I'm A Little Teapot

Mornin', y'all.  I woke up with a ginormous headache this morning so I'm going to be taking it easy today...just as soon as I get Ryan off to school and do the grocery shopping.  But first, a card:

This was actually the first one I made for the Color Dare Challenge:

I used Pretty Peacock, Gorgeous Grape, and Coastal Cabana on this one too, and fussy-cut three teapots from the new-to-me stamp set Tiny Teapots.  And here's my other challenge from AAA Cards:

And the card to CASE:

I kept the basic layout and the tea theme, but with the colors from the other challenge.

Okay, I'm back from the store and I'm almost done with my tea, so pretty soon Daphne and I will be heading out for our walk.  Maybe the fresh air will help alleviate my headache a bit...one can hope.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tiny Teapots, Snow Swirled, A Nice Cuppa
Ink:  Pretty Peacock, Gorgeous Grape, Coastal Cabana
Paper:  Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Textured Notes die used for reverse masking, Mini Dimensionals, rhinestones 

Snow Fun!

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Ryan was not best pleased this morning that he has to go back to school today, especially since the hubs is off for Veterans Day.  But that's what's happening : ) Still tons of snow everywhere but the roads are clear, so it's time to get on with life.

I picked a snowy scrapbook layout to share today : )  This was a snow day in Germany.

Aww smol Ryan!  We got that snowsuit at a place in Germany for only like 20 euros and it was great, we were sad when he got too big for those.  The hubs did find him a nice ski jacket and snow pants secondhand here, so he's set even though he's gotten so much bigger.

Today's wintry palette:  Coastal Cabana, Blueberry Bushel, Lemon Lime Twist, and white.  The Blueberry Bushel and Lemon Lime Twist were pulled straight from Ryan's snowsuit, and the Coastal Cabana made a good contrasting color for the page base.

That's it for me today, peeps.  After I finish breakfast, the hubs and I are going to take Daphne out on a walk in the snow and then later we're meeting up with friends for lunch.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tall Tales Alphabet, Snow Swirled
Ink:  Blueberry Bushel, Coastal Cabana
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Blueberry Bushel, Lemon Lime Twist, Thick Basic White, Let It Snow Specialty DSP
Accessories:  Layering Circles dies

Hairy Holidays! 2010

Scrappy Monday!  I've been working through my Maine scrapbook pages, but now that it's December, I'm going to switch over to holiday pages and I'll pick back up on Maine in January.  So to start with, I have a cute layout featuring my much-loved fur babies.

I miss them so much.  Anyway, I had already done some Christmas pages for this year (2010), but I had several pics left over with Sadie and Vader, so I made a layout for their album.  Yeah, Sadie and Vader will have their own scrapbook album once I finally take all my completed pages and actually put them in albums.  For this layout, I used a couple of different packs of patterned paper and just had fun with it.  Usually I'm trying to cram in a lot more pictures on a single layout but this time I could let it breathe with the fun patterns.

Today's festive color palette:  Garden Green, Real Red, Old Olive, and Very Vanilla.  And of course black for my doggos.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Taffy Alphabet, Snow Swirled
Ink:  Garden Green, Real Red, Old Olive, Basic Black Marker
Paper:  Garden Green, Real Red, Old Olive, Thick Very Vanilla, Merry Moments DSP, Cerise DSP
Accessories:  1 3/8" circle punch, Circles Framelits

So, last week I spent some time getting all my loose scrapbook pages organized.  I don't necessarily make pages in chronological order, and I haven't put my pages into albums in quite a while, so I had two or three paper holders of scrapbook layouts that needed to be organized into their proper years.  It took me a couple of hours to get it all done:

I already had a lot of containers labeled with different years, I just needed to file the newer pages into place.  But this gives you an idea of how many layouts I have done...

Yeah this went pretty much around the whole craft room.

And here they are, all properly labeled and organized!  I got several more paper storage containers the week of Thanksgiving when they were on sale for $4; I still have four empty ones at the top so I'll need to work on that ; )  Then there's two containers that have some supplies and odds and ends, and every single other one of these containers has completed scrapbook pages in it.  I'm going to need a whole room just to house my scrapbooks when we get our forever house.  And now that I have all the pages organized, I think Sadie and Vader are going to get at least two albums, because I have a very large stack o' pages for them.

Today I need to start wrapping some Christmas presents for Ryan while he's in school and maybe I'll get to do some more scrapping.  Like I said, I have those four containers that need to be filled with more completed pages.  Cheers, y'all!

