Happy Saturday y'all, and welcome to this week's Nancy Drew Challenge! This time, Nancy is taking on The Sky Phantom:
I like Nancy's flippy 'do here but it seems much darker than usual. Kinda wish we could see her face with those aviator glasses too, ha! So you can tell from the cover that this one has to do with flying planes and we also have some pseudo sci-fi shenanigans with the titular phantom. Side note: I think it's fun that Nancy is learning to fly in this one as Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote many of the early Nancy Drews and was the original Carolyn Keene, became a pilot as well.
Case file: Nancy, Bess, and George are in an unnamed part of the midwest (I'm going to imagine Wyoming or Montana since we were just there), where Nancy is taking flying lessons and Bess and George are riding horses and flirting with cowboys. Nancy and her flight instructor discover a downed plane, pilot missing, underneath a mysterious cloud that always seems to be in the same place. We also have drama with a stolen horse and then relationship drama when one of the cowboys proposes to Bess right before Ned, Burt, and Dave show up. And then the ending just feels like a big left turn from the rest of the book.
Here's my card:
Obviously I had to do a plane card, though I bet Nancy is flying a single-engine Cessna or something and not a biplane like this. The main color I saw on the book's cover was (appropriately) Soft Sky, and that led me to the long-retired Western Sky DSP so my card can also have a bit of a western feel like the book.
That matte copy of the book is one that I found at the used book store in the middle of nowhere on the way to Yellowstone last week : )
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Adventurous Sky
Ink: Basic Gray, Blue Bayou, Just Jade, Stampin' Blends in Smoky Slate & Just Jade
Paper: Soft Sky, Just Jade, Thick Basic White, Western Sky DSP
Accessories: Adventurous Sky dies, Textured Notes dies, Dimensionals
Of course, I had to make a card for the ground-based side of this mystery, so here's one for the horsey girls like me:
This is the maiden voyage for Equestrian Dream, which is where I got the main image. That stamp set doesn't have any greetings, but I thought the one from Let It Ride was a perfect match. I used a different pattern from the Western Sky DSP and I wish I'd gotten a second pack of this paper, I am hoarding it for special projects. (As if I don't have a bazillion sheets of paper...)
I stamped the horses and greeting with Early Espresso + Versamark and embossed with clear EP, so then I was able to paint the horses without the ink running. Just the horses are running. I made the one in the front a palomino (Golden Glow is the perfect palomino shade, BTW) because the stolen horse was a palomino. The one on the right is a chestnut to go with Nancy's bright red hair on this cover and then I included a liver chestnut on the left to go with the flight instructor's dark hair.
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Equestrian Dream, Let It Ride
Ink: Early Espresso, Golden Glow, Copper Clay, Soft Sky, Certainly Celery, VersaMark
Paper: Soft Sky, Blue Bayou, Thick Very Vanilla, Western Sky DSP
Accessories: Deckled Rectangles dies, Dimensionals, clear EP, Earthy Matte Dots
So between the airplanes and the horses, this book is a rather odd mish-mash, and that's not even taking into account a revolutionary militia group, a random cave that rains oil, and the weird phantom shapes in the cloud that give the book its name. If you want a ranch book, definitely go for
The Secret of Shadow Ranch over this one, revised or original text, they're both more fun than this. I did find the love triangle bit rather entertaining, so I'm going to give it two and a half stars. Stay tuned next Saturday when Nancy tackles the Strange Message in the Parchment.
