Toxic Treat Gravestone

Midnight greetings, spooky friends!  How are you enjoying my favorite month of the year?  We've had some cooler temperatures in the last few days and I am loving it!

Not quite so sure I'm loving tonight's card, though.

Have you ever bought a stamp set that you like, and yet you have trouble when it comes to making things with said stamp set that you like?  That's me and Toxic Treats.  I like this stamp set but I've had trouble making things I like *with* it, even when paired with my favorite Cast-a-Spell DSP.  The sketch from CASE-ing Tuesday Sketches did at least give me a good way to use up some long and skinny scraps!

I converted the sketch to a regular A2 card size as I personally dislike making slimline cards.  Not because I have anything against the different proportions really, but because it seems more wasteful of cardstock when I can't get two card bases out of a single sheet.  Just my opinion though.

Stay spooky, pals!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Toxic Treats
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Pumpkin Pie, Old Olive, Cast-a-Spell DSP
Accessories:  label punch, Dimensionals

Quoth the Raven

Mornin', y'all!  Our regular daycare lady is on leave back to the States for a while, and we couldn't find any backup childcare, so I had to take off work part of this week and all of next week to pretend to be a SAHM for a bit.  So I bought a bunch of craft supplies from where I work and we spent a lot of time yesterday drawing monsters on construction paper to make decorations for Halloween.  I had one package of giant glow-in-the-dark googly eyes and Ryan used all of them on ONE paper, ha.  But we both had fun yesterday doing that.

Ryan also helped me make a card earlier this week!

I did the stamping while he was in the tub, but he did the die cutting for the Pumpkin Pie and Crushed Curry pieces, put on all the adhesive, and helped me put the iridescent pearls on there.  Not too bad for a 4-year-old.

Check out the spooky challenge from the Paper Players!

The raven in the bottom right corner made me think of the long-retired stamp set Toxic Treats, and without intending to I pretty much used the colors from the jack-o-lantern pic in the bottom left.  The Misty Moonlight panel is from the current Beauty of the Earth DSP, and the other two layers are from the retired Classic Garage Stack.  Love how I made a Halloween card with papers that aren't Halloween themed!

Enjoy the spooky season!  We're going to draw more monsters today.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Toxic Treats
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Basic Black, Beauty of the Earth DSP, Classic Garage DSP Stack
Accessories:  Rectangles Stitched dies, Dimensionals, iridescent pearls

Friday Flashback: Letterpress Alphabet

Happy Friday!  Have you enjoyed Spring Break Scrap Week?  I'm finishing out the week with a Friday Flashback for Letterpress Alphabet, and you know how much I love my alphabet stamps :)  So let's take a whirl through the archives, shall we?

Also features Spencerian Alphabet

Geez, sorry about the terrible picture quality on this one.  Well, the original photos are fine, it's my picture of the layout that isn't good at all.  It was shortly after this that I figured out where to take pictures of layouts in our house in Alabama.

Also features Spencerian Alphabet

But not before I got both of these not-so-great ones.  Glare!

Ahh, here we go.  Much better photo of the layout.  And also the only time hubs and I have been to Turkey.

Also features Stars & Swirls, Amazing to Zany, Star Studded wheel

How about a card using the Letterpress Alphabet?  I'm still rather proud of this one, wait 'til you see it opened up:

It took a while to make with all the Stamp-a-ma-jigging but I still love it.  And it's Baylor Colors :D

Also features Spencerian Alphabet...again, and Noteworthy and Mosaic Madness

Here's a layout from California with some lovely bright colors.

And here's another one from Europe.

Also features Snow Flurries

I think I made this card when I was trying to come up with ideas using Snow Flurries.  I loved those little stamps but it was a challenge to make them the focal point of a card.

Also features Cold Play, Merry, Swirling Stars wheel

Oh man, this was from way back when Stampin' Up! had the spectrum ink pads!  I kinda miss those...

Also features Rough Type, Toxic Treats, Elementary Elegance, Carry On

Okay, there's the last England layout for today (though I do love it!) and now we're ready for this week's new creation!  Let's journey to St. Petersburg...

Oh dang, I got a glare on the photo in the bottom left corner.  It was really rainy and overcast when I took the picture of the layout and that makes a difference.  Anyway, this was the last place we visited in Russia before our cruise ship left, you can see the original photos here.  With no glare.

The cathedral is located on the Fortress of Peter and Paul, but it was the only thing we visited on the fortress so that's why I put "cathedral" rather than "fortress" on my page title.

