A-Team Baby Book: August

ETA:  Well dangit, I meant to schedule this for tomorrow morning and accidentally published it this afternoon, so bonus Friday post and pretend you saw it on Saturday.  :D

Happy Saturday and hooray for a long weekend!  Today's baby book pages are certainly summery.

So my brother attended Oklahoma State University, whose mascot is Pistol Pete (a cowboy) and whose colors are orange and black, and now you know why I incorporated orange and a cowboy on this layout.  Plus my niece was born in Texas and nothin' says Texas like cowboys (and cowgirls!).

I'm still angry at myself that somehow I NEVER got ink refills for the In Colors the year that Poppy Parade, Peach Parfait, and Concord Crush retired.  I forget the other two colors from that year but maybe they came back?  Anyway, my Poppy Parade ink pad is a little dry so the cowboy isn't as saturated as he could be.

I used the medallion from Wanted as an accent next to the month.

And some wee little horses for the journaling block!  They're actually part of a line of five, I just masked off the other two for this.

Today's super hot color palette:  Peach Parfait, Poppy Parade, Daffodil Delight, Pear Pizzazz, and Whisper White.  Have a great weekend, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Wanted, Bronc Buster, Weathered, small horses by Deadbeat Designs
Ink:  Peach Parfait, Poppy Parade, Daffodil Delight
Paper:  Peach Parfait, Poppy Parade, Daffodil Delight, Pear Pizzazz, PTI White, Sunny Garden DSP
Accessories:  Sizzix alphabet, circle & scalloped circle punches

Friday Flashback: It's Your Birthday

Happy Friday, y'all!  We are currently prepping for Snowmageddon, which is slated to start this afternoon.  But in the meantime, I have a Friday Flashback for you!  Today's stamp set is It's Your Birthday, and who doesn't need a great set of birthday greetings?  In fact, I'd used this set so much that I only picked about half of what I had in my archives to share otherwise we'd still be doing this flashback *next* Friday.  So let's giddyup!

Also features Bronc Buster, Paisley

First is a birthday card I made for my brother a few years ago.

Also features Floral, Roses in Winter

And here's one for my mother's great aunt...

Also features Baroque Motifs, Embrace Life

Honestly I don't know who I sent this to, it's a rare square card.

Also features Bloomin' Beautiful

This "someone like you should be celebrated every day" stamp is done in the same font as the "happy birthday" above so you could use them together.  Or just use this one for a card and it doesn't have to be birthday-specific.

Also features Dream Gardens

 I do love my Oriental stamps :)

Also features Pun Fun

Here's a cute little one I did for my mom, who loves hippos.

Also features Mixed Bouquet

I made this one for one of my favorite people in the world, who has sadly passed away.  Miss you, Neelu!

Also features Petal Prints

Let's be honest, this is one of my favorite cards.

Also features Wing It, Flannel Plaid

And one more kinda masculine card to round out the group.  Are you ready for today's new creation?  Here it is:

My friend Tiana (who doesn't read this blog, so I'm not giving away any birthday secrets) came out to visit at the beginning of the month and mentioned when we were out shopping that she wanted some super-soft comfy pajama pants.  And since her birthday is next week, I found her some ridiculously cute ones at Kohl's, they're black and have foxes on them and look kinda like this card :D  The jammies are more of a raspberry color than coral, but I only have Calypso Coral embossing powder so I went with that.  I loved these so much I ordered some for myself, and I also got her a set of Star Wars jammies because awesome.  The Star Wars ones have purple in them so this card kinda matches both.

Anyway, I used a sketch from the Retro Rubber challenge site, my very first time to play along over there!

If I got both It's Your Birthday and Fox & Friends when they first came out, then I've had It's Your Birthday for TEN years and Fox & Friends for 6.  And I still love them both :)

Ok, I'd better get moving before Snowmageddon starts.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  It's Your Birthday, Fox & Friends
Ink:  Basic Black, Versamark
Paper:  Basic Black, Lavender Lace, Lucky Limeade & Calypso Coral DSP
Accessories:  Circles Framelits, retired heart punch, Calypso Coral EP, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Sweet Serendipity

Happy Friday, stampers!  It is time once more for a Friday Flashback, and today's stamp set is Sweet Serendipity, a set of six cool sentiment stamps plus a few little images.  Let's go!

Also features Bronc Buster and Flannel Plaid

 I'd say riding a bucking bronco would be an adventure, wouldn't you?

The Sweet Serendipity stamp I used on this layout says "Live each day with laughter/enthusiasm" which seemed perfect with the picture of my friend Sarah on a carousel in Florence.

Also features Pretty Amazing and Pretty Petals

You saw this one earlier this year in the Pretty Amazing Friday Flashback.

Also features Happiness Always

And this one was in last week's Happiness Always Friday Flashback.

Also features Fabulous Flowers, Sanded, Paisley

 Oh hey, Fabulous Flowers had a Friday Flashback already too.  This is still one of my favorite cards.

Also features Snow Burst and Paisley

The sentiment says sparkle, and this card delivered!  The whole top panel is covered in Iridescent Ice EP, which is hard to photograph but looks awesome and sparkly in real life.

Also features Pretty Peony and Sanded

This was the first card on the Pretty Peony Friday Flashback, and it's another of my old favorites.  I love that Sanded background stamp.   That's it for the flashback part of today's post (and the flashback to prior flashbacks, if you followed all the links), it's time to see what's new!

I had Sheltering Tree out on my table for a different project so I thought I'd use it for today's post too.  I used the Fall-To Layout #22 from Clean & Simple Stamping:

And the softer color combination from Colour Me...!

