Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion

Mornin' stampy friends and welcome to another Nancy Drew Challenge!  This week we're taking a look at The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion, or The Mystery *of* the Moss-Covered Mansion depending on which version you have.  I have both : )

For the OT on the left, we have an action scene but it's a little ambiguous--looks almost like Nancy, Bess, and George are burying some cash but in fact they're digging up a criminal's stash of stolen funds.

We have a collage on the RT with Nancy looking a bit concerned that a panther is stalking her and also that house looks like the Addams Family lives there and I like it.  Interestingly, the RT version says AT on the spine but OF on the cover, which I never noticed until this year and I've had that book since I was 9.

Between those two covers, I have to go with the RT as my favorite.  That Addams house is just too cool.  Let's take a look inside, shall we?

Case file:  Nancy, Bess, and George are supposed to be enjoying a vacation in the town of Ashley while Carson works on a case to find an heiress, but Nancy is intrigued by a mysterious moss-covered mansion nearby.  Nancy crosses paths with Ramo, a "gypsy-like" character who is up to no good.  The missing heiress turns up and Carson hands over the inheritance, but then she absconds with Ramo, so Nancy figures out that she's a fake and they have to find the impostor and the money as well as the real heiress.  Everything seems to revolve around the moss-covered mansion where the owner keeps a variety of wild animals, and of course in the end Nancy solves it and all the good people live happily ever after while Ramo goes to jail.

Here's my card:

This one was actually really tough for me, but in the end I had to go with one of the wild animals that Nancy encounters at the moss-covered mansion.  I was tempted to go with a fortune-teller theme (Ramo's sister is a con artist fortune teller, and I found a cute cat fortune-teller stamp set and I'm just looking for an excuse to buy it) but all those parts in the book are *highly* problematic so wild animals seemed to be less fraught for a theme.  Also there's a plane crash in the book, but I'm definitely not making any plane crash cards.  Oyy.  I gave just a very brief synopsis of this book but it's pretty bananas.

I used Darling Duckling as my primary color to go with Nancy's dress on the cover of the book, plus it makes a good leopard color.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Wild Cats
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Darling Duckling, Evening Evergreen, Soft Succulent
Paper:  Darling Duckling, Thick Basic White, In the Wild DSP, Soft Succulent DSP
Accessories:  Big Cats dies, Textured Notes dies, Matte Decorative Dots, Mini Dimensionals

Next let's look at the RT, which is even MORE bananas:

Case file:  Carson Drew takes Nancy, Bess, and George down to Florida to help investigate when his friend and client Mr. Billington is accused of sending a truck of explosive oranges into the Kennedy Space Center (as if NASA is going to let a teen detective within a hundred miles of a case like that).  Once again Nancy is intrigued by a moss-covered mansion which is home to wild animals, but this time it belongs to a Bond villain wannabe who's trying to sabotage the US space program (this was written in 1971, so the Cold War was definitely the inspiration).  Like #17, this one was a gift to me for Christmas of 1989 and I adore how bananas it is.

Here's my card:

I was torn between the panther and the explosive oranges for my card inspiration, but since I did the leopard on the OT card I decided to go with the oranges on this one.  I fussy-cut one pretty orange from the Mediterranean Blooms DSP and then somehow stamped my greeting just a leetle bit crooked.  When I was growing up, my great-grandmother used to tell us to drink orange juice at breakfast to put sunshine in our day, so I had to go with a sunshine sentiment on here.

I did keep the main colors of the book cover on my card and now I kinda want to go make a haunted house card.  That mansion on the cover is a whole VIBE.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Celebrate with Flowers
Ink:  Early Espresso
Paper:  Thick Basic White, Pecan Pie, Lemon Lolly, Mediterranean Blooms DSP, Floral Impressions DSP
Accessories:  Nested Essentials dies, Mini Dimensionals, Transparent Dots

Like the previous book, I enjoy the off-the-rails shenanigans (in the RT especially) so I give this five stars just for being bananas.  If you would like to play along, please drop a comment on this post with a link to your card as I would love to see!  You can read a much more in-depth analysis of Nancy Drew books on my other blog, Hey Nancy Drew.  It's a few books behind where I'm at here, so next week on this blog, we will undertake The Quest of the Missing Map!

