Lavenham

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I've got Ryan at home with me all week and then he starts school next Monday.  I may not get much stamping done this week unless he wants to stamp with me, we'll see.

Lavenham is a little town in England that was used in the Harry Potter movies for parts of Harry's hometown, Godric's Hollow.  You can see my original pictures here.  I kept the layout super simple because sometimes that's all you need!  We have a 5x7 print of the picture of the church hanging up in our living room, how do you like that sky in the photo?

Today's color palette:  Certainly Celery, Crisp Cantaloupe, Calypso Coral, and Dapper Denim.  Had to go with the Cantaloupe and Coral to match some of the crooked houses.

Have a great day, peeps.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Lovely Letters Alphabet, Secret Garden, Simple Stems
Ink:  Dapper Denim, Crisp Cantaloupe, Whisper White
Paper:  Certainly Celery, Dapper Denim, Calypso Coral, Crisp Cantaloupe, Sweet Sorbet DSP
Accessories:  Secret Garden dies

Friday Flashback: Secret Garden

Hey y'all, happy Friday.  This week's Friday Flashback stamp set is Secret Garden.  So let's hop to it!

Also features Perfectly Penned, Positively Chevron

 Let's start off with some shiny gold chevrons, shall we?  I think the Strawberry Slush flowers really pop against the lighter colors and the gold.

Also features Simple Stems, Blessings from Heaven, Gorgeous Grunge

And here's a less successful card; there are matching Secret Garden Framelits and the stamp set Simple Stems works with them too.

Also features Sweet Serendipity

And for the last part of the Flashback, I made this one for the Sweet Serendipity flashback a little while back.  So that's it for digging around the archives, and here is today's brand new card:

This time I hand-cut the flowers instead of using the Framelits because my little girl dog parked herself right behind my chair and I couldn't get up (I'm absolutely certain she does that on purpose).  I need a birthday card for my MIL, so I turned to this week's Create with Connie and Mary color challenge:

I did only use SU! products, though the stamps are retired; they don't specifically say that's against their rules but if it is then they can throw paper scraps at me.  I love it when Elegant Eggplant shows up in color challenges, which happens next to never so I had to play along.

I also really liked this week's CAS(E) This Sketch:

So that's it for me today, folks.  I need to go vacuum the house (hopefully the vacuum won't try to knock me down the stairs this time) and get my Thanksgiving shopping list ready.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Secret Garden, Happy Everything
Ink:  Island Indigo, Versamark
Paper:  Island Indigo, Elegant Eggplant, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Gold EP, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Sweet Serendipity

Happy Friday, stampers!  It is time once more for a Friday Flashback, and today's stamp set is Sweet Serendipity, a set of six cool sentiment stamps plus a few little images.  Let's go!

Also features Bronc Buster and Flannel Plaid

 I'd say riding a bucking bronco would be an adventure, wouldn't you?

The Sweet Serendipity stamp I used on this layout says "Live each day with laughter/enthusiasm" which seemed perfect with the picture of my friend Sarah on a carousel in Florence.

Also features Pretty Amazing and Pretty Petals

You saw this one earlier this year in the Pretty Amazing Friday Flashback.

Also features Happiness Always

And this one was in last week's Happiness Always Friday Flashback.

Also features Fabulous Flowers, Sanded, Paisley

 Oh hey, Fabulous Flowers had a Friday Flashback already too.  This is still one of my favorite cards.

Also features Snow Burst and Paisley

The sentiment says sparkle, and this card delivered!  The whole top panel is covered in Iridescent Ice EP, which is hard to photograph but looks awesome and sparkly in real life.

Also features Pretty Peony and Sanded

This was the first card on the Pretty Peony Friday Flashback, and it's another of my old favorites.  I love that Sanded background stamp.   That's it for the flashback part of today's post (and the flashback to prior flashbacks, if you followed all the links), it's time to see what's new!

I had Sheltering Tree out on my table for a different project so I thought I'd use it for today's post too.  I used the Fall-To Layout #22 from Clean & Simple Stamping:

And the softer color combination from Colour Me...!

But since I was on a roll in my craft room, and there was a whole 'nother color challenge on there, I had to try the bold combination as well:

I added a bit of Sahara Sand to both color combinations, I couldn't help it :)  For this one, I also used the sketch from the Paper Players:

Hope you enjoyed today's extra-long Friday Flashback.  Have a great weekend, peeps, we're painting again!

