Baby Luke: Luke James

Okay y'all, I'm going to start sharing Luke's baby book layouts on Saturdays I think.  So here's the first full layout:

Baby Luke was named after a friend and mentor of my brother's, who gave his life in service to our country on his first deployment, leaving behind his own infant son.  Ryan's middle name is Luke partially because of that too--when Ryan was born we didn't know if my brother and SIL were going to have any other kids (Luke has a big sister), or if they'd have a boy, so we chose that for my son's middle name to honor my brother's friend even though we never met him.  (And also Ryan's grandfathers are Rich and Larry, so he shares an initial with each of them.)  Anyway, bestowing this name on his son was very important to my brother, so I wanted to have a layout in the baby book where he could write about why they chose this name and maybe have a picture of the first Luke there.

I kept the colors muted, mostly greens and brown as a nod to Army uniforms.

Supplies:
Stamps:  For Your Country, The Free & The Brave, Land That I Love
Ink:  Always Artichoke, Dapper Denim, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Mellow Moss, Always Artichoke, Dapper Denim, Very Vanilla, Manchester DSP
Accessories:  Sizzix letters

United States Capitol, Part 2

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Man, it's July ALREADY!  As promised last week, today I've got more scrapbook pages from the US Capitol to share.  Perfect since we're so close to the 4th of July!

Ahh, Ryan was such a wee babe!  He was 4 months old when we did this.  After we toured the Capitol, we had more time so we ate lunch there in the underground cafeteria and then we walked to the Library of Congress (pics on the right).

I didn't have any more of the star paper I used for the first layout, but I did have a few pages of a similar star paper made by the same company.  It's a different color, more brown than yellow, but it worked well with the photos anyway.

My color palette photo is off, it should be Baked Brown Sugar instead of Tip Top Taupe.  Guess I wasn't paying enough attention while I was taking pictures of all those layouts :) And then yesterday I didn't get around to re-taking the picture of this palette.

Okay, time to get my kiddo up and get ready to go.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Land That I Love, Simply Stars
Ink:  Midnight Muse, Early Espresso marker
Paper:  Midnight Muse, Riding Hood Red, Baked Brown Sugar, Thick Whisper White, K & Company patterned paper
Accessories:  flag die cut by Li'l Davis Designs

Friday Flashback: Filigree

Happy Friday!  This week's Friday Flashback stamp set is Filigree, which was one of my favorite background stamps for a very long time...oh who are we kidding, I still love me some Filigree.  But I don't want you to spend all weekend trying to make it through the entire Flashback, so I just picked out a few favorite older projects with Filigree.

Oh wow, I just saw in the Splitcoast gallery that Filigree retired in 2005!

Also features Roses in Winter, Hugs & Wishes

Wow, way back in the archives for this one:  that's Vintage Violet!

Also features Best of Brides & Babies

Here's a wedding card with one of the "Best of" sets they did a couple years ago.  Filigree is stamped with Versamark and embossed with clear EP; it also looks pretty fabulous done in metallic EP or Iridescent Ice.  Which is on the retiring list, to my great surprise.  I love that stuff!

Also features Land That I Love

Here's a patriotic eagle card.  Oy, back in the day when all I had was cheap big box store ribbon.  I don't have much current SU! ribbon, but I do have a laundry basket full of retired stuff :)

Also features Petal Prints, Happy Everything

Aww, this one's sweet.  I miss Regal Rose sometimes.

Also features Coast to Coast, Sincere Saluations

You know what?  I think a lighthouse makes for good symbolism on a thinking of you or sympathy card.

Also features Print Pattern, Wonderful Wings, Sincere Salutations

Okay, one last one with the kissing technique and a fabulous butterfly.  Of course you recently saw a Filigree-kissed sun on my Here Comes the Sun layout this Monday.

So that's all I'm sharing from the archives today, otherwise you'd be here until next Friday.  Here is today's new creation:

Today's colo(u)r combo is from ColourQ:

It's been a really long time since I busted out the Cool Caribbean, I still have quite a stash of 8.5x11 cardstock which makes me happy.  Sadly, the year that Cool Caribbean was an In Color I wasn't scrapbooking much at all so I never got any 12x12 in the In Colors.

I also used this week's Mojo Monday sketch:

I had a Goldilocks moment with the gold circle element--I wanted to use one of the gold doilies I have, but the smaller size was too small and the larger size was too big, so in the end I just die-cut a plain circle and it was juuuust right.