Sapporo, Part 5: Mount Moiwa

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  The packers come on Wednesday so we've got a lot to do between now and then, some of which I'll get started on when Ryan goes down for his nap here in a little bit.  But for right now, let's check out some scrapbook pages!

See the pics here.  Umm, I think I love blue and pink together.

This time I cut the title out so my pink would show up on the blue background.  And also more snowflakes because it's Sapporo.

Today's super-fun color palette is Pacific Point, Flirty Flamingo, Smoky Slate, and Whisper White.  This layout was super simple and pretty fast to put together, but I think it's still reasonably cute.

I'm off to play with Ryan until he's ready for his nap, then I'll go work on getting my craft room ready to pack up.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tall Tales Alphabet, Calendar Alphabet & Numbers, Snow Swirled
Ink:  Pacific Point, Flirty Flamingo, Whisper White
Paper:  Pacific Point, Flirty Flamingo, Smoky Slate, Whisper White, Fruit Stand DSP
Accessories:  hexagon punch

Friday Flashback: Bootiful Occasions

Happy Friday, y'all!  Today's Friday Flashback retired stamp set is Bootitful Occasions.  There are four main stamps in the stamp set and I thought for a hot second that I had actually used every stamp in the set, but the little "happy boot day" stamp has never been used.  Oh well, onward!

Each one of the four main boot stamps has an image of a boot along with a sentiment, but for this one I cut the two elements apart.  And this is one of those weird sketches from Splitcoast.

Also features Extreme Elements

If winter boots aren't your thing, perhaps a cowboy boot?

Here's what I need right now, some rain boots (a.k.a. Wellies).  I've been using my snow boots as rain boots for the past couple of weeks and they're covered in mud.  So is my basement.  Again.

Also features Make a Mitten and Snow Swirled

For this one, I just used the winter boot's sentiment with some images from other stamp sets.  See, multi-functional!

And possibly my favorite boot in the set, the witch's boot : )

The background on this card was fun (and messy) to create and involved finger-painting.  And that's the end of the flashback, so here is my new creation:

My dad asked me to make a thank you card for him that had boots on it, so this is what he got.  I stamped the boots on Thick Whisper White, sponged on Really Rust ink, then fussy-cut them and put them on an oval of Very Vanilla.  The boot on the left is popped up on Dimensionals.

I texted Dad a picture of the stamp set One Big Meaning so he could pick his particular thank you stamp and this is what he chose.  This card is large, 5x7 instead of a regular A2 card size, because that's what he wanted.  And also because everything is bigger in Texas.

Well, I'll see you tomorrow for another baby book layout, and in the meantime, cheers y'all!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Bootiful Occasions, One Big Meaning
Ink:  Basic Black, Really Rust, Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Really Rust, Very Vanilla, Thick Whisper White, Outlaw DSP
Accessories:  Ovals Framelits, Neutrals Candy Dots, Dimensionals

Ice Bar

Well, peeps, it's just another manic Monday :)  The hubs is off work today so we're painting some more.  But first, it's also scrappy Monday, so here's my layout for this week:

See the pics close up here.  Virginia in July is muggy and humid and hot and gross, so we're thinking cool thoughts with this layout.  As you can tell from the pictures, we were at the Stockholm Ice Bar Hotel :)

Here's my ultra-cool color palette:

Night of Navy, Pacific Point, Bashful Blue, and Whisper White.  That stripey paper I used is actually from the High Tide DSP, but I thought it worked well for my icy layout.

Well, I'd better go get to painting.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Snow Swirled
Ink:  Pacific Point, Bashful Blue, Night of Navy marker
Paper:  Night of Navy, Pacific Point, Bashful Blue, Whisper White, High Tide DSP
Accessories:  Circle punches

2014 Showcase, Part 1

Howdy, stampers!  As 2014 winds to a close, I thought I'd take a look back at all the stuff I've posted here for the past year and pick a favorite project for each month.  So instead of a Friday Flashback this week, here's the 2014 Showcase, Part 1!  And lemme just pat myself on the back here, haha.

Features Snow Swirled

For January, I chose this snowy layout.  I love the bright blue with the three pastel colors, and I love those photos from our house in England.  And I miss snow.  I think I've worn a jacket like, maybe three times since we moved to Alabama.  Okay, maybe four.

Perfectly Penned, Starburst Sayings, Nacho card!

February's pick is this bright and fun birthday card (even though there's a dog hair stuck in the middle of it in the photo).  Plus this blog post was one of the funniest ever I think; this is what happens when I blog late at night.

Best of Butterflies, Happy Day, Nacho card!

My March pick is all about the butterflies.  It's hard for me to do CAS cards, but this one just worked for me.  And who wouldn't want to get a butterfly smile in the mail?

Swallowtail, Yippee-Skippee!, Nacho card!

My April card is also butterfly-riffic, this time giant size.  I love bright fun happy colors and that Nacho color challenge delivered bright, fun, and happy in spades!  And you know what?  Three out of four projects I picked for this post were Nacho cards!  Love the Nacho challenges.

Showcase Parts 2 and 3 coming up soon.  Cheers, peeps!

Friday Flashback: Make a Mitten

I hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving yesterday!  Sweet potato casserole makes for good breakfast food :)  Anyway, it's time for a Friday Flashback, and now that Thanksgiving is over we can concentrate on Christmas cards!  Today's featured stamp set is Make a Mitten.  As usual, I think I need to use this cute stamp set more often!

Also features Snow Swirled

So let's start out with a baby book layout just for funsies.  These cute mittens are perfect for any winter-themed project, including a January layout.

Also features Snow Swirled & Bootiful Occasions

There are two different stamps that are patterned mittens, but the set also includes several stamps you can use to decorate your own mittens any way you want so that's what I did here.  I really need to use the adorable tiny reindeer stamp!  So here's today's brand new project:

I had planned to use the reindeer on this one but it didn't fit!  Oh well.  I found a scrap of that patterned paper in my stash and thought they, that's perfect!  I wanted to use some bright, fun colors today and it doesn't get brighter and funner than Tangerine Tango.  I used the sketch from The Paper Players:

That's it for me today...it's time to take the doglets for a walk and then get cleaned up to go to the movies.  Have a great Black Friday, everyone!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Make a Mitten, Snowflakes
Ink:  Tangerine Tango, Pacific Point
Paper:  Soft Sky, Old Olive, Whisper White, Frosty Day DSP
Accessories:  Mitten punch, Banner Framelits, white baker's twine, button, Dimensionals

Snow

Well, I'm starting off this Monday with a headache, but I'm hoping that my cuppa tea will ameliorate that a bit.  And I've got a brand new scrapbook layout to share!

The photos are from almost exactly a year ago; you can see them here and here.  I kinda wonder if my layouts are getting too boxy, but it's hard to really do much creatively when you're trying to cram in as many pictures as possible (and since our photography has improved, I hate to crop any of the pictures off too!).  I love the picture of the trees with the sun on them and the snow-covered swirly iron work, not to mention the pics of my cute little fur babies :)

I started out with a Pacific Point base for my pages and then for accents I used three super-pastel colors:  Almost Amethyst, Soft Sky, and Pistachio Pudding.  The stamped snowflake on the O gave me a good excuse not to try cutting out the center of the letter ;)  I'm hoping now that I've got the scrappy ball rolling for this year that I can pick up momentum and reach my 100-page goal for this year.  Well, I did 146 pages last year if I count the two baby books, but my goal was to do 100 pages in my own scrapbooks, and for that I got to 86 pages.  So hey, not too bad a showing I guess, but I'm gonna get to that 100-page goal this year!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Snow Swirled
Ink:  Pacific Point, Almost Amethyst, Soft Sky, Pistachio Pudding
Paper:  Pacific Point textured, Almost Amethyst, Soft Sky, Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White, retired Soft Sky DSP
Accessories:  lettering template because I'm crazy and still hand-cut my letters

Friday Flashback: Watercolor Winter

Happy Friday!  Are you ready for another festive Friday Flashback?  Today's featured stamp set is last year's Watercolor Winter, which I wish had carried over to this year because I really like it.  I suppose that doesn't matter though since I can still use it : )  So let's flash back!

The fun part about stamps is you can make things any color you want, so in my world, there are blue poinsettias.  This was a birthday card for a friend of mine last year, the same one who got the hedgehog snowman card from earlier this week.

I think this one might be my favorite of the flashback cards for today; I like the CAS layout and the little pops of pink.

And this is probably my least favorite one...it was a combination SCS sketch/color challenge card and I think I was just trying too hard.  Bleah.

I kinda like the layout on this one, which was another sketch I'm sure.  I almost always do sketch challenges for my cards, but I branch out a fair amount on my color combos.

This was my attempt to make a Watercolor Winter card *without* using the poinsettia stamp : )  So that's it for the cards from the vault, here's my brand new creation:

The layout is courtesy of Retro Sketches and the color combo was from an SCS challenge a few weeks ago.  I was prepared to hate Cameo Coral paired with Real Red, but when I stamped off the coral once and then layered the Real Red over it, I kinda liked how it turned out.  But I think if I'd used any more coral on here then I wouldn't like it as much; I kept the traditional red for my card base and then balanced it with lots of neutrals.

Here's the sketch, which for once I think I followed it pretty closely!

So that's it for me today.  I haven't decided yet if I'll do another Christmas-themed Friday Flashback next week since Christmas Day will be in the middle of the week, hmm.  I don't need any more Christmas cards this year, but I will need some post-Christmas thank you cards...

Have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Watercolor Winter, Petite Pairs
Ink:  Real Red, Cameo Coral, Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White Craft
Paper:  Real Red, Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake, Whisper White, retired Old Olive & Chocolate Chip DSP
Accessories:  Dazzling Details (on the flower center, though somehow I ended up with clear glue and not much glitter), Apothecary Accents Framelits (probably my favorite set of Framelits ever), corner rounder punch, Dimensionals

CreativeCrew: Color Blocking!

Hello hello hello!  Hope you're having a great day today.  I'm back with another CreativeCrew project for June.

I bet you get a bunch of photo cards from friends and family at Christmas, right?  I didn't want those pictures to get lost in a box somewhere, so I decided to put them on a scrapbook layout.  Really, I have enough to do probably two more layouts--why do those photo cards have to be so HUGE?!  This isn't the first time I've done one of these types of layouts though, check out this one from Christmas 2008.  Now I just need to find all my photo cards for all the other years too :D

Thanks to June's CreativeCrew challenges, my scrapbook page tally is now at 12 out of a goal of 100 pages (I'm not counting baby books).  o_O  At least I made some progress!

Thanks for stopping by!  Now you can go check out the CreativeCrew gallery for more goodness :)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tall Tales Numbers, Snow Swirled
Ink:  Gumball Green, Cherry Cobbler
Paper:  Gumball Green, Cherry Cobbler, Very Vanilla, Be of Good Cheer DSP (now retired)
Accessories:  a ruler to keep all those margins even!

P.S.  Yes, if you look at that baby card in the upper left, I have friends who gave their son the middle name Leonidas.  Because they are awesome like that.

Olivia's Baby Book

Not too long after I started stamping, I got the idea to make baby books for a couple of friends of mine for their baby showers.  Since then, I've done ten, and I've got one more that's 80% finished (I just need to find out if the baby's a boy or a girl).  I do one layout for each month of the year, plus layouts for the baby's birth and first birthday.  Add in the first and last pages, and each book is 30 pages.  They take me at least a couple of months to do, so I don't do them for very many people.  And I won't sell them either, because honestly, no one would pay what I would want to charge for them given how much time they take, never mind the cost of supplies.

So here's the one I just finished up for my SIL and her new daughter, Olivia.  If you want a complete supply list, check out my SCS gallery here.  Jill is doing the nursery in what my mom calls Strawberry Shortcake colors--pink, hot pink, and lime green, so that's what I started with.  The die cut alphabet I used is by Sizzix and I've had it since I graduated from college and it's long retired :)  Click on any of the pictures to see it bigger.

 Stamps:  Mixed Bunch, Papillon Potpourri

Stamps:  Baby Prints

Stamps:  Make a Mitten (retired), Snow Swirled

Stamps:  Artistic Etchings, Carte Postale (retired), En Francais

Stamps:  Celtic Knots (retired), Tag Time (retired)

Stamps:  Announcements (retired)...I did this one several months ago, had I known Rain or Shine was coming out I woulda waited so I could have used that!

Stamps:  Tea Shoppe...I thought a mother-daughter tea party theme would be cute?

Stamps:  By the Seashore

Stamps:  Land That I Love (retired)

 Stamps:  Bronc Buster (retired), Wanted (retired)...Olivia was born in Texas, she needed a cowgirl layout :)

Stamps:  Fruit & Flowers, One Smart Cookie

Stamps:  Googly Ghouls (retired)

Stamps:  Wonderfall, Falling Leaves (retired)

Stamps:  Reindeer Print

Stamps:  Crazy for Cupcakes (retired), coordinating cupcake wheel (retired)

So excited this one is done!  I've even made a card to go with it, so now I just need to get it in the mail.  Thanks for stopping by!