Teapot Rose

Yesterday was Mom's birthday, and today I'm sharing the card I made for her.  I just really wanted to do something stars & stripes for her birthday here on the blog, but this card coordinates with her birthday present!  I got her a vintage teapot with pale blue roses on it because it just looked like something she'd love.

Yep, still not tired of Stippled Blossoms.  And Four You is another awesome new stamp set :)  This is a slightly loose take on last week's SCS sketch challenge, and I really like how it turned out.  I just re-inked my Soft Sky ink pad and it took me several tries to get a good non-splotchy image...had to break out the brayer.  I used Not Quite Navy ink stamped off once for the detail.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Stippled Blossoms, Four You
Ink:  Soft Sky, Not Quite Navy, Mellow Moss, Always Artichoke
Paper:  Soft Sky, Very Vanilla, Fan Fair DSP (retired)
Accessories:  Apothecary Accents Framelits, retired Always Artichoke brads

Stars & Stripes Forever

Howdy, folks!  Today is my mom's birthday, and she loves stars & stripes stuff, so I thought I'd share the July pages I made for Karyn's baby books.  Take a look:

I was going through all my old DSP for inspiration when I found that Real Red star pattern and voila!  Inspiration struck.  I put the layouts together quite a long time ago and then had to wait what seemed like forever to get the brand new Simply Stars stamp set to complete them.  All four stamps in the set coordinate with SU's retired star punches, which I love but I think it's funny that they're still making stamp sets to coordinate with retired punches.

Thanks for stopping by, and happy birthday to my mom!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Simply Stars, July Fourth (retired)
Ink:  Real Red, Brilliant Blue, Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise
Paper:  Brilliant Blue, Tempting Turquoise, Daffodil Delight, Whisper White, Big Top Birthday DSP
Accessories:  large star punch, old Sizzix alphabet

Really Bright Birthday Wishes

This card comes with a warning label:  you may want to put on your sunglasses now.

I needed a birthday card for my SIL, who has a side business making cupcakes (whilst I am famous among my hubs' coworkers for my cookies, so we both bake a lot) so the fun and bright color challenge at Create with Connie and Mary fit the bill nicely.

I did add a teensy bit of Pumpkin Pie and Gumball Green to the birthday sentiment though.  Mostly because when I use the Daffodil Delight marker, it just doesn't show up all bright and beautiful like the ink pad does.  Anyway, this is another one of those gonzo weird SCS sketches that I'm not real thrilled with--looks unbalanced to me with both the stripes and the smaller panel on the left although I tried to even it out with the ribbon.  Oh well.  And this is the first time I've used the cupcake punch to make an actual cupcake...it's made clouds a couple times though :)

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Happiest Birthday Wishes (retired)
Ink:  Melon Mambo, Night of Navy, Gumball Green, Pumpkin Pie
Paper:  Melon Mambo, Daffodil Delight, Night of Navy, Whisper White, retired Brights & Regals DSP
Accessories:  Cupcake builder punch, white taffeta, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Land That I Love

Welcome to a special patriotic edition of the Friday Flashback!  Usually I pick a stamp set name at random, but since the 4th of July is next week I just had to do a patriotic stamp set for today's Flashback.  And that set is Land that I Love!  Probably my favorite patriotic stamp set to date, so this is gonna be a longer Flashback than normal :)

I got this stamp set relatively early in my stamping career, so my first couple cards aren't necessarily stellar, but hey, now we can see how I've grown as a stamping artiste.  I can always tell which ones are the oldest pictures because a.) they induce the most squirming on my part to look at them and b.) they're scans, not photos.

I didn't like this one much when I made it--in fact, the picture is called "Patriotic Blah"--but I don't think it's so terrible now.  The torn edges are something different.

This one I kinda liked pretty well; the front of the card is torn and the "Thank You" is actually stamped on the inside.