Hope y'all have a wonderful weekend, peeps.  I think we're supposed to get thunderstorms today and tomorrow, so that means it's a good opportunity to stay home and work in my craft cave!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Filigree, Stippled Blossoms, Thank You Kindly
Ink:  Cool Caribbean, Calypso Coral, Smoky Slate, Basic Gray, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Cool Caribbean, Basic Black, Thick Whisper White, Gold Foil
Accessories:  Circles Framelits, Hexagon punch, Dimensionals

Nachos: Veterans Day

Hello stampy friends, I hope you're ready for another sketch from the Nacho Average Challenges team.  Here it is:

Because today's Nacho post happens to fall on Veterans Day, I made a patriotic card with a favorite retired stamp set (um, don't ask how many "favorite" retired stamp sets I have, k?).

Ok, I had to make the panels bigger to accommodate my eagle, but I just couldn't get the current patriotic/military stamp set (For Your Country) to work with this sketch unless I did some flipping and mirror imaging and I just wanted to stick to the sketch so Land That I Love is it.

Check out the Nacho blog for more sketchy goodness and then let's see your take on the sketch.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Land That I Love (retired)
Ink:  Baked Brown Sugar, Night of Navy
Paper:  Night of Navy, Baked Brown Sugar, Very Vanilla, retired Real Red DSP
Accessories:  Oval & Curly Label punches, Brights Candy Dots, Dimensionals, Lucky Stars EF

Favorites Showcase 2013, Part 2

2013 is almost over, so here we are with the second half of the 2013 favorites showcase.  Let's go!

Here's one of my picks for July, I love this card.  Always good to have some masculine cards on hand.

My second July pick; July is when I really started to get back into scrapbooking and had loads of fun with it.  I can't wait to dive back in once my exam is over on January 13th!

Here's another scrappy pick for August, from when hubs' truck got squished almost 10 years ago.  It wasn't fun at the time, but I get a kick out of looking at this layout now.  The title makes me giggle every time.

My choice for September was this awesome leafy card, I love those colors together!

Another scrappy layout for October with lots of blues for my mama!

Another great color combo for November's card, love the aquas and purple together.

And we'll finish it up with my favorite December card, this Wedgwood-inspired poinsettia creation.  Once again, I've linked up the original posts for each card or scrapbook layout if you want to see more.  Tomorrow is Nacho Average Challenges day and then we're in to 2014!  Seems like I just got used to writing 2013...

Dolomite Mountain Hike

Are you ready for another scrapbook layout?  This one's a bit different because I got the hubs to do the journaling on it!

See hubs' blog post about these pictures here (yep, I made him write a blog post too!).  The pictures were taken in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy, where the lakes are bright turquoise due to the copper content in the water.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Land That I Love (stars), Rough Type Alphabet (small letters), non-SU alphabet
Ink:  Coastal Cabana, Midnight Muse, Smoky Slate
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Midnight Muse, Whisper White, Winter Frost DSP
Accessories:  Modern Label punch, old SU die cut from before they had Framelits

Friday Flashback: Land That I Love

Welcome to a special patriotic edition of the Friday Flashback!  Usually I pick a stamp set name at random, but since the 4th of July is next week I just had to do a patriotic stamp set for today's Flashback.  And that set is Land that I Love!  Probably my favorite patriotic stamp set to date, so this is gonna be a longer Flashback than normal :)

I got this stamp set relatively early in my stamping career, so my first couple cards aren't necessarily stellar, but hey, now we can see how I've grown as a stamping artiste.  I can always tell which ones are the oldest pictures because a.) they induce the most squirming on my part to look at them and b.) they're scans, not photos.

I didn't like this one much when I made it--in fact, the picture is called "Patriotic Blah"--but I don't think it's so terrible now.  The torn edges are something different.

This one I kinda liked pretty well; the front of the card is torn and the "Thank You" is actually stamped on the inside.

You can't tell in this picture but the eagle is actually stamped on glossy paper and there's a bit of pale, pale blue and purple done with baby wipes so it looks more like sky.

Something quite simple and bordering on CAS...you can just barely see the line of stars to the left of the sentiment.

And this stamp set has even made an appearance in a baby book :)  So how about my brand new card for the day:

I kinda like it, what do you think?  I was very closely following the latest Retro Sketch, but if I were to do this over again I think I'd move the knot to the right side and the sentiment to the left.  But you can see I did stick like glue to the sketch this time:

I think that might be my dad's birthday card next month.  It looks all manly, right?

Thanks for joining me for this week's Friday Flashback!  To all my American friends, have a safe and happy holiday next week.

Supplies, last card only, all SU!
Stamps:  Land That I Love, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Ink:  Baked Brown Sugar, Marina Mist, Early Espresso
Paper:  Cherry Cobbler, Early Espresso, Very Vanilla, retired Marina Mist DSP
Accessories:  Cherry Cobbler seam binding, Dimensionals