CreativeCrew: Vellum

My term on the CreativeCrew is at its end; this is my last card to share as a Crew member.

For this particular challenge, I used vellum and it's been quite a long time since I last did that.  I embossed the vellum with the Argyle embossing folder, which gave me a kind of an interesting look.  And for some reason I'm kinda stuck on this teal-with-a-pop-of-red color combination for these snowflakes :) 

It's been fun and I'm looking forward to participating in the CreativeCrew challenges in the future.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Festive Flurry, Christmas Messages
Ink:  Coastal Cabana, Bermuda Bay, Real Red
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Whisper White, Vellum, Coastal Cabana (lining the inside)
Accessories:  Festive Flurry & Deco Labels Framelits, Top Note Die, Real Red satin ribbon (retired, sorry), mini silver brads, Brights Candy Dots, Dimensionals, Argyle EF

CreativeCrew: Elegant Birthday Wishes

After two days of Venetian Romance, I think it's time to switch gears a bit and showcase the Afternoon Picnic DSP.  Behold!

This card was for one of the CreativeCrew challenges this month.  And yep, I'm still in love with Stippled Blossoms :)  Check out the link above to see the challenges, and then click here to see the gallery.  Have a lovely day!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Stippled Blossoms, Best of Butterflies, Bring on the Cake
Ink:  Crushed Curry, Basic Gray, Coastal Cabana, Wisteria Wonder, Pear Pizzazz, Soft Suede (no really, I used it on the butterfly)
Paper:  Crushed Curry, Basic Gray, Very Vanilla, Afternoon Picnic DSP
Accessories:  Dimensionals

CreativeCrew: It's a Shower

We're just making it a scrappy week here at Snapdragon, because this week's CreativeCrew project is also scrappy.

The pics are from my friend Tiana's baby shower before her first daughter arrived; I had fun playing with the bright colors and of course I had to put that giraffe on here.  Tiana and I used that giraffe on Emma's baby announcements so I think of them every time I see it :)

Thanks for stopping by today!  Don't forget to check out the CreativeCrew challenges here and the gallery here.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Mosaic Madness, Cuddles & Kisses, Bundle of Joy (retired)
Ink:  Island Indigo, Pumpkin Pie, Strawberry Slush, Baked Brown Sugar
Paper:  Whisper White, Pumpkin Pie, Strawberry Slush, Quatrefancy DSP Accessories:  Decorative Label & Mosaic punches, Deco Label Framelits

CreativeCrew: Hello Peacock

And hello August!  How can it be August already?  And it's my last month on the CreativeCrew too.  Man, time flies when you're having fun!

One of the challenges this month is to CASE a project from the Garden Delight section of the catalog (pages 80 to 95).  I knew immediately which one I wanted to CASE:  check out the top right pic on page 84.  So that's how I ended up with this peacock card.

But just one peacock card isn't enough, is it?  When I saw the new challenge at ColourQ, I had to do another one!

So this is a CASE of a CASE, and I've still got more ideas floating around in my noggin for this layout because I'm kind of in love with it.  The DSP is from the brand new holiday catalog, it's called Season of Style.  And this is proof that you can use Christmas DSP to make non-Christmas cards.

Here's the ColourQ graphic, you can see why I just had to do a second peacock:

I'd totally buy that for my mom if I knew what kind of cellphone she has, but I don't think she's got one that would work with this cover.  But it is really awesome.

Thanks for stopping by today, and go check out the brand new August CreativeCrew gallery.  And you can play along with those challenges here, too!

Supplies for the first card, all SU!
Stamps:  World Treasures, Four You
Ink:  Bermuda Bay, Elegant Eggplant, Crushed Curry, Versamark
Paper:  Baked Brown Sugar, Bermuda Bay, Elegant Eggplant, Crushed Curry, Whisper White
Accessories:  Corner rounder punch, white EP, Dimensionals

Supplies for the second card, all SU!
Stamps:  World Treasures
Ink;  Midnight Muse, So Saffron, Old Olive, Marina Mist
Paper:  Midnight Muse, So Saffron, Marina Mist, Whisper White, Season of Style DSP
Accessories:  Corner rounder punch, Dimensionals

CreativeCrew: Christmas in July Mosaic

It's the last day of the month, I'd better get my last July CreativeCrew project blogged!

Still having fun with the new In Colors, though I rather think this would be more stunning in Midnight Muse and silver.  Love me a blue and silver Christmas card.

