Happy Saturday and welcome to the fortieth Nancy Drew Challenge! Today we are investigating The Moonstone Castle Mystery:
I do have a matte cover of this as well, which you'll see in the pics with the cards. I'm not sure if Nancy's dress is yellow or edging towards chartreuse, it looks more greenish in person. We're doing all primary colors here with Bess in blue and George in red, with a very interesting sunset sky behind the titular castle. This is similar to the covers for Old Stagecoach and Golden Pavilion with the girls looking away from us, except this time we see their entire bodies instead of just from the waist up.
Case file: Carson asks for Nancy's help with a missing persons case, which leads her, Bess, and George to Deep River to find out what happened to Joanie Horton, who disappeared after her grandmother died fifteen years ago. Nancy receives a moonstone in the mail with a mysterious note, and upon arriving in Deep River (original name: Moonstone Valley, which is way cooler) she investigates a mysterious castle (why does my town not have a castle?!) and spends a lot of time getting all the hot goss from an old lady at a tea room called the Brass Kettle. The case ends up pretty dark though, between kidnapping, theft, and elder abuse, but Nancy gets all the bad guys behind bars in the end.
Here's my first card:
Nancy is always cruising around in her convertible and actually she goes through quite a few cars over the course of the series, I think Carson has bought her at least two new cars so far and she's had her car stolen or wrecked several times as well. So anyway, it was high time to make a card based on Nancy's wheels. Carson bought her a yellow convertible in The Haunted Showboat, but we don't have Crushed Curry Blends (still a little irked about that, Stampin' Up!) so I made a red convertible to go on the map background.
I chose red for George's dress and the yellow more for the sunset sky than Nancy's dress, which like I said looks a bit more chartreuse to me.
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Classic Convertibles, Geared Up Garage
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Crushed Curry, Stampin' Blends in Real Red, Smoky Slate, Pool Party
Paper: Real Red, Crushed Curry, Thick Basic White, Classic Garage DSP
Accessories: Textured Notes dies, Dimensionals, Tinsel Gems
I couldn't stop there, so here's my second card:
When I sat down to make cards for this book I discovered a very surprising dearth of castle images in my stamp collection. There's one in Chase Your Dreams but it is Neuschwanstein in Bavaria and I cannot see it as anything else; there's a turret in Provencal but I already used that for another book and I can't think of any more castles in my collection. So I ordered this Build-a-Castle die from La La Land Crafts.
I chose a sky pattern from the Everyday Skies DSP Stack, they didn't have a yellow one like on the book but I chose a Balmy Blue pattern to go with Bess's dress and it still has some warm colors in it. I wanted something sparkly to go with the moonstone theme of the book so I used silver glimmer paper. I scrunched up some plastic wrap and used that to ink up the Garden Green card base just to give it some extra texture.
Supplies:
Stamps: Chase Your Dreams
Ink: Smoky Slate, Basic Gray, Garden Green
Paper: Garden Green, Basic Gray, Smoky Slate, Everyday Skies DSP Stack, Silver Glimmer
Accessories: Build-a-Castle dies from La La Land Crafts, Dimensionals, Wonderful Gems
Then I was like wait a minute, don't I have white glimmer paper? I want to use that to look more like moonstone. And I bought a *second* castle die so this time I have three cards and here's the third one:
Somehow the picture turned out looking very pink and I still don't have a Mac to edit the photos properly but trust me, the castle is white glimmer paper. I got the die on Amazon.
I thought the colors in the Tea Boutique DSP Stack matched the cover pretty well, and though I didn't use any of the tea-related patterns, Nancy and her chums do spend a lot of time at a tea room in Deep River asking the old lady to spill the tea on the town and its inhabitants. And also there's a boating accident in this book because Nancy is forever having boat accidents.
Supplies:
Stamps: Magical Mermaid
Ink: Sweet Sorbet
Paper: Sweet Sorbet, Garden Green, Basic White, Tea Boutique DSP Stack, Myths & Magic Glimmer Paper
Accessories: castle die from Tnyvm?, Layering Ovals dies, Sparkle Dot Essentials, Dimensionals
I think The Moonstone Castle Mystery is an enjoyable addition to the Nancy Drew series, though like I said the crimes she uncovers are pretty dark (we have elder abuse like in The Password to Larkspur Lane and kidnapping a child). Overall I give it three and a half stars because I'm disappointed they never explain why there's a castle in Deep River/Moonstone Valley and that is the number one thing I wanted to know going into this book. If you're inspired to make a card for this book, leave me a comment below, and come back next Saturday when Nancy investigates The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes. Cheers!