Supplies, Sheltering Tree card:
Stamps:  Sweet Serendipity, Sheltering Tree
Ink:  Tip Top Taupe, Blushing Bride, Wisteria Wonder, Sahara Sand
Paper:  Tip Top Taupe, Blushing Bride, Wisteria Wonder, Whisper White, Wisteria Wonder DSP
Accessories:  Oval & Scalloped Oval punches, Dimensionals

Supplies, Secret Garden card:
Stamps:  Sweet Serendipity, Secret Garden
Ink:  Night of Navy, Whisper White
Paper:  Calypso Coral, Night of Navy, Sahara Sand, Whisper White
Accessories:  Secret Garden Framelits, Spring Flowers EF, ticket corner punch, Dimensionals

Inspiration

Mostly it seems like I do sketch and color challenges, but I really like inspiration challenges too.  Sure, some of the color challenges come with a photo of whatever inspired the color combo, but I like these kinds of inspiration challenges:

Just realized this is my second inspiration challenge this week!  This one is from Just Add Ink, and here's what I did:

I won't lie, I wish I had the gold vellum already printed with the chevrons :)  My embossing powder got a little messy on the chevron panel.  The larger flower and the sentiment are also gold embossed.

Still hard to tell, but you'll have to take my word for it.  I used a retired Glimmer Brad from when Pear Pizzazz was an In Color; I figured it looked close enough to a darker shade of Pistachio Pudding.  The other whozit (I can't even remember what these are called?) was a freebie added to a Paper Pumpkin kit a while back, otherwise I probably wouldn't own them.  My post office is SO picky about anything dimensional going through the mail.

I also used the latest sketch at Clean & Simple:

I really like their sketches but haven't played along over there in a long time; sometimes I feel a little ADHD with so many challenges out there to choose from.

Hope y'all have a lovely day.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Secret Garden, Positively Chevron, Perfectly Penned
Ink:  Versamark, Strawberry Slush, Whisper White
Paper:  Pool Party, Strawberry Slush, Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White
Accessories:  Secret Garden Framelits, lots of Gold EP, Dimensionals, retired Glimmer Brad, is it called Boutique Details?  I don't even know.

Because I needed more flower stamps?

Every year, it happens.  There's a stamp set or two in the SU catalog that I haven't given a second glance all year long, but when it goes on the retiring list, all of a sudden I *must* have it.  Because I am a lemming.  So this lemming jumped off the cliff and got the Secret Garden bundle *and* Simple Stems from the Occasions catalog.  I think I must have seen some card or project somewhere with one of those items on it that made its way into my subconscious and prompted me to buy them, but I have no idea where that might have been so I'll just blame the Internet in general.

So anyway, here's a card with some new toys that are now retiring--and in the case of the Secret Garden bundle, I'm pretty sure it's already sold out.  Probably because of lemmings like me.  We travel in packs.  Wait, pack of lemmings?  Herd of lemmings?  After an exhaustive 5-minute Google search, I came across the suggestion that it be called a plummet of lemmings.  And also found out that lemmings are usually pretty solitary and they don't jump off cliffs of their own accord, so this whole paragraph is a waste of space except for that first bit.

I digress.  Peekture!

I tried embossing that flower on So Saffron cardstock with Pool Party EP and it just didn't do anything for me, so Pool Party on Basic Gray wins.  This card took me forever to make, it was just a pill from beginning to end but I think it ended up okay.  I picked the hexagon embossing folder only because I hadn't used it yet.

My colors are courtesy of the last-ever challenge at Dynamic Duos:

And I used the sketch from the Paper Players:

Sooo I didn't put the sentiment in the same place as it is on the sketch.  Oh well!  I'm going to move on to something that's less persnickety with me today.

Thanks for stopping by.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Simple Stems (largest flower), Secret Garden (smaller flower around sentiment), Blessings from Heaven, Gorgeous Grunge
Ink:  Versamark, Smoky Slate, So Saffron
Paper:  Pool Party, Smoky Slate, So Saffron, Basic Gray, Whisper White
Accessories:  Pool Party EP, Secret Garden Framelits, Hexagon EF, Subtles Candy Dots, Dimensionals