Don't forget to check out the CreativeCrew gallery for more beauties!  And there's a whole new gallery starting tomorrow :)  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Mosaic Madness, More Merry Messages
Ink:  Strawberry Slush, Pistachio Pudding, Baked Brown Sugar
Paper:  Strawberry Slush, Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White, Quatrefancy DSP
Accessories:  Apothecary Accents & Labels Collection Framelits, Essentials paper piercing pack, Dimensionals, rhinestone

CreativeCrew: Sketched Christmas

Ready for another CreativeCrew Christmas in July card?  This challenge was to use colors in the Birthday Basics DSP, and I still managed to make it a Christmas card.  Lookie:

I got the layout from an old SCS sketch.  Since I didn't have Birthday Basics yet, I used some retired DSP for the layers on my card, though I suppose since I took advantage of this month's DSP special I could go back and redo it with actual Birthday Basics papers :)

Don't forget to visit the CreativeCrew gallery for more holiday inspiration.  Have a fantastic day!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Simply Sketched, More Merry Messages
Ink:  Basic Gray, Raspberry Ripple, Crisp Cantaloupe, Summer Starfruit, Gumball Green
Paper:  Summer Starfruit, Raspberry Ripple, Very Vanilla, retired Raspberry Ripple DSP & Patio Party DSP
Accessories:  Gumball Green stitched satin ribbon, Dimensionals

CreativeCrew: Faux Washi Tape

Howdy, folks!  Ready for another CreativeCrew challenge card?

This one really WAS a challenge because a.) I don't actually own any washi tape (I know, I know, everyone else is totally crazy about the stuff) and b.) More Merry Messages is just about the only current Christmas stamp set I have.  So I made faux washi tape with patterned paper and made myself a lil Christmas tree with the scallop border punch and a bit of snipping with scissors.  Couldn't leave my tree naked so I added some Cherry Cobbler Dazzling Details to dress it up a bit.

Now go check out the rest of the Christmas in July gallery and play along in the challenges.  They're fun, I promise ;)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  More Merry Messages
Ink:  Real Red
Paper:  Garden Green, Whisper White, Baked Brown Sugar, Pistachio Pudding & Real Red DSP (the Real Red polka dot paper is technically retired, but there's something really similar in the new catalog, it just takes me a while to accumulate all the new DSP)
Accessories:  corner rounder & scallop border punches, Cherry Cobbler Dazzling Details

CreativeCrew: Orford

Ready for a new round of CreativeCrew challenges?  This month it's all about Christmas!  The scrapbooking challenge is to do a layout of something on your Christmas wish list.

Pretty sure I've told the hubs at least once that I want a castle for Christmas :)  Not only is this layout of the first castle we visited after we moved to England, it's my first layout of any England pictures!  Can't wait to really dig in and do some more.  If you want to know more about the castle and see all the individual pictures (plus more that didn't make it on the layout), you can check out my other blog here, and you can see pictures of the church here.

The color combo for this layout came together really fast; for some reason I always wanted to use a deep rich red with these castle photos, and the River Rock page base just seemed to bring out the warm tones in the stonework.  Wish it was always that easy for me to pick out colors for scrapbook layouts!

I have a binder of scrapbook layout sketches arranged by the number of photos, and when I work on a layout I like to try out different arrangements of pictures and page elements until I find one I like.  Since I'm not wasting film in the camera, I take pictures of the different layouts until I pick one I like.

This was the first one I liked, but then I remembered I've used that sketch at least three times.  Actually I did use it again in another album, so I try to only use that sketch once per album because I'm pretty sure it's my favorite layout sketch EVER.  But I wanted to do something different this time.

Lucky for me, I found my sketch after only two tries.  So there's what I started with, before I added the DSP and photo mats to get the finished product above.  I really wanted to use that DSP with the Artistic Etchings motif on both pages, but alas, I didn't have even a full page of it so I had to use a different pattern on the left page.  That's why I stamped the bit from Artistic Etchings on the left page, to carry the motif over to the other side.  So there's a little peek into the mind of Christy when I scrapbook :)

My goal for this year is to do 100 scrapbook pages (so, 50 two-page spreads) not counting baby books, and this layout brings me to 14 pages.  Ugh.  If I *did* count the baby book pages, I'd be over 80.  Oh well, I'll keep on keepin' on and I'll get there someday!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Morning Post Alphabet, Artistic Etchings
Ink:  Cherry Cobbler, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  River Rock, Cherry Cobbler, Very Vanilla, retired Cherry Cobbler DSP
Accessories:  SAMJ

CreativeCrew: Inky Blocks

I'm back with another color blocked CreativeCrew project :)  This one is the last one I did for the June challenges.

I saw "color block" and I thought blocks of cardstock, which I did on another project, but there was a link to this technique of inking up bare acrylic blocks and using them as stamps.  Hey, I'd never done that before so I had to give that a shot too :)

I used four of the five new In Colors on this one, Pistachio Pudding, Crisp Cantaloupe, Coastal Cabana, and Baked Brown Sugar.  The card front is actually Shimmery White cardstock but of course it's nearly impossible to get the shimmer to photograph properly :)

Been having fun with this little Simply Sketched stamp set, it's wonderful!