Today's color palette:  Mint Macaron, Not Quite Navy, Hello Honey, and Whisper White.  And that's it for me today, hope you had a lovely week and are looking forward to a great weekend.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!, last layout:
Stamps:  Letterpress Alphabet, Rough Edges Alphabet
Ink:  Not Quite Navy, Hello Honey
Paper:  Mint Macaron, Not Quite Navy, Hello Honey, Thick Whisper White, Not Quite Navy DSP
Accessories: nothin' but a Stamp-a-ma-jig

Friday Flashback: Rough Type

Happy Friday, peeps!  Do I say that every week?  Well, regardless, Fridays should be happy because it's Friday Flashback day :)  This week's retired stamp set is Rough Type, which is an alphabet I've used a LOT on my scrapbooks so today is a longer Flashback and I didn't even include absolutely everything I've ever used it on.  So let's go!

My Captain America layout from my brother's return home from deployment, probably one of my mom's all-time fave layouts I've ever shared here :)

Also features Grunge Rock & Extreme Elements

You saw this one recently, from the Beijing Hard Rock Cafe.

Also features Bronc Buster

Oh hey, a card!  And I made it in my dad and brother's college colors (orange and black for Oklahoma State).

Also features Ocean Commotion

More scrapbook pages, this time from the aquarium in Okinawa.  I love Ocean Commotion...but I digress, today's Flashback is for Rough Type!  So this was actually I think the first time I punched out the letters with the 1/2" circle punch, but I did it again on the Hard Rock layout above.

Also features Ancient Asia

You'll notice I use this alphabet on my China pages a lot; to make the pages feel like they all "go" together, I'm using that calligraphy letter template and the Rough Type alphabet on each layout.

Also features Out West & Wanted

It's just a coincidence that the only two cards on today's Friday Flashback feature cowboys and the word "howdy".

More Okinawa pages, and again with the circle-punched letters.

Also features Circle Circus

This was the very first layout I did for my China scrapbooks :)  Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Wow, lots of Okinawa pictures here too.  Actually this layout has been modified since I took this picture, I added some of the dragons from Ancient Asia on the left-hand page.

Also features Letterpress Alphabet, Carry On, Toxic Treats, Elementary Elegance

Finally a layout from England!  And also one of my faves, I love the crowns and the ravens on here.

Another China layout you saw pretty recently, and that's the end of the Flashback part.  So here's today's brand new scrapbook layout, this time from Wales:

And here's a closeup of the Rough Type bit:

The top part is a Sizzlits alphabet, which is a total pain to use because it's always got little cling-on bits on the edges that you have to clean up and it's so tiny that it's hard to glue down without having extra glue everywhere but I just needed to use it for today's layout.  I kinda wish they'd made an uppercase version of Rough Type, though as you can see it bothers me not at all to use just the lowercase letters.

And there's my springy color palette:  Crisp Cantaloupe, So Saffron, Wild Wasabi, and Night of Navy.  I kinda wondered about using Crisp Cantaloupe for the page base, and no idea why I thought of it, but I did like how it looked with the other colors once I finished the layout, nice and springy.  And now I'm almost out of So Saffron cardstock :)

So I hope you enjoyed this scrappin' queen-sized Friday Flashback.  Have a great weekend and cheers, peeps!

Supplies, last layout only:
Stamps:  Rough Type Alphabet
Ink:  Night of Navy
Paper:  Crisp Cantaloupe, So Saffron, Afternoon Tea DSP
Accessories:  Sizzlits Alphabet

The Tower

So last week I was supposed to be doing housework, but instead I did a scrapbook layout.  Check it out!

You can see the pictures better if you check out my other blog here and here.  I wanted a raven on here because of the legend about how if the ravens ever abandon the Tower of London, then England will fall...somehow, the only raven stamp I have is from Toxic Treats but that ornate gate he's on looks right at home on this layout.  The big crown on the upper left is to represent the Crown Jewels, and the three smaller ones are for the three English queens who were executed at the Tower--Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Jane Grey (the Nine Days Queen).  So my layout is all symbolic and stuff!

I am SO excited to be back in the scrappin' groove, and actually I've been creating things faster than I can post them (even doing 5 posts a week).  And because I am SUCH a dork (dorkicus maximus, that's me) and I enjoy drawing random names out of a hat for the Friday Flashback post every week, I wrote down all the events I still need to scrap on little bits of paper to do a scrapbook random draw too.  I think that choosing the pictures to scrap was slowing me down because I'm so far behind, so the random draw makes that part much easier and I like the element of surprise about what I'm doing next.  Whee!

Cheers, peeps!  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Carry On (larger crown), Elementary Elegance (smaller crown), Letterpress Alphabet, Rough Type Alphabet, Toxic Treats
Ink:  Night of Navy, Basic Gray
Paper:  Smoky Slate, Night of Navy, Crushed Curry, Eastern Elegance DSP
Accessories:  SAMJ