Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Make a Splash with SUO Challenges

Mornin' y'all!  I woke up at 5:30 this morning and I wasn't real happy about it...couldn't get back to sleep but also just didn't want to get things done so I started off slow this morning.  I just finished my cuppa tea so maybe I'll start moving a little quicker here...and Daphne is agitating for a walk so I'll have to start moving whether I want to or not.

But first, we have a new challenge at SUO Challenges!  Check it out:


And I bet you know what new stamp set I'm using for it, right?  But in a surprise move, I did not use the sunglasses!  Here's my card:


I tried to keep the same summer/swimming vibe on my card with the Balmy Blue card base, and I pulled Daffodil Delight, Pumpkin Pie, and Azure Afternoon from the photo as well.  The stamps are new, but the dies are not (the stitched rectangles have been retired for a while but they still work fine) and I think the Rainbow Dots just left the online store.  I used a retired Pumpkin Pie stripe as well, but you could easily switch it for something current or do what I did on the Daffodil Delight piece and stamp your own design on it.

Anyway, this is a super fun inspo pic and I hope you'll play along!  Upload your card at SUO Challenges and don't forget...Stampin' Up! products only.  It's in the name ; ) Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Summer Happiness
Ink:  Azure Afternoon, Pumpkin Pie, Balmy Blue Blends
Paper:  Balmy Blue, Daffodil Delight, Basic White, Pumpkin Pie DSP
Accessories:  Summer Happiness dies, Rectangles Stitched dies, Nested Essentials dies, Dimensionals, Rainbow Dots

Monday, June 22, 2026

During & After Pictures

Mornin' y'all!  I am pleased to report that we finished painting the master suite and my craft room is about 93% back in order.  Wanna see some pictures?


It took two full days of painting (Friday and Saturday) and by Sunday Daphne said "Is enough, I confiscate paintbrush."  She's trying to grab the handle from me.  Daph was a Very Good Girl through the whole process; I made sure to still take her for walks in the mornings and she was patient with us locking her out of the rooms we were working in and just snoopervised from the doorway.  Or snoozed.


So here's an in-process shot of the warcraft room.  We had to paint the ceilings as well as the walls and it looks SO much better!


Starting to get the furniture back in place.


And there's Daphne last night back in her normal bed in her normal room.  You might notice that the wall color seems to shift, sometimes it looks more gray and sometimes more blue.  It also looks wildly different depending on the lighting, and I love it.


And here's the hubs playing World of Tanks last night after we got everything back in place.  I will say I would have gone with a brighter, more fun color if it was just my craft room, but this is the main part of the master suite and if we sold this house, it would be the master bedroom so I picked a color that I thought was more appropriate for a bedroom and it IS the same color in our bedroom and bathroom.  The way the walls go in here, we pretty much had to do the same color through the entire space.


And here it is this morning.  Things got shuffled around a bit, as they always do when everything gets taken out of a room and then put back in, so now that shelving unit on the right (with the pumpkins) has my completed scrapbook pages and some other supplies, and the one on the left has my DSP and 12x12 cardstock.  The pumpkins are a soft blanket and I put that in front of my scrapbook pages to protect them from light damage from the window...I've asked the hubs if we can do some UV film on the window, but we haven't done that yet.  There's another blanket on the side of the shelving unit on the left side too.


Nothing changed with my file cabinets and hutch though : )


The last 7% of organization will be alphabetizing my stamps, but I need to put a few more stamp sets on cling foam before I tackle alphabetizing later today.  I raised the level of the next to lowest shelf on my big Ikea bookshelves so that I could fit three photo boxes on the bottom shelves, and I fit in my binders and old catalogs around the photo boxes.  Some of those do have pictures in them, a bunch are finished cards waiting to be sent out, and some of them are non-SU! stamps and other miscellaneous items.


So there used to be another shelving unit in that corner, and a bookshelf underneath the artwork, but the hubs is talking about putting a small desk in that corner and getting a PC.  Given how much of this space is taken over by my hoard, that seemed reasonable to me, so the short bookshelf migrated elsewhere and that's why I reconfigured where my photo boxes are.  The big shelving unit migrated to a corner of the guest room, and one of these days I'll figure out what to do with those To Sell? boxes.  The sewing machine is in the corner because I accidentally snapped a leg on it trying to move it out of the room, so I'm hoping the hubs can fix it.  I inherited that from my great-grandmother, and I don't sew so I used it as a table for some of my ink caddies.  (Also, this is not the first time its leg has snapped, movers did that when we moved from Germany to Texas.)