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out the CreativeCrew gallery for more beautiful creations!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Simply Sketched
Ink:  Pistachio Pudding, Baked Brown Sugar, Crisp Cantaloupe, Coastal Cabana
Paper:  Pistachio Pudding, Shimmery White
Accessories:  none, unless you count the acrylic blocks I used to stamp with :)

CreativeCrew: Color Blocking!

Hello hello hello!  Hope you're having a great day today.  I'm back with another CreativeCrew project for June.

I bet you get a bunch of photo cards from friends and family at Christmas, right?  I didn't want those pictures to get lost in a box somewhere, so I decided to put them on a scrapbook layout.  Really, I have enough to do probably two more layouts--why do those photo cards have to be so HUGE?!  This isn't the first time I've done one of these types of layouts though, check out this one from Christmas 2008.  Now I just need to find all my photo cards for all the other years too :D

Thanks to June's CreativeCrew challenges, my scrapbook page tally is now at 12 out of a goal of 100 pages (I'm not counting baby books).  o_O  At least I made some progress!

Thanks for stopping by!  Now you can go check out the CreativeCrew gallery for more goodness :)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tall Tales Numbers, Snow Swirled
Ink:  Gumball Green, Cherry Cobbler
Paper:  Gumball Green, Cherry Cobbler, Very Vanilla, Be of Good Cheer DSP (now retired)
Accessories:  a ruler to keep all those margins even!

P.S.  Yes, if you look at that baby card in the upper left, I have friends who gave their son the middle name Leonidas.  Because they are awesome like that.

CreativeCrew: Battle of Okinawa Tour

Howdy, folks!  Time for me to share another CreativeCrew project for June!

The scrapbook challenge is to do a page (or in my case, pages--I almost never do single pages other than the first and last in each album) featuring your dad.  That worked out for me since I've been trying to finish up this album from my parents' visit to see us in Okinawa in 2008...holy cow it's been nearly 5 years now and I'm still working on it.  Well, I'm almost done!  Another challenge was to use color blocking, and it didn't occur to me that this layout looks kinda color blocked until one of the other Crew members commented on it.  Mostly I was trying to figure out a way to include all those pictures without cropping them much :)

Looks like I never blogged these pics over on Snapdragon, so I'll tell you about them here.  During my parents' visit, we went on the Battle of Okinawa tour, which took us to several sites on the island connected to the 1945 American invasion, including the Japanese Naval Underground headquarters, Hacksaw Ridge, and Peace Prayer Park.  It's unreal to think of how many people died during the battle--you can see bloodstains on the wall at the Japanese Naval Underground from where some Japanese officers committed suicide rather than concede defeat.  And Peace Prayer Park encompasses the cliffs on the southern tip of the island, where more Japanese officers jumped off the cliffs rather than surrender.  Today, the park is beautiful and serene and dedicated to peace while remembering the horrors of war.

Our tour guide, Setsuko, is this tiny little Japanese lady who speaks rapid-fire English with a heavy accent, but she usually repeats herself three or four times so you have a better chance of getting everything she's saying (my favorite thing she said:  every tour--hubs and I did several with her--she'd ask if any one needed to visit the "powdah loom"--powder room).  She was just a few months old when the Battle of Okinawa happened, and she hid in caves on the island with her family.  She's very passionate about sharing the island's history, especially since Japanese accounts generally gloss over their role--the Japanese military encouraged Okinawans to commit suicide rather than allow themselves to be captured by Americans, for one thing.  (Okinawans aren't exactly the same as mainland Japanese--they only became part of Japan in the 19th century.  Before that, the Ryukyu Islands were an independent kingdom and while they were somewhat related to the Japanese, they also had a lot more Chinese influence and they were a major trading hub in the Pacific in their own right.)

It's not all doom and gloom with Setsuko, however.  In the top left picture, in front of the Buddha statue, she'd started to say something about the statue and then had a thought that cracked herself up so much that she couldn't hardly talk :)  Mom especially liked her...she was our favorite tour guide on Okinawa.

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out the CreativeCrew gallery here!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Symbols of Solicitude (peace kanji on the left hand page)
Ink:  Versamark, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Dusty Durango (retired), Gumball Green, Whisper White, retired Pacific Point DSP
Accessories:  old Sizzix alphabet

CreativeCrew: Rosette Gift Box

Howdy, folks!  I managed to get all my June CreativeCrew projects done just barely on time :)  No minute like the last minute, am I right?

One of June's challenges is to make a project with an accordion fold.  Well, the first thing that came to my mind was a rosette, and since I'd never made one before now seemed like a great time to start.

