Swiss Capade 1

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I keep forgetting that I have several layouts done that I need to take pictures of, but today I thought I'd start a series of scrapbook pages from our first trip to Switzerland.  So here's the first layout of what I called the Swiss-capade : )

We took the train (several, actually) to Lauterbrunnen, which is in the Valley of 72 Waterfalls.  We did not see all 72, but we did see several!

Today's springy color palette:  Lavender Lace (how's that for an old color?!), Garden Green, Evening Evergreen, Polished Pink, and white.

I'm going to start a workout and see how far I can get before Ryan wakes up.  His camp this week is Lego engineering, but it's in the afternoons so he can sleep in.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Taffy Alphabet, Hydrangea Haven
Ink:  Evening Evergreen, Stampin' Blends in Polished Pink, Highland Heather, Evening Evergreen
Paper:  Lavender Lace, Evening Evergreen, Polished Pink, Basic White, Peaceful Prints DSP
Accessories:  Hydrangea dies

Blowing Rock

Scrappy Monday, y'all.  I've got Ryan home from school today because he developed some type of rash on his arms and legs--he's all over bumps.  So I'll be calling the doctor's office as soon as they open to get him an appointment.  In the meantime, I still got up fairly early and did a workout, then bought some new dishes because Fiestaware came out with a new color and y'all know how I feel about having ALL THE COLORS, ha.

And speaking of colors, my favorite ever set of In Colors will officially retire at the end of the day tomorrow, so I picked today's scrapbook layouts because they showcase Orchid Oasis and Starry Sky, both of which I love, with a healthy dash of Polished Pink because I would swap Melon Mambo for Polished Pink in a heartbeat.  Take a look:

These pics are from 2020, not too long before we moved from NC to Germany.  We had driven out to Tennessee to meet up with the hubs' sister and her family in the Smoky Mountains, and on the way back to our house, we stopped in the Blowing Rock area for a couple of days.  I took Ryan's pic next to that sign in the shop for the eponymous Blowing Rock attraction and let it be my page title because I'm smart like that.  And check out all those hydrangeas in the photo on the top right!  That led to me picking Hydrangea Haven for accent images, and drove my color choices too.  I'm real pleased with the color combo on this.  Good thing I built up a stash of the retiring In Colors.

Bonus layout today : ) We had too many good pictures from this stop on our trip to only do one layout.  We visited Blowing Rock in the morning and then went out to Grandfather Mountain in the afternoon.  Saw some great views over the mountains, it was gorgeous.

Today's color palette:  Orchid Oasis (page base), Mango Melody (DSP), Polished Pink (DSP, accents), Starry Sky (photo mats), Garden Green (in the photos and for stamped leaves), and white.  That Enjoy the Journey DSP came up on the clearance rack last week, and if I hadn't already hoarded like five packs of it, I would have been all over getting more of it.  It's one of the standout paper packs from the last few years in my opinion.

Anyway, I feel like I've chattered a lot here.  Time to call the doc for Ryan and we'll see what the rest of the day holds.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hydrangea Haven, Country Bouquet
Ink:  Orchid Oasis, Garden Green, Starry Sky, Polished Pink
Paper:  Orchid Oasis, Starry Sky, Polished Pink, Thick Basic White, Enjoy the Journey DSP
Accessories:  Hydrangea dies, Country Bouquet punch

Guest Designer: CAS Colours & Sketches Color Challenge

Happy Tuesday y'all!  I'm very excited to report that I am the guest designer at CAS Colours & Sketches for the month of April!  It's always a surprise to me when I get offered a guest designer gig :)  Check out these colors:

I have to say, this was definitely a challenge for me!  It took me over an hour trying different things in my stamp room before I finally came up with something I thought might work, and here it is:

Okay, pink and green together is a totally classic combination, that's not what gave me trouble.  I couldn't wrap my brain around using Soft Succulent and Garden Green together :p In the end, I decided to stamp the outline of my flowers and the sentiment in Garden Green (it might look black in the photo, I promise it's Garden Green ink), and then I colored in the image with Blends.  This worked much better than the several earlier attempts that ended up in the trash can, and I was happy to play with Hydrangea Haven.