Some of my Star Wars artwork with the new blue wall, trying to get a good picture of the color but there's shadows since I'm standing in front of the big window.  I don't think I mentioned it, the color is called Faded Flaxflower by Sherwin-Williams but we color matched it at Home Depot because SW paint is stupidly expensive and didn't work as well for us.  We bought paint there when we did the kitchen, and there was so much JUNK in the paint we got for the ceiling that we ended up tossing some of it and buying the color matched paint at Home Depot to finish painting the kitchen ceiling.  Paint should not be lumpy.  And we've done color matching at Home Depot for the entire rest of the house and never had lumpy paint from them.

My muscles are pretty sore from going full tilt for the last several days (I tried to stand up last night after lying in bed for about 10 minutes and I almost fell over), but I did a light workout this morning to try to stretch things out a bit.  I'm going to take Daphne for a walk, then work on mounting those few stamp sets, and then I'm going to get everything in alphabetical order...and once that's done, my craft room will be officially up and running.  Woo!  Have a great day, y'all!

Sunday, June 21, 2026

Weather Channel with The Paper Players

Mornin' y'all!  Sunday means it's time for a new challenge from The Paper Players...I think the colors I picked last week scared some people away, so I hope lots of stampers join in Jan's new Clean and Simple challenge!


Y'all know my brain is a bit wily, and as soon as I saw this challenge my wily brain immediately said...


TORNADO FROM WIZARD OF OZ!!!  And yes, I do have Wizard of Oz stamps.  Actually, I have Wizard of Oz stamps from multiple companies; the two I used today were part of a sheet (or possibly two?) of unmounted rubber stamps that I acquired years ago and I have no idea who the manufacturer is.  I've used some other stamps from this set on a scrapbook layout before and I have lots more images that I haven't inked up at all yet, plus the stamps from other manufacturers too.  (And as much as I love the original Wizard of Oz, I am Not A Fan of Wicked...I read it when the book came out and I just hated it!!)  Anyway, I had to go with a sepia tone to match the beginning of the movie, and just a teensy bit of blue gingham to call Dorothy's dress to mind.

Check out the other design team creations on the Paper Players blog, and you can hop through their individual blogs to leave some comments too:

The Paper Players Design Team



And then upload your card at the Paper Players blog!  Keep in mind a few simple rules:
1.  Create a new paper project
2.  Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us and provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge submission
3.  Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL
4.  Have fun!



Supplies:
Stamps:  Wizard of Oz stamps by ???
Ink:  Pecan Pie, Early Espresso, Creamy Caramel
Paper:  Pecan Pie, Basic White, Gingham Gala DSP Stack
Accessories:  Rectangles Stitched dies, Dimensionals

Friday, June 19, 2026

Before Pictures

Mornin' y'all!  My brother and his family left yesterday morning, taking Ryan with them to spend time with his grandparents in Texas, and the hubs has a 4-day weekend off work so guess what we're doing...painting the master suite!  This is the last area to still be ugly greige, though I do want to repaint the main area of the house because it ended up being baby blue instead a bluish neutral like I wanted.

So our house is technically three bedrooms; we have Ryan's room, the guest room, and the master, but the master suite has the bathroom, a sitting area I suppose you'd call it, and then the master bedroom itself.  Well, the hubs and I don't need a bedroom that's big enough to play soccer in, so we put our bed and dressers in the smaller sitting room area (closer to the bathroom) and the bigger area is what I like to call the warcraft room.  The boys like to play World of Tanks on the laptop in here, and I do crafts.  Here's what it looked like last weekend when I cleaned everything up before our guests arrived:


Hi Daphne : )  In the left corner that you can't see, there's a shelving unit with all my 12x12 cardstock and DSP, then there's two plastic drawer things under the windows which you can see to the left.  In the back corner is the shelving unit with my completed scrapbook pages and some other odds and ends, the back wall has the vast majority of my stamps, and in the right corner is another shelving unit with scrapbook albums in it.  Then on the right wall you see my file cabinets with cardstock in them, and then a hutch which is where my Big Shot lives and more storage.  In the middle, we have two tables back to back and an odd assortment of storage and furniture, so I have my ink caddies on the left and on the right are drawers holding my markers and other supplies.  Yes, I realize that I have a ridiculous amount of craft supplies.