Wanna know how to make one?  Follow these steps:

1.  Cut a piece of DSP to 1 1/2 by 12 inches.
2.  Score it across the short way every 1/2 inch, then fold mountain-valley-mountain etc.
3.  Adhere the two ends together with Sticky Strip and argue with it till you get it to fan out how you want.  (May take lots of arguing, and I think I ended up cutting off an inch or two of the paper because it just would NOT fan like I wanted).
4.  Embellish as desired and sit back and admire your handiwork!

I just did some simple ribbon loops for "leaves" around my rosette flower, and put a button threaded with linen thread in the middle of it.  The "for you" is from a Petite Pairs stamp that says "I'm here for you"; I just used a marker to ink up the part I wanted.

Side view of the polka-dotted Gumball Green paper.  At first I was going to do the whole box with that Daffodil Delight pattern from Quatrefancy, but I'm kinda wanting to hoard it so I did the green instead.  I could have gone a lot more gonzo decorating the box but I kinda like it more simplified anyway.  I got those kraft gift boxes months ago and never did anything with them...3D objects are not my crafting forte.  Who knows, maybe I'll give 'em a try more often now :)

Thanks for stopping by today and go check out all the June Creative Crew pretties here!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Petite Pairs
Ink:  Gumball Green
Paper:  Quatrefancy DSP, retired Gumball Green DSP
Accessories:  Kraft gift box, neutral button (retired style), linen thread, Gumball Green stitched satin ribbon

CreativeCrew: Blooming Birthday

Time for the last of my May CreativeCrew challenge cards!  I need to get crackin' on the June challenges :)

And here's the pic I used for my inspiration:

I think it's pretty easy to see where I got the colors and the idea for the stripes.  I love Garden Green, I should use it on cards more often.

Must dash, so that's it for me today.  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Blooming with Kindness, Petite Pairs
Ink:  Garden Green, Primrose Petals
Paper:  Pink Pirouette, Primrose Petals, Whisper White, Regals DSP Stack
Accessories:  Oval punch, Whisper White baker's twine, Windows Collection Framelits

CreativeCrew: Up Up & Away

I think it's time to post another card I made for May's CreativeCrew challenges, so here it is!

The color is totally off in that photo, I really should have taken another one but oh well.  The card base is actually white, not that slightly pinkish weird color.  And here's the pic I used for inspiration:

Fun, right?  Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Up, Up & Away; Happiest Birthday Wishes (retired)
Ink:  Real Red, Pacific Point
Paper:  Whisper White, Pacific Point, Pool Party
Accessories:  Brights Glimmer Brads, Chevron EF, Dimensionals

CreativeCrew: Happy Cupcake

Here's another project I did for May's CreativeCrew challenges, take a look!

It's kind of CAS but still shows off three different patterned papers, and I think that cupcake stamp is totes adorbs :)  And here's the party pic that inspired my card:

Fun colors, right?  For some reason the whole pennant thing hasn't really tripped my trigger, so I don't have the pennant punch or the birthday stamp sets with all the pennants.  Someone tell my husband that I do not in fact own everything SU! has ever made ;)

Have a wonderful day and don't forget to check out all the CreativeCrew beauties here!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Best of Birthdays
Ink:  Pacific Point, Daffodil Delight, Melon Mambo, Tempting Turquoise, Tangerine Tango
Paper:  Whisper White, Summer Smooches DSP (I'll miss this stuff, so many fun bright colors!)
Accessories:  Daffodil Delight seam binding, corner rounder punch

CreativeCrew: Yellow Sundress

A little while back, I was surprised to get a private message on Splitcoast inviting me to join the CreativeCrew, which is a group of demos who do monthly demo-only challenges on Splitcoast and try to gently brainwash people into using more Stampin' Up! stuff ;)  This is the first time I've ever been on a design team kinda thing, so I'm excited!  Just hope my stuff is up to snuff, so here's my first card for the Crew!

Ok seriously, that feathery Daffodil Delight print I used on the dress is perhaps my favorite patterned paper in the current catalog.  Like, a lot.  Part of the challenges for this month was to look at this website and pick a party to use as inspiration, so today's card was inspired by the Elegant Butterfly party:

Love that butterfly cake!  Perhaps I got a little carried away with the yellow on my card, but I think it feels sunny and cheerful :)  You can play along in the CreativeCrew challenges here!

Happy stampin'!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Perfectly Penned
Ink:  Raspberry Ripple
Paper:  Daffodil Delight, Sahara Sand, Pumpkin Pie, Whisper White, Floral District DSP, Brights & In Color DSP Stacks

Accessories:  Dress Up Framelits, Bitty Butterfly punch, rhinestones, Apothecary Accents Framelits, Festive Paper Piercing Pack