Friday Flashback: En Francais

Happy Friday, friends, and welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  This week's randomly chosen retired stamp set is En Francais, and it just might be one of my most-used background stamps.  Even with picking and choosing just some favorite projects from the archives to share today, this is gonna be a long flashback...let's go!

Also features Artistic Etchings, Circle Circus, I {Love} Love Wheel

It's only natural to pair En Francais with the Eiffel Tower from Artistic Etchings...I did that quite a few times actually, but I picked these to share today because I like the collage effect.

Also features Carte Postale

Here's another French-inspired creation with a fleur de lis.

Also features Baroque Motifs, All Holidays

En Francais also makes some pretty Christmas cards.  I like how this one has the traditional red and green but also Elegant Eggplant for something different.  And I made this card before I learned how to tie pretty knots :)

Also features Illuminations, Bella's Border wheel

I *love* the stamp set Illuminations, love love love it.  This was for one of those annoying all-neutral color challenges.

Also features Stippled Blossoms, Christmas Messages

 Another Christmas card, this one of a more recent vintage.

Also features Joyful Christmas

And this is one of my favorite cards ever.  I love the white watercolored poinsettias.

Also features Stem Silhouettes, Print Pattern, Sincere Salutations

One more less-traditional Christmas card.

Also features Pretty Peony, Lovely Letters Alphabet

And a pretty monogram.

Also features Simply Sketched

This one is a little bit different with the script stamped in such a dark color, so it's a bolder element than most of the cards on this post but I still thought it worked well for a sympathy card.

Also features Perfectly Penned, Flower Shop

You can just see the script stamped in white on the background squares.  And that's all I'm sharing from the archives, which is maybe half the cards o.0  Ready for a new creation?

It's Friday Flashback day and I still got to play with my brand-new Watercolor Wings :D  For the white squares, I pressed an acrylic block into my Whisper White ink pad and used it like a stamp--it came out with more ink around the edges and less in the middle without me even trying, which was great since that's what I wanted it to do.  I used three different stamps to make the butterfly (actually four, counting the antennae), but I ended up having to cut it out by hand because where I stamped the butterfly body didn't jive with the matching Framelit.  Note for next time:  cut out the butterfly and stamp the body on afterward.  That baker's twine bow was a pain too, it took four tries to get something that looked halfway decent.

But anyway!  I used this week's ColourQ colors:

I kinda thought that they shouldn't work together, but I did really like them when I had all five laid out on my stamp table.  I also used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And that's it for me this week.  Hope you have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  En Francais, Watercolor Wings, Vintage Verses
Ink:  Summer Starfruit, Concord Crush, Pale Plum, Coastal Cabana, Whisper White
Paper:  Summer Starfruit, Whisper White
Accessories:  white baker's twine, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Garden Silhouettes

Good morning, everybody!  It's Friday Flashback time, and this week's randomly chosen retired stamp set (RCRSS?  Nah, that doesn't work) is Garden Silhouettes, which is kind of a companion set to Stem Silhouettes (or at least, I often use them together).  So let's take a peek in the archives, shall we?

Ah, the shaving cream technique background.  Fun, right?  You put a layer of shaving cream on a paper plate and then add a few drops of ink refill and swirl them around, then smoosh glossy cardstock in it.  Scrape off the shaving cream and you're left with this neat swirly background.  I should do this again...oh yeah, use the cheap white foam shaving cream for this, not some fancy-dancy gel stuff : )  Sentiment on this one was from Hugs & Wishes.

I made this one for one of those "color" challenges that makes me roll my eyes, where there's only one color and two neutrals.  Not that I mind doing cards like that from time to time, but when you do that for six weeks in a row it gets old.  I think color challenges should have multiple colors in them, not neutrals. *steps off very colorful soapbox*  Sentiment from Fabulous Flowers.

Ooh, purple.  I miss Almost Amethyst, Lavender Lace and Lovely Lilac.   Sentiment on this one was from Fancy Flexible Phrases.

Here's another one color/two neutrals card, very simple because I think I was making Mother's Day cards at the last minute.  That sounds like me.

So here's today's brand new creation:

The colors are this week's SCS color challenge (now with multiple colors!):  Soft Sky (bring back Baja Breeze!!), So Saffron, and Summer Starfruit.  When I first read that, I thought EWWW and couldn't imagine what to do with them.  Then I got the cardstock colors out and what do you know, the So Saffron turns the Summer Starfruit into a green color, hmm.   So I actually liked that color combo a whole lot more than I thought I would.  I kept wanting to add more stuff to this card but it insisted that it was done like this, so I said okay.

I used last Friday's Sketch Frenzy Friday sketch:

I think I love this sketch.  I've got some ideas to use it again.  Anyway, for today's card I moved the banner flaggy thing over to the right side because otherwise all the Summer Starfruit would have been on the same side of the card and I thought it just worked better with my design to have it on the other side.  I used up some DSP scraps too, that Starfruit strip was straight out of the scrap pile, all I did was flag the end.  Yay for using up a small scrap!

Anyway, that's enough yammering for me today.  Since it is our tenth wedding anniversary today (yay us!), hubs and I are heading out to Liverpool for the weekend.  Wonder if he'd mind listening to the Beatles the whole way there...

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, last card only, all SU!
Stamps:  Garden Silhouettes, Noteworthy
Ink:  Summer Starfruit, Soft Sky
Paper:  Soft Sky, Whisper White, retired So Saffron & Summer Starfruit DSP
Accessories:  Deco Labels Framelits, I forget the name of the butterfly Embosslit thingie