So yesterday I spent hours clearing stuff out of here in preparation to paint this weekend.  Not only do we have to paint the walls, we have to paint the ceilings because I am NOT staring at ugly greige ceilings if I don't have to, and I'm not a fan of the color drenching thing so we've painted all the other ceilings a creamy white to match the baseboards.


So this is what the loft area currently looks like, and since Ryan isn't here, I took over his bedroom too:


And here's what the craft room looked like when I called it quits yesterday afternoon:


I had left that one container of SU! stamps on the shelf, thinking that I would make a card or two to wind down yesterday, but I was just worn out from all the heavy lifting so I didn't make anything.  I think I may postpone this week's Nancy Drew Challenge because I have one card made, but I wanted to make a second and it just hasn't happened yet.  I do have my Paper Players card all done for Sunday and SUO Challenges for next Tuesday taken care of, but anything else I think is going to have to wait.

I'm going to take Daphne for a walk before we get stuck in for today, hopefully that will loosen up my muscles because I'm sore from all that work yesterday.  Wish us luck with painting these three rooms, and stay tuned for the after pictures!

Thursday, June 18, 2026

Seahorse Thoughts

Mornin' y'all!  All our guests have left, the hubs went to work this morning, and now it's just me and Daphne in the house.  She kinda wandered around a little bit and whined like she wasn't used to the quiet.  I'm going to take her out for a walk here in a minute, and then I will be taking things out of the craft room because we're going to paint that, the master bedroom, and the master bathroom this weekend.  So it might be a little quiet here while everything is topsy-turvy, but I hope to be back up and running in short order.

In the meantime, have a colorful under the sea card for you today:


I was looking for a stamp set for something else (this has happened a couple of times recently) when Seaside Notions caught my eye and I thought it would be perfect with the Color Dare colors here:


I missed the challenge deadline but oh well.  My added color is a whole lot of Pacific Point, and I had to do another card with the CAS Colours & Sketches challenge:


And actually I made this card before the teacup card I posted last week.  That's it for now, kids, check ya later!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Seaside Notions, On the Grow
Ink:  Early Espresso, Pacific Point, Stampin' Blends in Calypso Coral & Berry Burst
Paper:  Pacific Point, Basic White, Waves of the Ocean DSP
Accessories:  Merriest Trees dies, Rectangles Stitched dies, Calypso Coral bakers twine, Dimensionals

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

One Fabulous Chicken

Mornin' y'all!  How long has it been since I made a card with the fun chickens in Hey Chuck?  Well, too long as it turns out, so I have one to share today:


CAS on Friday wants to see clean-and-simple cards featuring birds, so this chicken said she's ready for her close-up, Mr. DeMille.  Or is it a rooster?  I'm not an ornithologist, I don't know.  The hubs was sitting across from me as I colored in the image so he chose the colors for those shorts.  I really want a stamp that says "I'll rise, but I won't shine", but since I don't have one (or if I do, it's hiding really well) that Dare to Be Fabulous popped in my head and I just had to use it here.

Hope you have a fabulous day, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hey Chuck, Fabulous Flowers
Ink:  Early Espresso, Pretty Peacock, Stampin' Blends in Poppy Parade, Pecan Pie, Pretty Peacock, Timid Tiger, Pineapple Punch
Paper:  Pretty Peacock, Thick Basic White, Gold Glimmer Paper
Accessories:  Hey Chuck dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Fun in the Sun

Mornin' y'all!  Hope you are having a great week, and I have some sunshine to share with you today:


I told you, I love those sunglasses.  I made this for the AAA Cards Challenge:


I think my card fits summer and sun, and summer is also the theme at Just Us Girls:


That's it for now, peeps.  I'm gonna grab my sunnies and head outside.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Summer Happiness
Ink:  Gorgeous Grape, Daffodil Delight, Tahitian Tide Blends
Paper:  Daffodil Delight, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Summer Happiness dies, Perennial Postage dies, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella