Orchid Festival 2010, Part 2

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Looks like it's going to be a gray and rainy day here, but at least my scrapbook pages can be all pretty and pink!

It's time for more orchid photos!  And shishi dogs!  I kept the same color scheme from the first layout, but added some patterned paper.  And once again I cropped a lot of the photos.

Here's the sketch I used, for comparison's sake.  Looking through that Becky Higgins sketch book, I think she must have had a lot of her photos printed out much smaller than the standard 4x6 size, because I just CANNOT crop mi pictures down as small as the ones on her sample layout here!  But I managed to get 11 photos on my layout anyway.

Same color combination as last time:  Pink Pirouette, Sweet Sugarplum, Rich Razzleberry, Barely Banana and Wild Wasabi.

Ooh, my tea's ready.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Butterfly of Happiness, Eastern Influences
Ink:  Wild Wasabi, Barely Banana, Rich Razzleberry marker
Paper:  Pink Pirouette, Rich Razzleberry, Barely Banana, Blooms & Bliss DSP
Accessories:  None

2014 Showcase, Part 2

Welcome back for Part 2 of the 2014 Showcase here at Snapdragon Stamps!  Let's go.

Eastern Influences

My pick for May is this scrapbook layout of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan.  Some great pictures that I'm so glad are immortalized on a scrapbook layout, and a great excuse to use some of my favorite colors :)  However, I couldn't pick just one project for May, so here's a bonus:

Hello Lovely, Nacho card!

This card took under 5 minutes to make and I still love it.  That patterned paper is workin', y'all!  Proof that a really cute card doesn't have to take forever.

Wanderlust, World Map, The Open Sea, Nacho card!

June's pick is this travel-inspired card, which I immediately sent to a friend who travels so much that she makes me and the hubs look like shut-ins.  In three years, she and her hubs visited 50 countries!

Stippled Blossoms, Teeny Tiny Wishes, Nacho card!

My July pick is yet another Nacho card, this time anniversary roses.  I do love those roses.

Starburst Sayings, Alphabet Rotary, Gorgeous Grunge, Positively Chevron, Nacho card!

And finally, my August pick could be none other than this Princess Bride-inspired Inigo Montoya card.  I giggled like crazy the whole time I was making it and I know it gave my dad a chuckle when he opened it up, too.

One more part of the 2014 Showcase coming up, but first...ya know tomorrow is Nacho Average Challenges day :)

Friday Flashback: Eastern Influences

Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  Today's featured stamp set is another one of my very favorites:  Eastern Influences.  Let's flash back!

Also features Bella Toile and Cardinal Christmas

This was our Christmas card one year when we lived in Okinawa.

Also features Floral

This one was a swap card I made when Eastern Influences debuted in the catalog.

A red rose this time with what is possibly my favorite-ever DSP, Bella Rose.

Also features Full of Life

And another Bella Rose for good measure : )

Also features Bella Toile and Thank You Kindly

I think this was an after-Christmas thank you card.

Also features Bella Toile and Cardinal Christmas

I tried out a few color combos for my Christmas cards that one year :)

The Baja Breeze one at the top won out because I love that color.  I had fun playing with the other colors though.

So that's it for the Flashback part, and for the brand-new project I have a scrapbook layout!

The pictures are of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan.  I had to have all my photos reprinted because the first time they came out too dark...they looked so much better the second time around!  And I'm kind of in love with the color combo:  Baja Breeze, Crushed Curry, Garden Green and Chocolate Chip.  The stamping is done in Lost Lagoon, which is like a slightly darker version of Baja Breeze.  LOVE IT.

There you can see Lost Lagoon in action on Baja Breeze.

And one more time.  I was lucky on this; when I punched the patterned paper, the place where I wanted the birds was pretty much as far down as the punch would go on the paper so it was easy peasy.  I just punched half the shape out, adhered the DSP to my page base, and stamped the birds in the negative space.  I think this is one of my favorite scrapbook layouts ever :)

So that's it for me today!  Thanks for joining me for the Friday Flashback.

