sometimes the colors evolve a little as I go through my scrappin' process.  So here's the palette I initially picked out:

Real Red, Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise, Chocolate Chip, and Whisper White.  Really very similar to what I used, but every single color (except white) got tweaked a little bit before I got to the end.  Sometimes that's just how it works.  Other times, I pick the right mix of colors the first time ; )

Cheers, peeps!  I'm off to organize more schtuff for the garage sale.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Calendar Alphabet & Numbers, Broadsheet Alphabet, Feeling Sentimental
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Poppy Parade, Taken with Teal, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Poppy Parade, Taken with Teal, Basic Black, Whisper White, Peach Parfait DSP, Sweet Pea DSP Stack
Accessories:  Circles Framelits

Friday Flashback: Sweet Shoppe Alphabet

Happy Friday, peeps!  Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback, featuring the Sweet Shoppe Alphabet.  It's a very cute alphabet, I'm happy for the reminder to break it out and use it again!  So let's go flash back.

This is a more recent creation, I made it just last December.

Ok, I admit, it's a little sad that the Flashback is pretty short and one of the photos is the index card I did for the Splitcoast gallery.

Also features Broadsheet Alphabet & Array of Sunshine

Ok, so there's one more project I used the alphabet for.  Clearly I needed the reminder to use it again, and I'm super excited about what I made!

These photos are from way back in 2006 when the hubs and I lived in North Carolina and we had a go at growing flowers in our backyard, no mean feat for me who has two black thumbs.  The layout is very, very simple, so to make it a little more interesting I matted half the pictures with different colors and left the other half unmatted.  So let's take a look at that title:

Your eyes do not deceive you, I used a different alphabet for the capital letters (Empire Alphabet).  I just love mixed font titles and I love how those two looked together!  I will admit, though, that it took For.Ev.Er. to stamp the title on here.  I always worry I'll do something like drop an inked stamp on the cardstock and I'll have to start over, but I managed to get through that entire very long title with no oopsies.  Even spelled it right.

And I finally used the largest of the Butterfly Thinlits.  This is a flashback for color too, that lovely shade on the butterfly is the long-retired Marvelous Magenta.  It's such an 80s color, am I right?  It retired shortly after I started stamping, so I only have a few pieces of 12x12 cardstock this color and no 8.5x11 and no ink pad.  If you want to get technical, the cardstock I have is from before Stampin' Up! went to "true" 12x12, it's about a quarter inch shy of twelve inches square.  And now I have three pieces of it plus some scraps, but it was worth it to use one piece for this layout.

There's my color palette:  Pistachio Pudding, Garden Green, Marvelous Magenta, Ballet Blue, and Elegant Eggplant even though it looks black 'cause it's not.  So that's it for me this week, peeps, hope you have a marvelous weekend, whether or not it's magenta ;)

Supplies, scrapbook layout only:
Stamps:  Sweet Shoppe Alphabet, Empire Alphabet, Embrace Life
Ink:  Garden Green, Ballet Blue, Elegant Eggplant
Paper:  Pistachio Pudding, Marvelous Magenta, Ballet Blue, Elegant Eggplant
Accessories:  Butterfly Thinlits

Friday Flashback: Broadsheet Alphabet

Woohoo, it's Friday!  And time again for another Friday Flashback.  Today's featured stamp set is Broadsheet Alphabet so you know there will be some scrapbook pages.  Oh look!

Best of Shelli

Scrapbook pages.  I so miss Baja Breeze!  But I'm loving that we have Lost Lagoon now.

Nursery Times

Here's a name frame I did for a baby gift basket.

Flower Fancy

And another one, I really like how the flowers turned out on this one.

Baroque Motifs, Strength & Hope

Two more name frames.  At this point I think I know too many pregos!

Array of Sunshine, Sweet Shoppe Alphabet

And here's the sign for last year's Mad Hatter tea party.  So, nary a card in the whole bunch from the archives, and today's all-new project is another scrapbook layout:

Wish it wasn't dark there on the left side but I kinda can't help where the window is in my craft room, the right side is always lighter than the left.  Hubs and I took these pics at Leeds Castle in August 2011; you can see the photos here and here on my other blog.

Anyway, click on the picture to see it larger.  I was surprised (and happy!) with how fast this layout came together--as soon as I saw the peacock photo, I knew I had to use that patterned paper from the Country Club Simply Scrappin' Kit (retired).  There were so many bright colors in the photos that I decided to go with a neutral for the page base, and I used the bright Glorious Green for my title (sadly retired).  Whee for more scrapbook pages done!

That's it for me today.  Cheers, peeps, and have a great weekend!

Supplies, last photo only:
Stamps:  Broadsheet Alphabet
Ink:  Glorious Green, Midnight Muse
Paper:  Baked Brown Sugar, Midnight Muse, Whisper White, Country Club SSK
Accessories:  None

Kissin' the Blarney Stone

Wow,  I had intended to make a card this morning for today's post, but I kinda had a headache and the rain lulled me to sleep sometime around mid-morning and I just woke up and here it is mid-afternoon.  Sooo...how 'bout a nice Irish scrapbook layout for today?

As I said in my journaling, sometimes I can't believe all the cool things hubs and I get to do, like kiss the Blarney Stone.  If you're curious, they do disinfect it periodically--not between every person though, so they didn't do it between the four of us in our group so hubs made sure to kiss it in a different spot than Bennet who went before him :)  But you're kissing a ROCK, you can't be too picky about hygiene.

Detail shots!

As soon as I stamped the first letter on my title, I realized I needed to ink up my Night of Navy ink pad, but it was too late.  Didn't want to do it then and have one letter way lighter than all the rest, so they're all a little bit faded.  (I did ink it up when I was working on another layout...and then realized after I'd already put all the ink on that I was using an Island Indigo ink refill.  D'oh!)  The handwritten words are done with Gumball Green marker; I traced over them a second time to make them stand out better.

Little four-leaf clover hidden in the corner :)

I was hoping I had a stamp that was just lips but I don't, so I went with this one from Best of Love instead.  And the end of my journaling says "Pucker up, buttercup!"

And here's a progress shot from my desk, you can see I work in creative chaos clutter (and then I have to clean up between projects).  Lately I haven't been cropping my photos hardly at all, but I wanted to squeeze in all 11 pictures on this one so I had to chop 'em a bit.  I didn't want to crop the photos until I was sure how I wanted to lay them all out, so I used some white scratch paper (the kind that comes in scrapbook sheet protectors when you buy them) and chopped that to the sizes I thought I'd use.  Worked a treat to make sure my placement was okay, and then I didn't have to worry about messing up the photos.  I use that same scratch paper to stamp alphabet letters on and use them for placement the same way; I've got small plastic bags of letters in all my alphabet stamp cases.

If you're interested, you can see the original photos here.

Cheers, peeps!  Thanks for stopping by today.  Erin go bragh!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Broadsheet Alphabet, Hearts & Clovers, Best of Love
Ink:  Gumball Green, Night of Navy, Regal Rose
Paper:  Gumball Green, Night of Navy, Whisper White, DSP from Little Yellow Bicycle (hey, if SU! made DSP that would work on Ireland pages, I totally woulda used that, but they don't)

Boscastle

I've got more scrapbook pages to share today!

The pics are from our first trip to Cornwall in 2011; see more pics here.

The thing that took me the longest in making this layout was picking the patterned paper.  I'd already picked the colors, but it took forever to find some DSP that I thought would go well with my pictures...the pattern I eventually went with is from Tea & Crumpets (retired).  I used some of my precious hoard of Baja Breeze cardstock for the page base, and it's textured so the stamped title kind of mimics the look of the patterned paper.  I wish I could say I'd planned it that way but it was a happy accident : )  At first I kinda wanted to get a 5x7 of the pic on the bottom left, but then I ended up just giving it a bigger mat instead.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Broadsheet Alphabet, Best of Shelli
Ink:  Elegant Eggplant, Baja Breeze, Not Quite Navy, Always Artichoke
Paper:  Baja Breeze, Not Quite Navy, Elegant Eggplant, Very Vanilla, Elegant Eggplant DSP, Tea & Crumpets DSP
Accessories:  7/8" scallop circle and 3/4" circle punches

Friday Flashback: Flower Fancy

Happy Friday and welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  I randomly picked a fun springy stamp set today, Flower Fancy.  Let's visit the archives, shall we?

I remember thinking this color combo was never going to work (it was an SCS color challenge) and then being pleasantly surprised with it when I actually got my card made.  I also used the still-current Four Frames and Pursuit of Happiness.

 I like the flowers on this name frame, but I'm less sure of how much I like the cut-out Broadsheet Alphabet letters.  But I like the bright colors!  You know me, I love-a de bright colahs!

Here's one using my favorite Baja Breeze *sniffle*!  Fear not, I have quite the stash of both 8.5x11 and 12x12 cardstock to keep me company.  I was surprised how well it went with Island Indigo and Rich Razzleberry, this is one of my favorite cards!

And here's today's creation:

I went with some springy colors for today, and I picked out the two stamps I hadn't used yet in this set.  There's no sentiment on it so it can be for Mother's Day or a new baby (I always thought this color combo would be cute for baby girl cards) or just hey friend, I'm thinking of you.  I was inspired (or should I say INKspired?) by the latest challenge at Inkspirational:

Obviously I just went with the sketch and chose my own colors :)  And I moved the bow to the bottom of my image because it just didn't work on the top like in the inspiration pic.

That's it for me this week, y'all have a great weekend!  We leave early tomorrow morning to spend a couple days in Amsterdam.  I know, tough life right?!  Happy stampin'!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Flower Fancy
Ink:  Regal Rose, Peach Parfait, Old Olive, Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Peach Parfait, Chocolate Chip, Old Olive, Whisper White, retired DSP in Regal Rose & Peach Parfait
Accessories:  Windows Collection Framelits, Festive Paper Piercing Template, retired Old Olive polytwill (yay for me using some retired ribbon!), Dimensionals

Mad Hatter Tea Party

We have reached that unspecified point in the future at which I promised to post the things I made for the tea party this past Tuesday.  :)

Here's the sign I made for the front door so guests would just come on in and I wouldn't have to run answer the door every 20 seconds.  I used the Broadsheet Alphabet for the top part, and "Come On In!" is stamped with the now-retired Sweet Shoppe Alphabet, though I wish I'd picked one that was a bit thicker letters because it kind of got lost on the sign.  The flowers are from the retired hostess set Array of Sunshine, and after I stamped them I thought d'oh!  I should have used the teacup stamp from Tea Shoppe!

I made labels for all the food and stuff using the Floral Framelits dies and Daydream Medallions stamps with some computer-generated words.  They came together really fast,  like 20 minutes to make 10 signs.

I have a bunch of little decorative jars?  flower vases? glass containers of some kind that I got for cheap at the 100 yen store when we lived in Okinawa, so I just filled them with jellybeans (the guests loved the jellybeans) and used pipe cleaners for the flower stems.

If you want to see a few more pics and get a look at the recipes I used, visit my other blog here.  Thanks for stopping by!

Friday Flashback: Strength & Hope

Today's Friday Flashback stamp set is one I adore, Strength & Hope.  There are four stamps in this little set, though of course the butterfly is by far my favorite (though it is TOUGH to cut out those teeny antennae!).  So I've got a little gallery for you today and it's not all cards!

Here's a scrapbook layout from when my parents visited us when we lived in Okinawa.  I think as soon as I finish this post, I'm gonna have to go pull out some photos to scrap...I looked at my scrapbook layout gallery on SCS and I just really want to add to it now!  (Supplies for this particular layout listed here.)

Here are a couple of name frames I made.  That Bella Rose DSP is still some of my very favorite, and I have a *lot* of DSP.  *giggle*

Here's more Bella Rose DSP and a CAS card.  If I ever draw Baroque Motifs as the Friday Flashback stamp set, that post is gonna be a mile long.  I love that giant swirl!

I made this for a friend of mine who was battling cancer when I sent it to her (I think the stamp set sales went to benefit cancer research of some kind).  Sadly, my friend lost her battle at the age of 31, but I still think of her every day and miss her always.

I think this is my favorite card I've made with this stamp set; that stamp I used on the border is part of Strength & Hope and the sentiment is from my fave Fabulous Phrases.  And for once I didn't cut out those stinkin' butterfly antennae!

So here's today's card.  It's a bit muted compared to the previous card, but I kinda like it.  I think Sahara Sand is my favorite pale neutral; I know everyone else is crazy for Crumb Cake but for me, Sahara Sand is where it's at.  The sentiment on here is from the also-retired set Friendship Flowers; I thought it went with the theme of Strength & Hope.  And there's that Cast-a-Spell DSP that I'm using once again for not-Halloween stuff :)

Thanks for joining me for today's Friday Flashback, have a wonderful weekend!

Supplies for last card:
Stamps:  Strength & Hope, Friendship Flowers (both retired)
Ink:  Always Artichoke, Sahara Sand, Perfect Plum, Rose Red
Paper:  Always Artichoke, Sahara Sand, Very Vanilla, Cast-a-Spell DSP (retired)
Accessories:  Dimensionals