Happy Halloween!

Mornin' y'all!  I sent Ryan off to school this morning wearing his Iron Man costume and lugging our contributions to his class ice cream party.  This afternoon he's going to help me get Daphne dressed up in a costume and take a few pictures : )  We let her sniff the costumes this morning and I am 100% sure she is NOT going to cooperate for dressing up.

Since it IS Halloween today, I couldn't resist just one more Halloween card this year, especially since I hadn't used one of my favorite Halloween stamp sets yet--not sure how that's possible given how many Halloween cards I made this year!  But here it is:

Carved & Candlelit is one of my earliest stamp set acquisitions and I will never get rid of it : )  I had to pull it out for this week's Inspired By... challenge:

Which I paired with the CAS Colours & Sketches sketch:

But wait, there's more!  I really liked this sketch so I had to make another card with it:

Plus I couldn't pass up the Creative Colour Challenge this week:

The leaf stamps are from Lovely Leaves, another longtime member of my stamp collection and one I won't let go of, and the "hello" is from Love of Leaves because I was looking for a small hello and it was conveniently close to Lovely Leaves on my stamp shelves.

That's it for me today, peeps.  Daphne wants to go on her daily tour of the neighborhood : )  Hope you have a wonderful Halloween!  I get to debut my new Maleficent costume tonight!

Cheers!

Supplies, pumpkin card:
Stamps:  Carved & Candlelit, Spooky Cat
Ink:  Pumpkin Pie, Pecan Pie, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Basic Black, Thick Basic White, Shaded Spruce DSP
Accessories:  Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, Sunny Day Iridescent Dots

Supplies, leaf card:
Stamps:  Lovely Leaves, Love of Leaves
Ink:  Daffodil Delight, Cajun Craze
Paper:  Mossy Meadow, Thick Basic White, Cajun Craze DSP
Accessories:  Banners Collection Framelits, Dimensionals, Faux Glass Dot

Maine: Witch Hole Pond

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Ugh, waking up this morning was tough--Ryan was off school all of last week so we were both enjoying the opportunity to sleep in a bit in the mornings.  But we're going to have to get back to the regular routine now...at least until he gets *another* week off for Thanksgiving!

Anyway, I'm still chugging through the Maine pages and I really should put the album together.  Um, I've started one single scrapbook layout since we moved to Texas and it's been halfway done for WEEKS.  Need to get on that.  But here are some completed pages!

Witch Hole Pond is a part of Acadia National Park, we explored several areas of the park and I would go back to Maine in a heartbeat, it's gorgeous.  I made two layouts for Witch Hole Pond and still had a lot of pictures left over that I really liked.  Maine is definitely picturesque.

We used that family picture for our Christmas cards that year.  I wish I had bought more than one pack of the Into the Woods DSP too, I love it and I've been hoarding it to use on scrapbook pages.  And of course I adore the Thankful Forest Friends stamp, the bear and the fox have been featured on quite a few scrapbook pages and cards.  (The bunny doesn't get used as much, sorry bun-bun.)

Today's fall palette is from the DSP:  Tangelo Twist (I only have one piece of 12x12 cardstock left in this color, waily waily!), Daffodil Delight, Old Olive, Mossy Meadow, Soft Suede, Early Espresso, and white.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Make a Difference, Thankful Forest Friends, Love of Leaves
Ink:  Tangelo Twist, Daffodil Delight, Old Olive, Mossy Meadow, Early Espresso
Paper:  Tangelo Twist, Daffodil Delight, Old Olive, Mossy Meadow, Rich Razzleberry, Thick Basic White, Into the Woods DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Leaves dies, Stitched Shapes dies

I'm Leaving

Just kidding, I'm just punny because today's card is all about leaves : )

This is a triple challenge card, too.  First up is the Just Add Ink sketch:

I rotated the sketch 90 degrees to the left, I couldn't find a placement for my leaves with the vertical orientation.  Next up is the tic-tac-toe from Retro Rubber:

I went down the right side of the board with masculine, leaves, and die cuts.  At first I had the ribbon tied in a bow, but I changed it to a simple knot because I thought that felt a teensy bit more masculine.  Is that silly or what?  But that taffeta ribbon was the only thing I had that matched the colors of the card.  My stamp set, Love of Leaves, is 3 years old, and the colors are retro too.  I chose colors based on the Sunday Stamps color challenge:

I used More Mustard, Riding Hood Red, and Buckaroo Blue for my colors, all of which are long retired.  I even busted out a retro stamping technique for the card base, I scrunched up a piece of plastic wrap, tapped it on my ink pad, and stamped it on the card base.  That technique was A Thing when I first started stamping circa 2004-2005, and the inspo pic for this challenge is what made me think of it.  Super easy way to make a nice subtle background when plain cardstock is too plain and patterned paper is too busy.

