Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion

Mornin' stampy friends and welcome to another Nancy Drew Challenge!  This week we're taking a look at The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion, or The Mystery *of* the Moss-Covered Mansion depending on which version you have.  I have both : )

For the OT on the left, we have an action scene but it's a little ambiguous--looks almost like Nancy, Bess, and George are burying some cash but in fact they're digging up a criminal's stash of stolen funds.

We have a collage on the RT with Nancy looking a bit concerned that a panther is stalking her and also that house looks like the Addams Family lives there and I like it.  Interestingly, the RT version says AT on the spine but OF on the cover, which I never noticed until this year and I've had that book since I was 9.

Between those two covers, I have to go with the RT as my favorite.  That Addams house is just too cool.  Let's take a look inside, shall we?

Case file:  Nancy, Bess, and George are supposed to be enjoying a vacation in the town of Ashley while Carson works on a case to find an heiress, but Nancy is intrigued by a mysterious moss-covered mansion nearby.  Nancy crosses paths with Ramo, a "gypsy-like" character who is up to no good.  The missing heiress turns up and Carson hands over the inheritance, but then she absconds with Ramo, so Nancy figures out that she's a fake and they have to find the impostor and the money as well as the real heiress.  Everything seems to revolve around the moss-covered mansion where the owner keeps a variety of wild animals, and of course in the end Nancy solves it and all the good people live happily ever after while Ramo goes to jail.

Here's my card:

This one was actually really tough for me, but in the end I had to go with one of the wild animals that Nancy encounters at the moss-covered mansion.  I was tempted to go with a fortune-teller theme (Ramo's sister is a con artist fortune teller, and I found a cute cat fortune-teller stamp set and I'm just looking for an excuse to buy it) but all those parts in the book are *highly* problematic so wild animals seemed to be less fraught for a theme.  Also there's a plane crash in the book, but I'm definitely not making any plane crash cards.  Oyy.  I gave just a very brief synopsis of this book but it's pretty bananas.

I used Darling Duckling as my primary color to go with Nancy's dress on the cover of the book, plus it makes a good leopard color.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Wild Cats
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Darling Duckling, Evening Evergreen, Soft Succulent
Paper:  Darling Duckling, Thick Basic White, In the Wild DSP, Soft Succulent DSP
Accessories:  Big Cats dies, Textured Notes dies, Matte Decorative Dots, Mini Dimensionals

Next let's look at the RT, which is even MORE bananas:

Case file:  Carson Drew takes Nancy, Bess, and George down to Florida to help investigate when his friend and client Mr. Billington is accused of sending a truck of explosive oranges into the Kennedy Space Center (as if NASA is going to let a teen detective within a hundred miles of a case like that).  Once again Nancy is intrigued by a moss-covered mansion which is home to wild animals, but this time it belongs to a Bond villain wannabe who's trying to sabotage the US space program (this was written in 1971, so the Cold War was definitely the inspiration).  Like #17, this one was a gift to me for Christmas of 1989 and I adore how bananas it is.

Here's my card:

I was torn between the panther and the explosive oranges for my card inspiration, but since I did the leopard on the OT card I decided to go with the oranges on this one.  I fussy-cut one pretty orange from the Mediterranean Blooms DSP and then somehow stamped my greeting just a leetle bit crooked.  When I was growing up, my great-grandmother used to tell us to drink orange juice at breakfast to put sunshine in our day, so I had to go with a sunshine sentiment on here.

I did keep the main colors of the book cover on my card and now I kinda want to go make a haunted house card.  That mansion on the cover is a whole VIBE.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Celebrate with Flowers
Ink:  Early Espresso
Paper:  Thick Basic White, Pecan Pie, Lemon Lolly, Mediterranean Blooms DSP, Floral Impressions DSP
Accessories:  Nested Essentials dies, Mini Dimensionals, Transparent Dots

Like the previous book, I enjoy the off-the-rails shenanigans (in the RT especially) so I give this five stars just for being bananas.  If you would like to play along, please drop a comment on this post with a link to your card as I would love to see!  You can read a much more in-depth analysis of Nancy Drew books on my other blog, Hey Nancy Drew.  It's a few books behind where I'm at here, so next week on this blog, we will undertake The Quest of the Missing Map!