Happy Saturday y'all, and welcome back to the Nancy Drew Challenge! I'm posting a bit late today because Ryan wasn't feeling well this morning and snuggling with my kiddo will always be more important than pretty much anything else. He's fine, just needs to take it easy today. So anyway, here we are with the kickoff for the Nancy Drew digest paperbacks, #57, The Triple Hoax:
Let's talk covers! The one on the left is a Wanderer arch cover (we get these up to I think #78), and oddly enough I would say that this particular edition of The Triple Hoax is the easiest paperback Nancy Drew to find at used book stores--I found copies in at least three of the stores I visited in Texas. Anyway, the Wanderer covers have never been my favorites just from a design standpoint, but I do have to say that they have some pretty fantastic charcoal illustrations inside. So for this cover, we have some lovely purple hues and Nancy looking pensive in front of a group of probably nefarious magicians.
The other two are what I call the checkerboard covers for the little checkerboard between the Nancy Drew name and the title of the book, the pink one is another Wanderer edition and the teal one is a Minstrel. Style-wise I keep thinking that pink cover should be the newest one because Nancy's shorts are more fashionable ; ) and I think it's my favorite of the three, it's got more action than the other two and I like those colors.
The third cover is a similar scene to the second one and also has some great colors, but my goodness Nancy, those shorts! This is the first of many, many opportunities to mock fashion on the Nancy Drew book covers, I tell you. But let's talk contents.
Case file: Aunt Eloise (yay!) invites Nancy, Bess, and George to New York to investigate when one of her friends is swindled out of several thousand dollars. Nancy quickly becomes suspicious of The Hoaxters, a magic act performing in town, so of course she follows them to Mexico City when they clear out of NYC in a hurry, and then follows them to Los Angeles before she's able to bring them to justice. We have lots of travel, theft, fraud, kidnapping, poison, arson--this book is a RIDE, let me tell you.
Here's my first card:
What with all the travel, Nancy spends a LOT of time making long-distance and/or international phone calls and I couldn't resist making a phone card. I believe this card takes the cake for the most stamp sets used on a single card, I used five old Paper Pumpkin stamp sets plus five other stamp sets for a grand total of ten! It took some time to stamp-a-ma-jig all those hellos on the front but I like it.
I had to do an arch for our first Wanderer arch cover, but when I finished I wished I had used a darker purple for the card base to match the colors better; I was so excited to make this that I just ran right ahead to stamping instead of comparing purples. Oh well, I still like it.
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Timeless Talk, Elementary Elegance, Heartfelt Hellos, Blossoms in Bloom, A Dozen Thoughts, My Paper Pumpkin (multiple sets)
Ink: Highland Heather
Paper: Gorgeous Grape, Highland Heather, So Saffron, Basic White
Accessories: Everyday Arches dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, So Saffron Candy Dot
Despite the different colors, the text of the books is all the same but we're going to have fun with the multiple covers for quite a few books. So here's my card for the second book:
The girls visit the Pyramid of the Sun near Mexico City and that's where they are on the cover scene:
I pulled out Flores Misticas because it has that fun pattern that looks like the carved stone of the pyramid, and I chose Watermelon Wonder, Crushed Curry, and Highland Heather for my colors. I love Watermelon Wonder and I am hoarding the small amount of cardstock I have left in that color. I used blending brushes to add some lighter color on the yellow and purple bits, and I embossed the butterflies with Iridescent Ice embossing powder so now everything upstairs is covered with glitter. I added some foil gems for more glitz, too.
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Flores Misticas, Make a Difference
Ink: Watermelon Wonder, Crushed Curry, Highland Heather, Basic Gray, Versamark
Paper: Watermelon Wonder, Basic White
Accessories: Iridescent Ice embossing powder, Iridescent Foil Gems, Dimensionals
And for the final book cover:
The girls fly to Mexico City, but due to an airline strike, they rent a car to get to Los Angeles. On the trip, which takes several days, they come across an indigenous community that doesn't speak Spanish, but they manage to communicate that they're looking for breakfast. One of the older women, thinking that Bess wants an extra-fresh egg, catches a chicken and has it lay an egg in Bess's hand, which just made me laugh so much that I knew immediately this incident would be the basis for one of my cards.
To match the cover and color in my fabulous chickens, I used Pretty Peacock, Purple Posy, Rococo Rose, So Saffron, Fresh Freesia, and Golden Glow. The Tinsel Gems are technically Berry Burst, but they match the Rococo Rose cardstock pretty well, and I was quite tickled to find that sunrise-looking pattern in my stash in one of my chosen colors.
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Hey Chuck
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Pretty Peacock, Purple Posy, Fresh Freesia, Golden Glow, So Saffron, Rococo Rose
Paper: Pretty Peacock, Rococo Rose, Basic White, Playing with Patterns DSP Stack
Accessories: Hey Chuck dies, Perennial Postage dies, Dimensionals, Tinsel Gems
When I was a kid, I didn't particularly care for this book and reading it now I have no idea why I didn't like it more back then. We have lots of adventures in this book with all the travel and it was fun to do some sightseeing in Mexico, plus that incident with the chicken is hilarious. I give it four and a half stars. This book was the first Nancy Drew published under a new publisher, and I think they did a very good job of making it feel like a continuation of the old series. I could seriously have done without the fat-shaming that George subjects Bess to, I wish they hadn't kept that element of the original series, but almost everything else was very fun. If you're inspired to make a card based on this book, leave me a comment below, and I will see you next week when Nancy investigates The Flying Saucer Mystery.