Supplies, scrapbook layout only:
Stamps:  Eastern Influences
Ink:  Lost Lagoon, Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Baja Breeze, Crushed Curry, Chocolate Chip, Garden Green, Eastern Elegance DSP
Accessories:  Curly Label & Decorative Label punches

Friday Flashback: Floral

Time for the Friday Flashback again already!  This week's randomly chosen retired stamp set is just one stamp, the background Floral.  Back in the day before I had tons of patterned paper and embossing folders and such to play with, I used background stamps a LOT so today's Flashback is longer than like the last three put together (no wait, four flashbacks, I looked), and I didn't even post all my previous cards with Floral : )  So let's flash back with a visit to the archives, shall we?

This one features an old favorite, Roses in Winter, plus It's Your Birthday for the sentiment.

One of my favorite color combinations ever!  Baja Breeze, Pink Pirouette, and neutrals.  Main images on this one are from Eastern Influences (another favorite of mine).

 Flower and definition stamp on this one are from Bloomin' Beautiful.

A nice springy card with the morning glories from Morning Soft and sentiment from Warm Words.

Main image from Perfect Petals, "wish" from Small Script.

Here's a more autumnal take with a hummingbird from Spring Song and a second background stamp, Sanded.  I like this card but I wish I could move that sentiment up onto the main image panel--it would have fit just fine underneath the bird!

And here's something a bit different, I stamped the floral pattern with a contrasting color on light cardstock instead of doing tone-on-tone like I did with everything else.  So that's it for the flashback part, here's my new card:

This time I wanted the Floral stamp to take center stage, so I stamped it with Versamark and embossed with Early Espresso powder, then colored with an Aquapainter.  You can't tell from the picture, but the white bit with the sentiment is popped up from the card base, and then the butterfly is popped up again from there so it's multidimensional.

I used the colors from Dynamic Duos' Triple Threat Week:

So there you have it!  I've done nothing but flowery cards (and even a floral scrapbook layout) for over a week now, so I promise that next week I'll have at least two non-floral projects to share.  In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Floral, Best of Butterflies, Fancy Flexible Phrases
Ink:  Versamark, Melon Mambo, Tangerine Tango, Wild Wasabi, Elegant Eggplant (because pansies have to be purple!)
Paper:  Melon Mambo, Whisper White, retired Wild Wasabi DSP
Accessories:  Early Espresso EP, Circles Framelits, Artisan Label punch, Dimensionals, random ribbon from my stash that's probably not SU

Friday Flashback: Oriental Retrospective

So before I left England to visit Texas for two weeks, I scheduled a bunch of blog posts to show up on here.  However, I forgot to factor in that I would leave Texas on a Thursday and wouldn't arrive back in England until Friday, so I didn't have another Friday Flashback post ready to go.  Oops.

So instead, I thought I'd just pick out some old favorite cards to post today, and the first one that caught my eye was using one of SU!'s old Asian sets so I thought hey, why not?  So this Friday Flashback is an Oriental retrospective.  (It's my blog, I can do that.)

Let's start off with a nontraditional Asian Valentine, shall we?  I think this is from the first year that SU! had In Colors, still love that Cranberry Crisp.  The stamp sets used are Artfully Asian and Kanji, and the Artichoke panel is done using the ghosting technique.

I loved Eastern Influences the moment I saw it, and this was a swap card I did as soon as I got those stamps in my hot little hands.  Love Baja Breeze and Pink Pirouette together.

Asian Artistry was a hostess set one year, the year we got Crushed Curry as an In Color.  I think I've said it before, but I wish they'd bring Crushed Curry back--that was probably my favorite yellow ever.  I need to bust out this stamp set again too, I really liked it.

I've always loved dragons, so I hunted down Ancient Asia on the Buy/Sell/Trade boards because that little dragon is pretty cool.  The background stamp is Bamboo II and the "Imagine" sentiment came from Natural Beauty.

Last one for today, another Artfully Asian card.  That flower is colored with Tempting Turquoise ink, just watered down so much that it looks like Cool Caribbean.  I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Artfully Asian, I've used it on a bunch of scrapbook layouts too.

Hope you've enjoyed this slightly different take on the Friday Flashback.  I'm going to go spend time with my sweet little stinky dogs since I haven't gotten to see them for two weeks.  Ta-ta!