Getting Sketchy with SUO Challenges

Mornin' y'all!  Guess what today is?  (Is anyone keeping track of what day of the week it is now???)  It's time for a new challenge at SUO Challenges!

This time we're asking you to use a sketch from page 42 of the Occasions Catalog, which means you have three lovely choices!

Confession:  I peeked at what my fellow Design Team members did and picked the sketch no one else played with :D  That was the second one, so here's my card:

I resized it to a standard A2 card, and since I was CASEing the sketch I decided to CASE some other elements too:  the watercolor background and fussy-cut, popped up image with sequin accents.  Since today is the last day of Sale-a-Bration, I had to ink up Power of Hope again, and the sentiment is from Sending You Thoughts, another SAB offering that I hadn't used before this.  My unscheduled blogging break means I didn't get to play around with my SAB freebies as much as I might like, so you'll probably be seeing them here now and again for a while yet.  I did a huuuuuuuuge order a while back and haven't inked up everything yet!

Check out the three cards above and CASE the layout of one of them (or more, that would be awesome too) and post it on the SUO Challenges blog.  And since we're all social distancing right now, why not send out your creation to someone and let them know you're thinking about them?  I am going to try to send out more fun mail in the coming weeks.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Power of Hope, Sending You Thoughts
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Shaded Spruce, Pear Pizzazz, Poppy Parade
Paper:  Shaded Spruce, Petal Pink, Thick Whisper White, watercolor paper
Accessories:  Basics Sequin Assortment, Tailored Tag punch, Dimensionals

Crate Expectations

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  And it was a relatively scrappy weekend too--I got one layout done start to finish yesterday, and a second one is about 75% done, which will bring my year to date page total up to 90.  Pretty dang good!

Since Blogger got over its snit and is letting me upload pictures again, I can share one of my recent layouts:

The pictures are from the end of December in 2010, so they're not new, but I just finished this layout in the past few weeks and I am *ridiculously* proud of my page title.  We had to get new travel crates for the doggos when we moved to England (even though they hadn't gotten any bigger since we moved them to and from Japan, the airline insisted) and I'm over her still giggling about crate expectations.

Today's color palette is a blast from the past:  Tip Top Taupe, Ruby Red, Brocade Blue, and still-current Basic Black and Very Vanilla.  Very simple layout, and not as many pictures as I usually cram in, but I like how it turned out.

Hope your week is off to a good start, y'all.  We're in quarantine day 156...

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Headline Alphabet, Back to Basics Alphabet, Happy Tails
Ink:  Brocade Blue, Memento Tuxedo Black, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Tip Top Taupe, Brocade Blue, Thick Very Vanilla, Holiday Lounge DSP
Accessories:  Dog punch

Best Dressed Friendship

Mornin' y'all!  Surprise Sunday post...and a big surprise because Blogger has somehow gotten over its snit and is letting me upload new pictures again.  I know it's not anything I did to fix it, but yay!  So I got up early this morning and made a card before kiddo wanted to get up.

Alas, it was very hard to photograph, the embossing powder shows up better in real life.

I embossed the big flower from Beautiful Day with Shimmery White embossing powder and now there's glitter everywhere in my craft room :)

Happy I had the opportunity to play along on the challenge for this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And the Color Throwdown:

I used Petal Pink and Purple Posy as my colors, with just a smidge of Soft Sea Foam for the leaf.

Well, the hubs has Ryan in the tub right now so maybe I can get a little work done in my craft room.  Getting back in there is helping with my mental health during quarantine so I need to figure out how to make that happen more when our schedule is so upended.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Beautiful Day, So Sentimental
Ink:  Versamark, Gray Granite
Paper:  Thick Whisper White, Soft Sea Foam, Best Dressed DSP Stack
Accessories:  Shimmery White EP, Dimensionals

Ryan: One Month

Hey, y'all.  What a week.  Looks like we're going to be doing the shelter-in-place thing for another MONTH.  Crazy.  And for some reason I can't get Blogger to let me  upload new photos, so I haven't been in my craft room because I couldn't post anything anyway.  I do have a lot of scrapbook pages as draft posts, including all the rest of Ryan's book, but I'd like the option to put up something new, ya know?

Anyway, on to this week's baby book layout:  Ryan at one month.

That Yoda onesie was a hand-me-down from my brother's besties and we're all Star Wars fans.  I think I sent it to my brother and his wife for Baby Luke?  My mom made the green and brown striped baby blanket in the pictures, and I got the Yoda hat from an online friend.  This was our first monthly photo shoot and I think that top left photo is hilarious because it looks like Ryan's saying, "You're gonna do WHAT?!"

Today's color palette is Confetti White, Pear Pizzazz, Marina Mist, and Early Espresso.  This is the *only* time I've ever used Confetti White for a page base.  I never used it much for cards either, so I can see why SU! retired it so long ago ;) But it seemed to work here.

I'll be back on Monday with a scrapbook layout.  Still trying to figure out how to solve my photo uploading problem...