You can't tell in this picture but the eagle is actually stamped on glossy paper and there's a bit of pale, pale blue and purple done with baby wipes so it looks more like sky.

Something quite simple and bordering on CAS...you can just barely see the line of stars to the left of the sentiment.

And this stamp set has even made an appearance in a baby book :)  So how about my brand new card for the day:

I kinda like it, what do you think?  I was very closely following the latest Retro Sketch, but if I were to do this over again I think I'd move the knot to the right side and the sentiment to the left.  But you can see I did stick like glue to the sketch this time:

I think that might be my dad's birthday card next month.  It looks all manly, right?

Thanks for joining me for this week's Friday Flashback!  To all my American friends, have a safe and happy holiday next week.

Supplies, last card only, all SU!
Stamps:  Land That I Love, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Ink:  Baked Brown Sugar, Marina Mist, Early Espresso
Paper:  Cherry Cobbler, Early Espresso, Very Vanilla, retired Marina Mist DSP
Accessories:  Cherry Cobbler seam binding, Dimensionals

CreativeCrew: Inky Blocks

I'm back with another color blocked CreativeCrew project :)  This one is the last one I did for the June challenges.

I saw "color block" and I thought blocks of cardstock, which I did on another project, but there was a link to this technique of inking up bare acrylic blocks and using them as stamps.  Hey, I'd never done that before so I had to give that a shot too :)

I used four of the five new In Colors on this one, Pistachio Pudding, Crisp Cantaloupe, Coastal Cabana, and Baked Brown Sugar.  The card front is actually Shimmery White cardstock but of course it's nearly impossible to get the shimmer to photograph properly :)

Been having fun with this little Simply Sketched stamp set, it's wonderful!

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out the CreativeCrew gallery for more beautiful creations!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Simply Sketched
Ink:  Pistachio Pudding, Baked Brown Sugar, Crisp Cantaloupe, Coastal Cabana
Paper:  Pistachio Pudding, Shimmery White
Accessories:  none, unless you count the acrylic blocks I used to stamp with :)

Tropical Hello

So I'm loving Stippled Blossoms and I made another card with it this week.  Hope you don't get tired of it because I think it's gonna get a lot of lovin' in my stamp room :)  Now I'm just wondering why it took me so long to buy the stamp set.

I used some now-retired but still totally awesome Sunshine & Sprinkles DSP along with this fun summery color combo from Nacho Average Challenges:

Awesome, right?  And I used this sketch from Create with Connie and Mary:

As per usual, I tweaked the sketch just a teensy bit and I completely forgot to round the corners.  Oh well, too late now since I need to leave for the gym like, right now :)

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Stippled Blossoms, Four You (also brand new and scrumptious)
Ink:  Pool Party, Bermuda Bay, Melon Mambo, Pear Pizzazz, Garden Green
Paper:  Pool Party, Whisper White, Sunshine & Sprinkles DSP (now retired)
Accessories:  Apothecary Accents Framelits, Square Lattice EF, white taffeta

Amazing You

Howdy folks!  Finally got my card done for today :)  I think I need to quit procrastinating!  Or, y'know, quit doing the dishes or something, 'cause that sucks up a lot of time...or maybe it only seems like it sucks up a lot of time because I procrastinate about doing the dishes too.  Hmm.

I combined today's SCS color challenge with the current sketch at CAS(E) This Sketch for a very CAS card.  The Crushed Curry images (whadya call those anyway?) are popped up on Dimensionals and I put rhinestones in the centers for a little bling.  A bit of patterned paper and a sentiment, and this card was finished in record time.  Why did I choose that "amazing you" sentiment?  No idea, I just liked it :)

Here's the sketch:

Lookit that, I actually did pretty much exactly the same as the sketch.  Yay me.

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you have a lovely day!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hello, Lovely; Express Yourself
Ink:  Crushed Curry
Paper:  Whisper White, Eastern Elegance DSP
Accessories:  rhinestones, Dimensionals