Okay, I've got to go work on organizing stuff again.  I actually got a lot of progress made upstairs yesterday and I have a truly ridiculous number of empty scrapbook albums in one closet and a whole lot of completed scrapbook pages in another.  One of these days I'll have to get those together : p  Today I'm going to be packing up our old sets of dishes to get them ready to donate since I got all-new Fiestaware dishes this year.  Wheeee!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Love of Leaves
Ink:  Buckaroo Blue, More Mustard, Riding Hood Red
Paper:  Buckaroo Blue, Thick Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Stitched Leaves dies, Stitched Rectangles dies, Riding Hood Red taffeta ribbon, Dimensionals
Accessories:  Riding Hood Red taffeta ribbon,

Oklahoma, Part 5: Cousins

Scrappy Monday!  And hey hey, we're up to the last layout from the 2019 Oklahoma trip : )

Before we left the cabin, my mom wanted to get a picture of Ryan and his cousins together.  Uh, have you ever tried to get four kids to all behave and look at the camera and smile at the same time?  I think we took like 50 pictures and this is what we got!  I also think it's funny that Ryan is the only one with dark hair.  *singing* One of these things is not like the other ones!  And when we took these pictures, my SIL was pregnant...and yep, *that* cousin is also blond!

Today's color palette:  Cinnamon Cider, Mossy Meadow, Cranberry Crisp, Crushed Curry, and Whisper White.  I reached way way back for that Cranberry Crisp paper, it was from the first year or two of In Colors.  And I wish I'd bought more than just one pack of that Into the Woods DSP because I've used it a LOT on my scrapbooks and I'm about to go into hoarding mode.

Hope you have a good week, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Pure & Simple Alphabet, Love of Leaves
Ink:  Cranberry Crisp, Crushed Curry, Mossy Meadow, Early Espresso marker
Paper:  Cinnamon Cider, Cranberry Crisp, Crushed Curry, Mossy Meadow, Thick Basic White, Into the Woods DSP, Perfectly Artistic DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Leaves Dies

Superfast

Mornin', y'all!  How's your week going?  I've been busy at work because we're getting ready for inventory.  As it happens, *I* won't be doing inventory because our daycare is closed that day, so I've been helping to get everything prepped for it and counting as much stuff ahead of time as I can.  But I still had time for a very quick card!

This is for the As You See It Speed Stamping challenge, fast foliage:

And I do mean fast--I completed my card in six minutes, 25 seconds.  How's that for fast?  I had the Just Jade card base already cut and in my stash before I started, so I just gathered up what I needed for stamps, dies, and paper scraps.  The Paper Players sketch helped me get this card done lickety split:

Oh dang, it's later than I thought--I need to get my workout done and get ready for work!  Have a great day, peeps.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Love of Leaves
Ink:  Just Jade
Paper:  Just Jade, Thick Basic White, Hand-Penned DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Leaves dies, Stitched So Sweetly dies, Dimensionals, linen thread

Leafy Greens

Mornin' y'all!  Yesterday I decided to take the day off from working around the house and I dug into a brand new book from my favorite author and drank copious amounts of tea and okay, I also did five loads of laundry because I can't ignore that for long ;) Once I finished the book, I had enough time to make a quick card in my craft room!

Saint Patrick's Day might have been yesterday but I approve of green any day because it's my favorite color.  The card base on this is Granny Apple Green, the square is gold foil and I had trouble getting a good picture of it because it was so rainy and dark out yesterday (which made it an even BETTER day to stay in and read!).

There you can see the gold a bit better.  I could not resist the supergreen challenge from Color Throwdown (and you get a million bonus points if you know what movie "supergreen" is from):

I used Garden Green, Granny Apple Green, and my trusty gold foil to go with the white.  I quite enjoyed this sketch from Fab Friday:

And I'm entering this card over at Retro Rubber as well:

Neither Love of Leaves nor Art Gallery count as retro as they are under a year old, but I broke out Post Script, which is one of my favorite-ever background stamps and I acquired it in 2017.  I hadn't decided on a sentiment to use when I pulled out Post Script, but something about that stamp makes me want to make "I miss you" cards, so I did.