I hope you'll make your own CAS creation and share it on the CAS Colours & Sketches blog.  I'm sure you'll have lots of ideas for these colors!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hydrangea Haven
Ink:  Garden Green, Stampin' Blends in Soft Succulent & Polished Pink
Paper:  Soft Succulent, Thick Basic White, Polished Pink DSP
Accessories:  Hydrangea dies, Stitched So Sweetly dies, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella

Hydrangea Valentine

Happy Friday, y'all!  How has your week been going?  I think I'm still sleepy from the night earlier this week when I woke up at 3:45 and couldn't get back to sleep, ugh.  It's been kind of a weird schedule this week too since I've been working until 3, then rushing home to work in my craft room for about 30 minutes before heading back out to pick Ryan up from daycare.  I don't like feeling rushed when I'm crafting, ya know?  But I did make a card yesterday.

I am calling this a Valentine because why should roses be the only flowers on Valentines?  So it fits with the Global Design Project theme:

I also used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

I did make my card the standard A2 card size rather than square, because I don't *like* making square cards.  I realize I may be in the minority with that opinion but that's okay.  Last up, I used the color challenge from the Color Throwdown:

This color palette immediately made me think of the Hydrangea Hill DSP from last year's Occasions catalog, so I used Rococo Rose, Highland Heather, and Mossy Meadow for my colors.

Gotta get ready to go to work.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hydrangea Haven
Ink:  Early Espresso, Rococo Rose, Mossy Meadow, Highland Heather
Paper:  Highland Heather, Thick Basic White, Hydrangea Hill DSP
Accessories:  Hydrangea dies, Highland Heather ribbon, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella

Fusion Hydrangea

Helly again, friends!  How is your week going?  Hope it's a good one.

Hydrangeas are some of my favorite flowers.  After the hubs and I got engaged, I bought a giant wedding magazine and immediately found a picture of the bouquet that inspired what I carried on our wedding day--hydrangeas and gardenias.  My bouquet was purple, but I love all the colors that hydrangeas come in.  Today's hydrangea card was inspired by the challenge from Fusion:

I took my inspiration just from the picture this time, especially the colors:  Seaside Spray, Soft Succulent, and So Saffron, with Night of Navy as my neutral.  I like that little pop of yellow.

Hope you smile today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hydrangea Haven
Ink:  Night of Navy, Seaside Spray, Soft Succulent
Paper:  Seaside Spray, So Saffron, Night of Navy, Thick Basic White, Soft Succulent DSP
Accessories:  Nature's Thoughts dies, Painted Labels dies, Dimensionals

An Interesting Experiment

Hey y'all!  How's your day going so far?  Since Ryan stayed home on Friday, I didn't think I'd be able to make any cards to share today and tomorrow since I'm working.  But my hubs took Ryan to see his cousins on Sunday so I got a couple cards made :D  Here's the first one:

This was pretty interesting.  It's very hard to tell in the photo, but the Very Vanilla layer is actually some old DSP--the pattern shows up the most in the center of the middle flower.  That Very Vanilla pattern also made the ink colors turn out more muted than I expected--I used Mango Melody, Bumblebee, and Terracotta Tile but it sure doesn't look like it, does it?  Not necessarily displeased, just not quite what I was expecting it to look like.

I got my inspiration from the Inspired By challenge:

I used the optional sketch as well as the inspiration pic for my card.  I was going to dig up an old stamp set with fruit in it, but Painted Poppies caught my eye so I went with that instead.  As for the sentiment...well, since I've been mailing a lot of cards to two ladies undergoing treatment for breast cancer, there's nothing more appropriate than this one!  Plus I figure neither one of them want a constant flood of "get well soon" cards since this is a long-term fight, so I like to go with "thinking of you" or just "hello" instead.  And cheerful stuff.  Because it's always nice to get pretty mail.

Have a great day, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Painted Poppies, Hydrangea Haven
Ink:  Mango Melody, Bumblebee, Terracotta Tile, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Basic Black, retired Very Vanilla DSP
Accessories:  none

The Dancing Goat

The Prancing Pony is the name of the pub in Lord of the Rings, right?  If I ever open a pub, Imma call it The Dancing Goat.  Coincidentally (not) my cards today feature...a dancing goat!