But since I was on a roll in my craft room, and there was a whole 'nother color challenge on there, I had to try the bold combination as well:

I added a bit of Sahara Sand to both color combinations, I couldn't help it :)  For this one, I also used the sketch from the Paper Players:

Hope you enjoyed today's extra-long Friday Flashback.  Have a great weekend, peeps, we're painting again!

Supplies, Sheltering Tree card:
Stamps:  Sweet Serendipity, Sheltering Tree
Ink:  Tip Top Taupe, Blushing Bride, Wisteria Wonder, Sahara Sand
Paper:  Tip Top Taupe, Blushing Bride, Wisteria Wonder, Whisper White, Wisteria Wonder DSP
Accessories:  Oval & Scalloped Oval punches, Dimensionals

Supplies, Secret Garden card:
Stamps:  Sweet Serendipity, Secret Garden
Ink:  Night of Navy, Whisper White
Paper:  Calypso Coral, Night of Navy, Sahara Sand, Whisper White
Accessories:  Secret Garden Framelits, Spring Flowers EF, ticket corner punch, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Rough Type

Happy Friday, peeps!  Do I say that every week?  Well, regardless, Fridays should be happy because it's Friday Flashback day :)  This week's retired stamp set is Rough Type, which is an alphabet I've used a LOT on my scrapbooks so today is a longer Flashback and I didn't even include absolutely everything I've ever used it on.  So let's go!

My Captain America layout from my brother's return home from deployment, probably one of my mom's all-time fave layouts I've ever shared here :)

Also features Grunge Rock & Extreme Elements

You saw this one recently, from the Beijing Hard Rock Cafe.

Also features Bronc Buster

Oh hey, a card!  And I made it in my dad and brother's college colors (orange and black for Oklahoma State).

Also features Ocean Commotion

More scrapbook pages, this time from the aquarium in Okinawa.  I love Ocean Commotion...but I digress, today's Flashback is for Rough Type!  So this was actually I think the first time I punched out the letters with the 1/2" circle punch, but I did it again on the Hard Rock layout above.

Also features Ancient Asia

You'll notice I use this alphabet on my China pages a lot; to make the pages feel like they all "go" together, I'm using that calligraphy letter template and the Rough Type alphabet on each layout.

Also features Out West & Wanted

It's just a coincidence that the only two cards on today's Friday Flashback feature cowboys and the word "howdy".

More Okinawa pages, and again with the circle-punched letters.

Also features Circle Circus

This was the very first layout I did for my China scrapbooks :)  Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Wow, lots of Okinawa pictures here too.  Actually this layout has been modified since I took this picture, I added some of the dragons from Ancient Asia on the left-hand page.

Also features Letterpress Alphabet, Carry On, Toxic Treats, Elementary Elegance

Finally a layout from England!  And also one of my faves, I love the crowns and the ravens on here.

Another China layout you saw pretty recently, and that's the end of the Flashback part.  So here's today's brand new scrapbook layout, this time from Wales:

And here's a closeup of the Rough Type bit:

The top part is a Sizzlits alphabet, which is a total pain to use because it's always got little cling-on bits on the edges that you have to clean up and it's so tiny that it's hard to glue down without having extra glue everywhere but I just needed to use it for today's layout.  I kinda wish they'd made an uppercase version of Rough Type, though as you can see it bothers me not at all to use just the lowercase letters.

And there's my springy color palette:  Crisp Cantaloupe, So Saffron, Wild Wasabi, and Night of Navy.  I kinda wondered about using Crisp Cantaloupe for the page base, and no idea why I thought of it, but I did like how it looked with the other colors once I finished the layout, nice and springy.  And now I'm almost out of So Saffron cardstock :)

So I hope you enjoyed this scrappin' queen-sized Friday Flashback.  Have a great weekend and cheers, peeps!

Supplies, last layout only:
Stamps:  Rough Type Alphabet
Ink:  Night of Navy
Paper:  Crisp Cantaloupe, So Saffron, Afternoon Tea DSP
Accessories:  Sizzlits Alphabet

Favorites Showcase 2012, Part 1

My humble little stamping blog here is less than a year old so I didn't realize the year-end favorites showcase was a thing until I saw everyone else was doing it and so I'm hopping on the bandwagon slightly late because I wanna go to the party too.  I'm a teensy bit hampered by the fact that it looks like I was a bit sporadic in uploading to my SCS gallery this year, but I've got a few fun cards from the first 6 months of 2012.  (Detailed supplies lists for all my cards are included in my gallery.)

This one uses Curly Cute and Mixed Bunch and I think that might be this year's SAB paper?  Hope I have a hoard of that somewhere ;)

Here's a Valentine card with nary a heart to be seen, but the Eiffel Tower is romantic, right?  This one uses Artistic Etchings, Grateful Greetings (retired), and En Francais.

I didn't have a whole lot in the gallery for around March, but I thought this kid birthday card was tolerably cute.  I like how the background came out--it's just scribbling on the acrylic block with markers, spritzing with water, and smooshing it around on the paper.  This one uses Dinoroar and I forget the alphabet.

So this uses the retired sets Bronc Buster, Wanted (which now live in the same stamp case because I almost always use them together) and Cute & Curly.  I needed an encouragement card for my dad who is a die-hard Oklahoma State Cowboy.

Here's something more CAS-y, again with Mixed Bunch and Curly Cute.  (I kind of love both those sets.)

I couldn't pick just one for June so I've got one manly card and one girly card.  Love this one with French Foliage and one of the retired All-Year Cheer stamp sets; I think I need to use this layout more often 'cause I love it.

One more CAS creation with Kindness Matters and the (sadly retired) Thank You Kindly.  That Beau Chateau DSP is now on the clearance rack...and I am resisting buying any more retired DSP because I think I've hit critical mass when it comes to patterned paper o.O

Stay tuned for the second half tomorrow and Happy New Year!