So Long, Octopus

Hey y'all!  Been quiet on the blog lately, but I've been working on stitching projects and just hadn't been in my craft room very much the past couple of days.  But I'm back today with a quick card!

SU! released the retirement list this week, and my octo-buddy is on it.  Two years ago, Sea of Textures was one of the first two stamp sets I bought when that year's catalog debuted--I just love this guy!  Of course, I pretty much don't get rid of stamps so he's got a permanent home with me.

I liked this week's sketch at CAS(E) this Sketch:

Okay, so I took some liberties with the sketch by adding the octopus as a layer.  A couple of weeks ago, the CAS(E) this Sketch team picked one of my cards as a challenge favorite, that's always fun!

Next up is this week's Color Throwdown:

I used Night of Navy, Pineapple Punch, Crumb Cake, and Granny Apple Green.  As it happens, I opened up my stamp case and I already had the yellow and green octopus stamped and die cut, so that made this card really quick to put together.  Sometimes I save extra pieces in the stamp case, and sometimes I stamp things on scratch paper and use them as kinda placeholders to see how things will look before I commit to stamping (especially alphabets for scrapbook pages).

Last up is this week's Retro Rubber Challenge:

Sea of Textures is two years old.  Well, maybe a bit shy of two years, I think I got it in the summertime, but close to two years anyway.  I've got some more photographs from aquariums coming up to scrapbook, so I'm sure my octo-buddy will be getting inky again soon :)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Sea of Textures
Ink:  Crumb Cake, Night of Navy, Pineapple Punch, Granny Apple Green
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Night of Navy, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Under the Sea dies, mini Dimensionals, Happiness Blooms enamel dots

If you're curious, this is the cross stitch project I finished earlier this week!  This is one of the Pretty Little Cities patterns from Satsuma Street.  I have a dozen of them, and this is the third one I've made for myself.  All the other ones are for places I've been, but I haven't visited India (yet).  This is more in honor of my friend Neelu, one of my favorite people in the world; we became friends in 7th grade when her family moved to my hometown and she was a bridesmaid in my wedding.  Sadly she lost a battle with cancer a few years ago.  This makes me think of her every time I look at it.

Have a great weekend, y'all.  I'll be back tomorrow with more pages from Ryan's baby book!