Ain't HE fun!  I started with this week's Global Design Project challenge:

As you can see, I was primarily inspired by the layout of the card, and I used a stamp to get the three-color watercolor wash effect on my card.  I took  my colors from the Color Throwdown:

They described the colors as yellow, orange, red, and kraft; honestly the top color looks more like a tan than yellow to me but I ended up using Bumblebee, Terracotta Tile (I like this color and I feel like I hardly played with it the last two years and now it's retiring), Cherry Cobbler, and Cinnamon Cider.  These colors feel like fall to me so I challenged myself NOT to do a fall card because I'm hard-headed like that.  Goats are hard-headed too so it all works out.

The last challenge for today is the Paper Players theme:

I tried to keep my card CAS, but it does have several layers.  And then I worried that the Challenge Police were going to come after me for not keeping it CAS enough, so I made another version:

All the same stamps and colors, but just the card base and one fussy-cut dancing goat.  Definitely CAS!  But then it felt slightly out of balance, so...

I gave him some cans.  Still CAS though, so I should be safe from the Challenge Police, haha!  The color swatches are lighter because this time I used sponges to apply ink to the stamp, and I colored the goat a little bit differently because why do it exactly the same twice in a row.  I kind of adore this sassy goat.

Hope you have a great Friday, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Way to Goat, Hydrangea Haven
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Cherry Cobbler, Terracotta Tile, Bumblebee, Gray Granite, Stampin' Blends in Cinnamon Cider & Ivory
Paper:  Cinnamon Cider, Thick Basic White, Bumblebee DSP
Accessories:  Mini Dimensionals

Shimmery Hydrangea

Mornin' everyone.  Kinda glad I'm not working today because my husband's phone was buzzing all night  last night and I'm tired!  I do have a card to share today though.

I started out with a sketch challenge but my card ended up morphing enough that it didn't look much like the original sketch, so I'll just stick with the Fab Friday color challenge:

I used Shimmery White cardstock for the white panel and the die-cut hydrangea, and then I upped the shimmer factor by painting the flowers with Wink of Stella.  I used the Stacked Stone background stamp done with Versamark and clear embossing powder for the background panel; I love that background :)  I made this card on Tuesday and it went out in the mail yesterday.

Tired or not, I've got some things to get done today so I'm going to get after it.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hydrangea Haven, Stacked Stone
Ink:  Basic Gray, Misty Moonlight, Pear Pizzazz, Versamark
Paper:  Smoky Slate, Misty Moonlight, Pear Pizzazz, Shimmery White
Accessories:  Hydrangea dies, clear EP, Wink of Stella, Dimensionals

Hydrangea Happiness

Hey y'all!  Yesterday I managed to spend a good chunk of the day in my craft room, which is always nice.  Mostly I'm working on a series of scrapbook layouts from a trip to Texas and Oklahoma in 2019, but I did take the time to make a card too.

I love hydrangeas--they were the main flower in my wedding bouquet--so of course I was tickled to see the Hydrangea Hill suite in the Occasions catalog.  This is the first time I've gotten to play with it but how GORGEOUS is that paper?!  And marvel with me, friends--if you look closely you can kinda see the Wink of Stella I put on the stamped flower on the left of the sentiment strip.

How about a couple challenges?  First up is Inspire.Create:

Yeah, I can do anything goes :)  The Paper Players color challenge was taken straight from the Hydrangea Hill DSP, which was part of why I chose this suite to play with for today's card:

And I liked both of the sketches from Sunday Stamps:

I chose the sketch on the right but I do like both of them.  Technically my sentiment strip should have been a leetle bit longer to exactly match the sketch but I cut it too close.  Oh well.

I still have a rather large stack o' stamps that I haven't gotten to play with yet--I did a pretty big order during Sale-a-Bration and then didn't get to play with any of it because Ryan seems to think he requires constant entertainment *insert eyeroll here* It's so NICE having him in daycare every day, whether I'm at work or working on projects at home.  Getting to play with paper and ink again has definitely had a positive impact on my mental health.

Anyway, hope y'all have a great Friday!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hydrangea Haven
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Highland Heather, Old Olive
Paper:  Seaside Spray, Old Olive, Thick Basic White, Hydrangea Hill DSP
Accessories:  Hydrangea dies, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella