I Love the 80s

Mornin' y'all!  I'm still not feeling well but hoping I'll be back to 100% tomorrow.  In the meantime, we've got a new challenge at SUO Challenges!  This time it's all about birthdays which is appropriate since MY birthday is on Thursday.  Since I am a child of the 80s, I decided to go with an 80s theme for my birthday card.

Black with neon colors (Berry Burst, Lemon Lime Twist, Bermuda Bay, and a banner of Mango Melody) plus a tape deck that I'm just SURE is playing the Bangles (my favorite band).  The banner is popped up in the middle with two layers of Dimensionals, I should have taken a side view so you could see.  The two stamp sets I used are Free Cake and Birthday Backgrounds, I think both of those were on sale last October for the 30th birthday celebration for Stampin' Up.

And there's the inside of my card.  My husband on occasion tries to call 80s music "oldies" and I'm like "It's not oldies, it's RETRO!"

Hope you enjoyed this blast from the past today.  Go check out the SUO Challenges blog and I hope you'll play along!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Free Cake, Birthday Backgrounds
Ink:  Berry Burst, Lemon Lime Twist, Bermuda Bay, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Berry Burst, Lemon Lime Twist, Bermuda Bay, Basic Black, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes Framelits, Dimensionals

China: Temple of Heaven

China Sunday again, peeps!  And today is a brand new layout, as promised.

See the photos up close and personal here.  At this point in the trip, I was coming down with the crud that Bennet had and then gave to my hubs, so I stayed in the hotel room and laid down for a couple hours while the other three went to visit the Temple of Heaven.  Coincidentally, I am once again coming down with the plague while I write this blog post!  Urgh.

I think I looked up information on the Temple of Heaven and stars were involved somehow, and that's why I did stars on here?  I can't remember now.  I stamped them with white craft ink on black cardstock and embossed with white EP, then cut out with the retired Stars Framelits.

Today's color palette includes the long-retired Brocade Blue for the page base, accented with Cherry Cobbler, Smoky Slate, Basic Black, and Whisper White.  I like it.

Well, I just pulled some lemon cream cheese scones out of the oven, so I'm going to go glaze those bad boys and have a late breakfast.  There will also be tea involved, because of course there is.  Cheers!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Rough Type, Bright & Beautiful
Ink:  Versamark, Basic Black
Paper:  Brocade Blue, Basic Black, Smoky Slate, Whisper White, Be Merry DSP
Accessories:  Stars Framelits, lettering template

Special Snowflake

Happy Friday y'all!  Woohoo!  I'm happy it's Friday and I'm looking forward to spending a weekend with my hubs and my kiddo just relaxing (ya hear that Ryan, I said RELAXING!).  I did get a card made yesterday afternoon to share today but sadly it was already getting dark when I took the picture so it doesn't look as good as it could.

Those three white dots under the sentiment are more rhinestones, but even though I took four pictures at different angles this was the best I could do.  I tried with my phone too:

And the Blueberry Bushel card base came out looking like Night of Navy o.0  Not sure how that happened!  Maybe I'll try to take another pic today and see if I can get a better one.

In the meantime, check out this lovely sketch from Sunday Stamps:

I've got a TON of brand new stamps and accessories in my craft room right now just waiting to be inked up, so naturally I got out Snow is Glistening that was a special buy in November.  Ha!  But the Snowfall Thinlits had that super-cool snowflake flourish that I used for the stripe on the left and I just had to do it.  Especially since I wanted to play along in the Color Throwdown:

I used Coastal Cabana, Blueberry Bushel, and Whisper White (the darker blue is NOT navy, I promise!). I just *had* to do snowflakes after looking at that inspiration picture.

Alright kids, that's it for me this week.  Have a great Friday!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Snow is Glistening
Ink:  Coastal Cabana, Blueberry Bushel
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Blueberry Bushel, Shimmery White
Accessories:  Snowfall Thinlits, Mini Dimensionals, Rhinestones

Figgy Pudding Valentine

Mornin' kids!  How's your week going?  I pulled out some new stamps yesterday while Ryan was napping so yay!

Although I'm not 100% happy with this card, and I wish I liked it better because I like the sketch and color challenges I used and I kinda feel like they deserve a better card.  Here's the Freshly Made Sketch:

I tend to stay away from square cards so I made mine a standard A2 size.  Here's the color challenge from Hand Stamped Sentiments:

OH DANG I just realized I used Powder Pink instead of Petal Pink!  I wrote it down wrong before I went in my craft room.  Oops!  Well, Petal or Powder, I really like the soft pink with the strong purple and green; I'll have to remember this next time I do a baby book for a baby girl.

Next up is the Cupcake Inspiration Challenge:

Forever Lovely is a brand new stamp set in the Stampin' Up! Occasions catalog, and this is my first time inking it up.  I'll have to play with it some more.

In the meantime, have a great day, folks!  I'm off to barre class.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Forever Lovely
Ink:  Powder Pink, Fresh Fig, Mossy Meadow
Paper:  Powder Pink, Mossy Meadow, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Lovely Flowers Edgelits, Mini Dimensionals, Wink of Stella

Friendly Watercolor Sunflower

Hey y'all!  Despite having The Headache That Would Not Die (I swear, I've had this headache on and off since last Tuesday), I managed to make a card yesterday afternoon.  Here 'tis:

I sponged Soft Suede ink on the Post Script background stamp to give it a softer feel so it wouldn't compete with my sunflower from Painted Harvest.  I love Post Script so this was me reminding myself to use it more often :)  My card was inspired by the CASE the Designer challenge at Global Design Project:

And I paired that with the color challenge from the Paper Players:

Assuming that neutrals aren't counted as the extra color, I used Pear Pizzazz for the color of my choice because the sunflower needed some leaves.

That's it for me today, kids.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Post Script, Painted Harvest, Oh So Eclectic
Ink:  Pool Party, Pear Pizzazz, Grapefruit Grove, Daffodil Delight, Soft Suede
Paper:  Thick Whisper White, Pool Party, Pear Pizzazz
Accessories:  Leaf Punch, Dimensionals, retired epoxy shapes, Wink of Stella pen

Dublin, Part 1

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  It's all gray and overcast where I am but I think I need some sunglasses before I look at today's pages...

All hail Lemon Lime Twist!   And also that super-cool patterned paper, now retired.  We went to Ireland in December of 2011; see the pictures up close here.  I did several layouts for our trip, some of which I think have been shared here, and because it's Ireland I did every layout on green cardstock.  Plus I love green :)

This one was pretty straightforward; the only stamping is my page title and the patterned paper really does the work here.

There's my color palette:  Lemon Lime Twist, Berry Burst, Night of Navy, and Whisper White.  Kiddo is talking and I need to get him up so we can eat breakfast before we go to the gym.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Morning Post Alphabet
Ink:  Night of Navy
Paper:  Lemon Lime Twist, Berry Burst, Night of Navy, Whisper White, Naturally Eclectic DSP
Accessories:  None

China: Forbidden City

Mornin' y'all!  It is time once again for China Sunday...and once again these pages are reruns, but I promise all-new pages next Sunday.  So let's visit the Forbidden City!

Original blog post here.

When I made these pages, I had a hard time with the color combination.  Sometimes the colors come together easily, and sometimes they don't.  I'm still not sure how successful this combination is, but at least the pages are done!

And I do love that red patterned paper I used.  Blog post for the second two layouts here.  Recipes for all three layouts are on the original blog posts as well, should you want them.

It's a rainy day here where we are, so I'm not even going to try to photograph any of the scrapbook pages I have waiting.  Instead I'll just work on getting a few more pages done!  But right this minute I'm eating pumpkin coffee cake and enjoying a large cuppa tea.  Can't do better than that on a rainy morning.

Cheers, y'all!