Another Apple Card

Hello again, y'all!  I got Ryan off to school and did the dishes while I made myself a cuppa, so now I can relax with my tea and a protein bar for breakfast.  And I have my second card to share today:

Apples again and I have to say that Apple Harvest is my favorite apple stamp set ever, I love it.  For this card, I turned to this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And the Color Throwdown:

I read that as Real Red, Darling Duckling, and Granny Apple Green.  I tried it with Old Olive first but the background stripes looked too dull, so I switched to Granny Apple Green but I neglected to switch out my Blends so the leaves on my apple are Old Olive and Darling Duckling.  My Granny Apple Green pad is extra juicy right now so the greeting looks dark but I like it.

Halfway through my cuppa tea and I'm already contemplating making another one : ) Daphne thinks we should go for a walk first, but I think we'll wait a bit since it's supposed to start raining here shortly.  Maybe I can make another apple card while we wait...

Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Apple Harvest, Heartfelt Hellos, Painted Stripes
Ink:  Early Espresso, Granny Apple Green, Stampin' Blends in Real Red, Darling Duckling, Old Olive, Bronze
Paper:  Real Red, Thick Basic White, Darling Duckling DSP
Accessories:  Apple Blossoms dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, Iridescent Foil Gems

Return of the Toadstools

Mornin' y'all!  It's a gray morning here and the temperature has dropped 20 degrees since yesterday...and the hubs and the kiddo are planning to go camping this weekend.  Me and Daphne are staying home where the indoor plumbing is : )  I want to get out all the fall and Halloween decorations while they're out in the wilderness.

Anyway, I have a card to share:

It's been a while since I made a Terrific Toadstools card.  I had a go at the Paper Players tic-tac-toe challenge:

I went across the middle with bright colors - free (toadstools!) - enamel dots.  The enamel dots I used are some of the first ones that SU! ever released, they're glitter enamel dots and I bought like five packs of them.  I paired that with the Atlantic Hearts sketch:

It was actually the Toadstool Garden DSP that kicked off this card, I knew I was going for bright colors when I was looking through my DSP stash and that one fit the bill.

This is NOT all for me today though, peeps, I will be sharing another card here in a little bit because I wanted to enter some challenges and I already have my posts planned out for Saturday and Sunday and I'm excited to share those and then we can't skip Scrappy Monday.  Stay tuned!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Terrific Toadstools
Ink:  Melon Mambo, Fresh Freesia, Granny Apple Green
Paper:  Melon Mambo, Thick Basic White, Toadstool Garden DSP Stack
Accessories:  Dimensionals, Glitter Enamel Dots

Pirate Ship

Mornin' y'all!  Well, I did not get the laundry done yesterday but today is a new day and that laundry is always waiting ; )  What I did get done is a pirate card!

I will be sending this to a friend who's been having a hard time of it lately because sometimes you just need to yell ARRRRR!  I was inspired to talk like a pirate by the Festive Friday challenge:

I used black, white, a ship, and waves, and I'm not sure if the pearl accents count as jewels.  They're not stones, but they are used in jewelry.  My ship is either the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean or the pirate ship Revenge from The Princess Bride.  One of those.

My card came together super fast thanks to the CAS Colours & Sketches challenge:

And I'll enter this at Shopping Our Stash, where the challenge is on or in the water.  It was fun to pull out two of my piratical stamp sets for this card : )

Time to go walk with Daphne.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  On the Ocean, Beware Pirates
Ink:  Versamark, Lost Lagoon, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Baja Breeze, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  On the Ocean dies, black EP, Dimensionals, Riverside Irregular Pearls

Apple Thanks

Mornin' y'all!  Did you have a good holiday weekend?  We flew out to Texas for the weekend, which was great until they canceled our flight back to Colorado on Monday.  Somehow our suitcase ended up flying out on Monday night, but we spent that night in a hotel and flew out yesterday morning and Ryan got to miss a day of school.  We're back to our regularly scheduled programming today and I got to spend the weekend with my parental units and I hit up four Half Price Books stores and came back with a rather tall stack o' books.  If I had bought any more, we would have had to get a second bag for them : )

Anyway, I got in my craft room for a little bit yesterday and made this:

My friend Toby gave me a book that's kinda like a Nancy Drew scrapbook, so I made this card to send to her.  I absolutely loooooove the inspo challenge at Hand Stamped Sentiments:

An excellent excuse to break out my favorite retired apple stamp set, Apple Harvest, and also I would like to go to there, please.  Actually I'm planning to make apple cider muffins in the very near future (I got the new Sally's Baking 101 cookbook), I can easily make myself a cuppa tea, and I have a stack of new books to read so that will be very much like living in these inspo pics : )  

Next up is the follow my lead challenge at AAA Cards:

Which dovetails nicely with the TGIF Challenge:

I used one of the Everyday Arches dies as a mask to sponge ink on my card base, then floated my apple branch on top and added the greeting and a few sparkle dots.  I think I want to play along with all of these challenges again and Ryan has his cooking class after school today which means extra crafty time (after I wash dishes and start some laundry, anyway).

That's it for now, peeps, have a great day!  As soon as I get Ryan off to school, I'm going to make myself a cuppa.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Apple Harvest
Ink:  Early Espresso, Darling Duckling, Wild Wheat, Stampin' Blends in Sweet Sorbet, Darling Duckling, Pecan Pie, Mossy Meadow, Ivory
Paper:  Basic Beige, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Apple Blossoms dies, Everyday Arches dies, Dimensionals, Opaque Sparkle Gems, Wink of Stella

A Frightfully Good Color Combo from SUOC

Mornin' y'all!  Get ready for a new challenge from SUO Challenges!

It's comin' at ya right...NOW!

Now that we are officially in Spooky Season (because in my reality that officially starts on September first), I had to give these colors a Halloween spin.  Here's what I made:

I used the blendy thingies I can't think of the name for right now to apply Timid Tiger and Melon Mambo ink on some plain white cardstock, just kinda randomly, and then I flicked a bit of water on it and dried it with a heat tool because I'm impatient.  Then I stamped the Fright Night stamp on top, cut it out, et voilà, a custom-color background for my main image piece.  I played around with different elements and eventually landed on a few spiderwebs on some Spooky Sweet Specialty DSP, a few Melon Mambo Faceted Gems and done.  I've been in Michaels a couple of times recently and it seems like there is a LOT of Halloween decor out there with hot pink, so now I'm trendy (first time for everything).

Hope you'll play along with the challenge over at SUO Challenges.  You don't have to make it Halloween, just remember to use SU! only supplies and have fun.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Fright Night
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Timid Tiger, Melon Mambo
Paper:  Timid Tiger, Basic Black, Melon Mambo, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Fright Night dies, Dimensionals, Solid Faceted Gems

Appel Happel

Scrappy Monday, y'all, and welcome to SEPTEMBER which kicks off my favorite time of the year, fall!  Squeeeee!  I'm so excited for cooler temperatures and autumn colors and many, many cups of tea and also apples.  I love today's layout!

In 2021, we went apple picking at a place called Appel Happel in Germany despite having two apple trees in our own yard, and I wish we had done it every year because it was fun.  I made pie and muffins and my first-ever attempt at homemade applesauce and I love that picture of Ryan just stretched out at his leisure in the wheelbarrow.  Love love love love love.

Today's color palette is courtesy of the Orchard Harvest DSP, one of my favorites and one of the first that I can remember SU! having on the clearance rack after it had retired.  Like, when the clearance rack was introduced, this paper was on it and I happily snagged several packs of it because I had already used most of my first pack (which rarely happens, I buy DSP faster than I use it even with how much stuff I make).  Anyway, the colors are Raspberry Ripple, More Mustard, Lucky Limeade, Island Indigo, Early Espresso, and white.  I had a mishap while creating this layout though; I wanted to ink up my Island Indigo ink pad and I accidentally used Pacific Point ink instead.  Since then I've been using a Stampin' Spot (like a mini ink pad), but I do have a full-size one in my eBay cart to replace the one I messed up.  Harrumph.

I have a bag of apples on my counter right now, I think some apple muffins would not go amiss to celebrate the beginning of September.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Big Deal Alphabet, Perfectly Preserved
Ink:  More Mustard, Island Indigo, Lucky Limeade, Early Espresso marker
Paper:  Raspberry Ripple, Lucky Limeade, Island Indigo, Basic White, Orchard Harvest DSP
Accessories:  Cannery Framelits