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: Morning Soft

Hellooooo stampy friends!  I'm late, but finally here with today's Friday Flashback.  It's been a long time since the last one!  But anyway, today's featured stamp set is Morning Soft.

I love morning glories, they're some of my favorite flowers.  I also love hydrangeas and orchids, if you're curious :)  When we lived in North Carolina, I had some morning glories in our backyard.

Also features Floral and Warm Words

I had morning glories in all different colors, from a pretty cornflower blue to the striking dark purple Grandpa Ott variety, and I also planted some moonflowers and four o'clocks in there too so I had flowers all day.  Well, until the hubs put undiluted Miracle Grow on them...did you know that can kill plants?  The moonflowers were HUGE, too.

Also features one of the All-Year Cheer sets.  Honestly, who can keep all three of them straight?  Not I.

I think the sentiment on this one should be scooched over just a little down and left...I try hard at CAS cards but it's so difficult to get everything in just the right place!  Anyway, that's it for the flashback part of today's post, so here's the card that took me all afternoon to make:

I was going for a Grandpa Ott morning glory :)  I thought I'd try something a little different and embossed the image with clear EP on white cardstock, then colored it in with my (retired, but still missed) Watercolor Wonder Crayons.  Actually I think the shading looks a little bit better IRL than it does on the picture, and when I was halfway done with coloring it in I thought I'd made a mistake, but I ended up liking the finished image better than I thought I would.  I used this week's sketch from Freshly Made Sketches:

I'm a little bothered by the white space to the left of the sentiment, but I couldn't think of anything to put there that wouldn't make the card too busy so I left it as is.  And I know who's getting this card too, so now I just need to pull out my postage stamps and get to writin' so I can send along some happy mail!  But not 'til after dinner.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Morning Soft, Elegant Cheer
Ink:  Versamark, Garden Green
Paper:  Wild Wasabi, Whisper White, retired Elegant Eggplant DSP
Accessories:  Circles & Windows Collection Framelits, clear EP, pearls, Dimensionals, retired Watercolor Wonder Crayons

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: Natural Beauty

Time for another Friday Flashback!  This week's featured stamp set is Natural Beauty, and it is a beauty.  It was fun for me to play with this set again : )  So let's take a look back in the archives:

My first two Flashback cards were inspired by some yellow freckled orchids I had when we lived in Okinawa.  The above card also features Floral (background), Full of Life (sentiment), and Itty Bitty Backgrounds (freckles on the flower).

This one is mostly the same as above, but trade out the Full of Life sentiment for one from All Holidays.

Here's something a little different; only the sentiment on this one is from Natural Beauty.  The stamp is kind of a word cloud thing so I just inked up the "Imagine" bit that I wanted.  The dragons are from Ancient Asia, and I also used Bamboo II and Itty Bitty Backgrounds (again).

This one is more CAS; the sentiment is from that perennial favorite, Sincere Salutations.  So that's it for the Flashback part, let's check out the brand new creation:

I used this week's SCS sketch and an old color challenge (I have about 20 sketches and 15 color combos to go to complete my challenge to myself to complete them all).  The flower image was stamped with Chocolate Chip craft ink (sadly retired) and embossed with clear EP before I colored the image using both a blender pen (need some new ones) and an Aquapainter.  The card is pretty straightforward, the only thing that took some time was coloring the image.

Thanks for joining me for this week's Friday Flashback, and have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Natural Beauty, Warmest Regards
Ink:  Chocolate Chip (craft and classic), Crumb Cake, Barely Banana, Real Red, Mellow Moss
Paper:  Barely Banana, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla, retired Real Red & Mellow Moss DSP
Accessories:  clear EP, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: On Angel Wings

This week's Friday Flashback set is one that I really love, On Angel Wings.  It was a hostess set in 2004, the first year I started stamping.  It's not just a Christmas set, though one of the sentiments in here is Christmas-related, so I'm including it in my holiday Friday Flashbacks :)  Up first are two cards from the archives.

Here's the first card I ever made with it, for a combination sketch/color challenge on Splitcoast.  And from the looks of my SCS gallery, it took me three years to make anything with the stamp set...though I think that I may have gotten it long after it retired from the BST boards.  That's my story anyway.

I made this one last year as a sympathy card.  How is it that I can use the Stamp-a-ma-jig and *still* have the sentiment be crooked??  I really like this color combo though, Pink Pirouette, Wisteria Wonder, and Concord Crush.

Ok, here's my first new card with this stamp set.  I'm still plugging away at catching up on all the SCS color and sketch challenges though sometimes I think that kind of warps my creativity a little bit, do you ever feel like challenges are stifling?  But I keep at it because I've only got about 30 to 40 more of each to go and I can combine those for the most part.  I kind of threw the kitchen sink at this card though with the stripes stamped with snowflakes (somebody please remind me to re-ink my Whisper White ink pad!) and then the holly on the Certainly Celery layer.  I meant to stamp the angel on Shimmery White cardstock but I forgot so instead I spritzed it with vanilla Smooch Spritz.  She's watercolored with WWC and since I stamped her with Early Espresso, the ink ran a little bit when I wasn't careful enough with the Aquapainter.  I'm hoping it looks like a nice softening of the image and not like she's wearing camouflage-print robes.  Good grief.

Because I'm an overachiever this week (and I was waiting for that Smooch Spritz to dry) I made a second card, this time going more CAS, and I like it better.  Plus I wanted to try stamping the angel in a color without coloring the image in afterward.  I was inspired by the current color challenge on Create with Connie and Mary, but I didn't use any silver so I won't link it up over there.  I think I'll do that color challenge sometime next week, it looks awesome...maybe I'm trying too hard on the SCS challenges and that's why I'm not loving my cards for those.  Hmm.

Hope you enjoyed this angelic Friday Flashback, thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, card #3:
Stamps:  On Angel Wings, Background Basics, Snowflakes
Ink:  Early Espresso, Whisper White, Certainly Celery, Blushing Bride
Paper:  Rose Red, Early Espresso, Certainly Celery, Whisper White, Subtles DSP Stack
Accessories:  Vanilla Smooch Spritz, Dimensionals

Supplies, card #4:
Stamps:  On Angel Wings
Ink:  Baja Breeze, Wisteria Wonder
Paper:  Baja Breeze, Shimmery White, In Color DSP Stack
Accessories:  Baja Breeze seam binding ribbon