I'm hoping to get some scrapping done today, and then tomorrow I'm working at the arts & crafts center again.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Love of Leaves, Art Gallery, Post Script
Ink:  Garden Green, Versamark
Paper:  Granny Apple Green, Garden Green, gold foil, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Stitched Leaves dies, Floral Gallery dies, Stitched Shapes dies, Dimensionals

Springtime Serenity

Hey y'all!  I had a day off yesterday so I got my hair cut for the first time in over four months and I'm SO HAPPY about that.  I ran around and did some errands and then spent two hours in my craft room, so I'm also happy about that!  Here is one of the things I worked on yesterday:

It was a raw, blustery day yesterday but in my cozy craft room it was all about soft spring colors.  I started with Soft Sea Foam and Purple Posy and then I had to add in a bit of pink, so I pulled out some retired Powder Pink because Petal Pink is too peachy for this card.  Don't recognize that heart die?  It retired a while back, it's in the Sunshine Wishes Thinlits.  I wanted something to go behind my sentiment block, and I cut out some of the flowers with the Wild Rose dies but one wasn't enough and two or more just felt like they were taking over the card and then I found this heart already cut out and was like yep, that's exactly what I needed here.  I managed to use three different sets of dies on this card, and a corner rounder punch.

I started with the sketch from Global Design Project:

As soon as I saw the sketch, the Well Written dies popped in my head and I hadn't used them in a while so I decided to go with that notion.  I combined that with the Paper Players theme challenge:

You don't have to use fall colors with leaf stamps, ya know!  I picked Soft Sea Foam because it's the softest SU green, and then stamped three leaves from Love of Leaves for the biggest panel on my sketch.  This card came together pretty quickly and I figure it's a good multipurpose card.  Could be just a thinking of you but can also work for sympathy.

I've got my third day at work today.  Wednesday was day #2 and my bosses kinda left me minding the shop by myself for a good chunk of the day.  Good thing I'm a fast learner, and I knew where to find them when something came up that I needed to ask a question (they were playing ping-pong!).  Ryan is enjoying daycare a lot and I'm enjoying the opportunity to be out of the house and interacting with other people, so yeah I think this is a success so far.  Hope y'all have a great Friday, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Love of Leaves, Well Said
Ink:  Soft Sea Foam, Highland Heather
Paper:  Purple Posy, Soft Sea Foam, Powder Pink, Pear Pizzazz, Thick Whisper White, Playing With Patterns DSP Stack
Accessories:  Sunshine Wishes Thinlits, Painted Labels dies, Well Written Framelits, corner rounder punch, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella

SUO Challenges: All Things Autumn

Hey friends!  October is my favorite month of the year, how about you?

Another favorite:  it's SUO Challenges day!

Our theme this time is to make fall cards.  Fall is my favorite season so you know I was all over this :)

I ended up with an autumn rainbow here and I love it.  I picked a pretty plaid from the Plaid Tidings DSP Stack and then chose some warm colors that I thought would pop on the plaid, so altogether my card has Bumblebee, Pumpkin Pie, Cinnamon Cider, Cherry Cobbler, Pretty Peacock, and Shaded Spruce on it.  Once again I turned to my trusty catalog for inspiration, take a look at page 55 for the original card.

Your turn!  Upload a fall card on the SUO Challenges blog, and enjoy something pumpkiny if that's your thang (iced pumpkin coffee cake, here I come!).  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Love of Leaves
Ink:  Bumblebee, Pumpkin Pie, Cinnamon Cider, Cherry Cobbler, Versamark
Paper:  Bumblebee, Cinnamon Cinder, Thick Whisper White, Plaid Tidings DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Leaves dies, Rectangles Stitched dies, white EP, In Color Enamel Dots, Dimensionals

SUO Challenges: Get Punchy or Die

Good morning stampy friends!  It's time once more for a new challenge from SUO Challenges!

This one is probably easy for most all of you: use dies or punches.  I used an old favorite set of dies and a new favorite set to make my card :)

Yeah, if a die set has "stitched" in the name of it, I'm probably going to buy it ;) How do you like the Stitched Leaves dies?  I admit I really liked a card on page 49 of the mini catalog and it inspired my leafy creation here.  Also the Plaid Tidings DSP stack is like my new favorite set of papers, so many great colors and I've always loved me a plaid.  I wish I could have them all in 12x12 size too.  I probably would not have put Mango Melody, Cajun Craze, and Blackberry Bliss together all by my onesies, but I do love how they look here!

Your turn!  Make a punch-tastic or die-riffic card and share it on the SUO Challenges blog.  Mwah!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Love of Leaves
Ink:  Versamark, Mango Melody
Paper:  Mango Melody, Blackberry Bliss, Cajun Craze, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Stitched Leaves dies, Rectangles Stitched dies, In Color Enamel Dots, Dimensionals, white EP