The Triple Hoax

Happy Saturday y'all, and welcome back to the Nancy Drew Challenge!  I'm posting a bit late today because Ryan wasn't feeling well this morning and snuggling with my kiddo will always be more important than pretty much anything else.  He's fine, just needs to take it easy today.  So anyway, here we are with the kickoff for the Nancy Drew digest paperbacks, #57, The Triple Hoax:

Let's talk covers!  The one on the left is a Wanderer arch cover (we get these up to I think #78), and oddly enough I would say that this particular edition of The Triple Hoax is the easiest paperback Nancy Drew to find at used book stores--I found copies in at least three of the stores I visited in Texas.  Anyway, the Wanderer covers have never been my favorites just from a design standpoint, but I do have to say that they have some pretty fantastic charcoal illustrations inside.  So for this cover, we have some lovely purple hues and Nancy looking pensive in front of a group of probably nefarious magicians.

The other two are what I call the checkerboard covers for the little checkerboard between the Nancy Drew name and the title of the book, the pink one is another Wanderer edition and the teal one is a Minstrel.  Style-wise I keep thinking that pink cover should be the newest one because Nancy's shorts are more fashionable ; ) and I think it's my favorite of the three, it's got more action than the other two and I like those colors.

The third cover is a similar scene to the second one and also has some great colors, but my goodness Nancy, those shorts!  This is the first of many, many opportunities to mock fashion on the Nancy Drew book covers, I tell you.  But let's talk contents.

Case file:  Aunt Eloise (yay!) invites Nancy, Bess, and George to New York to investigate when one of her friends is swindled out of several thousand dollars.  Nancy quickly becomes suspicious of The Hoaxters, a magic act performing in town, so of course she follows them to Mexico City when they clear out of NYC in a hurry, and then follows them to Los Angeles before she's able to bring them to justice.  We have lots of travel, theft, fraud, kidnapping, poison, arson--this book is a RIDE, let me tell you.

Here's my first card:

What with all the travel, Nancy spends a LOT of time making long-distance and/or international phone calls and I couldn't resist making a phone card.  I believe this card takes the cake for the most stamp sets used on a single card, I used five old Paper Pumpkin stamp sets plus five other stamp sets for a grand total of ten!  It took some time to stamp-a-ma-jig all those hellos on the front but I like it.

I had to do an arch for our first Wanderer arch cover, but when I finished I wished I had used a darker purple for the card base to match the colors better; I was so excited to make this that I just ran right ahead to stamping instead of comparing purples.  Oh well, I still like it.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Timeless Talk, Elementary Elegance, Heartfelt Hellos, Blossoms in Bloom, A Dozen Thoughts, My Paper Pumpkin (multiple sets)
Ink:  Highland Heather
Paper:  Gorgeous Grape, Highland Heather, So Saffron, Basic White
Accessories:  Everyday Arches dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, So Saffron Candy Dot

Despite the different colors, the text of the books is all the same but we're going to have fun with the multiple covers for quite a few books.  So here's my card for the second book:

The girls visit the Pyramid of the Sun near Mexico City and that's where they are on the cover scene:

I pulled out Flores Misticas because it has that fun pattern that looks like the carved stone of the pyramid, and I chose Watermelon Wonder, Crushed Curry, and Highland Heather for my colors.  I love Watermelon Wonder and I am hoarding the small amount of cardstock I have left in that color.  I used blending brushes to add some lighter color on the yellow and purple bits, and I embossed the butterflies with Iridescent Ice embossing powder so now everything upstairs is covered with glitter.  I added some foil gems for more glitz, too.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Flores Misticas, Make a Difference
Ink:  Watermelon Wonder, Crushed Curry, Highland Heather, Basic Gray, Versamark
Paper:  Watermelon Wonder, Basic White
Accessories:  Iridescent Ice embossing powder, Iridescent Foil Gems, Dimensionals

And for the final book cover:

The girls fly to Mexico City, but due to an airline strike, they rent a car to get to Los Angeles.  On the trip, which takes several days, they come across an indigenous community that doesn't speak Spanish, but they manage to communicate that they're looking for breakfast.  One of the older women, thinking that Bess wants an extra-fresh egg, catches a chicken and has it lay an egg in Bess's hand, which just made me laugh so much that I knew immediately this incident would be the basis for one of my cards.

To match the cover and color in my fabulous chickens, I used Pretty Peacock, Purple Posy, Rococo Rose, So Saffron, Fresh Freesia, and Golden Glow.  The Tinsel Gems are technically Berry Burst, but they match the Rococo Rose cardstock pretty well, and I was quite tickled to find that sunrise-looking pattern in my stash in one of my chosen colors.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hey Chuck
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Pretty Peacock, Purple Posy, Fresh Freesia, Golden Glow, So Saffron, Rococo Rose
Paper:  Pretty Peacock, Rococo Rose, Basic White, Playing with Patterns DSP Stack
Accessories:  Hey Chuck dies, Perennial Postage dies, Dimensionals, Tinsel Gems

When I was a kid, I didn't particularly care for this book and reading it now I have no idea why I didn't like it more back then.  We have lots of adventures in this book with all the travel and it was fun to do some sightseeing in Mexico, plus that incident with the chicken is hilarious.  I give it four and a half stars.  This book was the first Nancy Drew published under a new publisher, and I think they did a very good job of making it feel like a continuation of the old series.  I could seriously have done without the fat-shaming that George subjects Bess to, I wish they hadn't kept that element of the original series, but almost everything else was very fun.  If you're inspired to make a card based on this book, leave me a comment below, and I will see you next week when Nancy investigates The Flying Saucer Mystery.