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Nursery Necessities
Ink:  Marina Mist, Pear Pizzazz, Early Espresso marker
Paper:  Confetti White, Early Espresso, Coffee Break DSP
Accessories:  Star punch

AAFES Spring Bazaar

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I did spend a little bit of time in my craft room over the weekend, got a couple of layouts finished up and started on another one.  I also took pictures of a big stack of finished layouts, but for some reason Blogger won't let me upload pictures.  Don't know what the deal is.

So here's a layout blast from the past!

These pics are from 2009, see 'em up close here.  I've traveled from one end of the galaxy to the other, I've seen a lot of strange stuff.  But I've never seen anything...like VENDING MACHINE HOT DOGS.  Amber had to try one (for SCIENCE) and I got one too and we didn't die so that's a plus.  I used the fun Broadsheet Alphabet for part of the title and a couple of Kettos (the little girl fairies) for accents.  Kettos were a big thing from Stamping Bella years ago and I have quite a few of them, they're darling.  I try to use them on my scrapbook pages from time to time.

The orange and yellow on my layout were inspired by the hot dog machine :D  And I just picked some other colors to round out the palette:  Coastal Cabana, Tangelo Twist, Pineapple Punch, Pacific Point, Basic Black, and Whisper White.

And so we begin Week 2 of the Great Quarantine.  So far we've done okay, here's hoping we keep it up.  Good luck to all of you out there!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Broadsheet Alphabet, Back to Basics Alphabet; Maisy Ketto, Anise Ketto, Kenya's Sparkle, Anise's Flowers from Stamping Bella
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Coastal Cabana, Pacific Point, Pineapple Punch, Tangelo Twist, Granny Apple Green, Petal Pink Stampin' Blend, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Pacific Point, Pineapple Punch, Thick Whisper White, Confetti Celebration DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes Framelits

Ryan: February

Hey y'all!  Didja miss me?  I haven't been in my craft room all week, except for about 15 minutes yesterday (I got one whole image colored in before I had to go back out).  What with the virus craziness happening, the Y is closed, so I don't get my 2 hours in the morning to work out and/or stitch, so I've been stitching in the afternoons when Ryan does quiet time, which means I haven't been stamping or scrapbooking at ALL.  Sigh.  I hope we can resume our regularly scheduled programming soon.

In the meantime, I can still share Ryan's baby book layouts because it's all done :) So here is the first monthly layout for his book:

Wow he was so tiny!  I mean, he started out at 8 pounds, 10 ounces, so lots of babies start out smaller than he did, but it's quite a difference to look at these pictures and look at Ryan now--he's 3 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs just over 32 pounds.  Growing so much!  Anyway, there's his first picture with Mimi and Grandpa, when he was 8 days old, and I love the three pictures on the bottom of the right page.  Just fun to see Ryan looking at his daddy, and then the other two Ryan's facial expressions are hilarious.  That one on the far right looks like "Hey Mama, how YOU doin'?"

Today's color palette is Balmy Blue (I will never have enough of this in 12x12 so a layout has to be really special to rate this color for the page base), Gable Green (long retired), Blueberry Bushel, and a touch of Real Red.  Usually I make blank baby books for other people, so I can just use whatever seasonal color combination I want; since I did this one after I had all the pictures, I tried to use colors to complement the photos.  And for a lot of the layouts, pictures were taken through an entire month, so finding a cohesive color combination could be a challenge.  But I'm quite pleased with how the whole giant album turned out.

Here's hoping I get some time in my craft room this week.  Stay healthy, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Letters for You, Background Basics, I {Heart} Hearts
Ink:  Real Red, Blueberry Bushel, Gable Green, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Balmy Blue, Gable Green, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Large Letters Framelits

SUO Challenges: Spring

Hey y'all!  How is your social distancing going?  They Y has closed its childcare for at least two weeks, so I get no break from Ryan until quiet time (and sometimes he's not great at the "quiet" part), and I had to cancel my girls' weekend trip, which makes me sad.  But yesterday, our first day of pseudo-quarantine, actually went okay.  I was going to do my Scrappy Monday blog post, but our mouse was D-E-D dead, so instead I read a book and really enjoyed it ;)  Ryan behaved pretty well, the weather was nice so he got to play outside and get dirty, and I managed not to bust into the stash of brownie mix on day 1.  So, success.

And today it's time for a new challenge as SUO Challenges.

The theme this time is SPRING!  My brain was going international...I kept thinking about the song "I love Paris in the springtime" and also how the appearance of cherry blossoms is the herald of spring in Japan, and that's how I ended up with cherry blossoms on the Eiffel Tower.

And since today is St. Patrick's Day, I had to use green too!  The card base and DSP are Mint Macaron.  Yeah, I could have picked a brighter shade of green, but I wanted something soft and pretty for my spring card.  Whenever I want to send this, I can stamp a sentiment on the inside if I want to.

Okay, Ryan wants me to watch Paw Patrol with him, so that's next on our agenda for quarantine.  If you get a chance, make a spring-inspired card and share it with us at SUO Challenges.  We'd love to see!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Butterfly Wishes
Ink:  Petal Pink, Mint Macaron
Paper:  Mint Macaron, Soft Sea Foam, Thick Whisper White, silver foil, Mint Macaron DSP
Accessories:  Parisian dies, First Frost dies, Dimensionals