Mid-Mod Inspo

Mornin' y'all!  Hope you've got your sunglasses ready because I went All In on the bright colors today!

Check out the really fun inspo pic from the Just Us Girls challenge:

I saw where my Paper Players teamie Elizabeth posted her card for this challenge and I just *had* to play along, pretty sure this is the first time I've participated in the JUGS challenges.  Actually I was looking for stamps for a different challenge when I ran across Flores Misticas in my hoard and thought it would be fun to pair with the colors in the inspo pic.  I found a large and in charge sunny greeting in the aptly named Sunny Sentiments.  I really had fun with this challenge, I do love me some bright colors.  And it was really fun to play with Flores Misticas since I've only used it once before this card and it's got such a fun style.

That's it for me today, peeps.  Go forth and conquer!  Or, maybe just spread sunshine.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Flores Misticas, Sunny Sentiments
Ink:  Bermuda Bay, Pumpkin Pie, Lovely Lipstick, Versamark
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Pumpkin Pie, Lovely Lipstick, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  White EP, Dimensionals, Opaque Dots

Chinese Lantern Festival and New Year's Goals

Happy New Year and Scrappy Monday!  I read somewhere once that you should spend New Year's Day doing the things you want to do for the rest of the year, so definitely don't do any laundry or housework.  With that in mind, yesterday I spent some time in my craft room, I worked on two different stitching projects, I read a bit (starting off the year right with S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and high adventure), and hung out with the hubs and the kid.  So that's what I want to do this year--work on creating things, reading good books, and spending time with the fam.  More on New Year's goals at the end of the post but for now, scrapbook pages!

My parents visited us in North Carolina for Christmas 2019, and during that visit we went out near Raleigh to a Chinese lantern festival.  That's the first time that the hubs and I have done anything like this and it was beautiful!  I had a hard time narrowing down which pictures to use; we took zillions, I printed out a big stack, and then I tried to squeeze in as many as I could on two layouts.  And then it turned into three layouts.

There were so many neat things to see!  I'd love to do this again sometime but I suppose for now I'll stick to the European Christmas markets : )  Fair trade.

I knew right from the start that I wanted to use black for the page base, so then the question was what color(s) to use to mat the pictures.  In the end I went with a whole rainbow:

Basic Black with Poppy Parade, Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, Emerald Envy, Bermuda Bay, Starry Sky, and Orchid Oasis.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Alphabet Antiques Upper & Lower, Flores Misticas
Ink:  Poppy Parade, Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, Emerald Envy, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Basic Black, Poppy Parade, Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, Emerald Envy, Bermuda Bay, Starry Sky, Orchid Oasis, Thick Basic White, Sunshine & Sprinkles DSP
Accessories:  None

Okay, so time for some new goals!  I don't make resolutions per se, more like I set intentions.  You can see my goals/intentions for last year here; I always go back and reread what I wrote a year ago and kind of assess how I did.

1.  Scrapbook layouts:  I didn't have a set number in mind, but I made 136 pages in 2022, so not bad at all!  For the past ten years or so my goal has been about 100 pages per year; some years I don't quite make it and others I blow right past that number.  I do want to buckle down and do more scrapping this year so I'll stick with the usual 100 pages, and hopefully the upheaval of our move this summer won't last too long.  It'll be harder to scrap during the summer with Ryan off school anyway.

2.  Organize and pare down pictures:  still ongoing.  I haven't been as diligent for the past few months as I should be, so I need to refocus on this one.  But I have made quite a lot of progress over the last couple of years and I do pretty well with getting new pictures organized into the proper folders (with labels!) as we take them.  I may have to find a new photo printing service though; the last batch I got was just much poorer quality than I want.  Hmph.

3.  Reading:  According to Goodreads, I read 102 books in 2022.  A few of them were novellas and the very last one was a 9-page short story, but quite a few other ones were epic-length books (including several 700+ page chonkers) so I think it all evens out.  I ended 2021 with 390 unread books on my Kindle, and that number is now 545 so I will never, ever run out of things to read.  A couple of weeks ago I dipped a toe into Terry Pratchett's Discworld books because Hogfather was on sale for $1.99; I've now read three of the 41 books in the series and will likely continue for the foreseeable future.  I think for all three books I spent the first 75% pretty much confused as to what was happening but I was having such a good time that it didn't matter.

4.  Stitching:  I currently have three projects in the works.  The first is a Ghostbusters stitch; I finished the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man but I need to decide placement for the words to go with him, so it's on a break at the moment.  I'm working on Pretty Little Dublin from Satsuma Street, and yesterday I started something new to me, a temperature tracker.  I love how this one is potions bottles and makes me think of going to school at Hogwarts.  Yesterday I had to choose fabric and get out all the colors for it, and I stitched my first potion bottle : )  This one should be fun to work on all year.  After Dublin and the Ghostbusters, I have three more Pretty Little Cities and a slew of other patterns I'd love to work on, so I definitely need to clone myself several times over.

And when I'm not stamping, scrapping, organizing, reading, or stitching, I'll probably be cooking dinners for the fam and traveling.  Which will then involve taking more pictures to organize and eventually scrapbook : )  Hope your year is off to a good start, peeps!  Back tomorrow with this year's first SUO Challenges card.