A Spooky Sweet Cupcake

Mornin' y'all!  Happy LAST DAY of September...tomorrow starts the best month of the entire year!  I'm so excited, I absolutely love October--fall colors, cooler weather, comfy sweaters, pumpkin everything.  And lots more Halloween cards on the way but of course I started early and I have another one to share today.

New schtuff alert!  I first discovered this Simon Says Stamp set called Spooky Sweets back when I was looking for eyeballs for Mystery of the Glowing Eye and I finally added it to my Halloween stamp hoard last week.  I had to make a pastel candy-colored cupcake card for the Inspired By... Challenge:

I used Pretty in Pink, Highland Heather, and Peach Pie for my colors and I think I should have gotten an extra pack of that Unbounded Beauty DSP, who knew it would be so good for pastel Halloween cards?  Maybe I should have used Fresh Freesia for my purple but I still like it with Highland Heather.  Anyway, I've already made another card with this stamp set which you will be seeing soon, and I have a couple more cupcakes to ink up too.

Supplies:
Stamps:  Spooky Sweets by Simon Says Stamp
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Highland Heather, Stampin' Blends in Highland Heather, Peach Pie, Pretty in Pink, Ivory
Paper:  Highland Heather, Peach Pie, Pretty in Pink, Basic White, Unbounded Beauty DSP, Peach Pie DSP
Accessories:  Spooky Sweets dies by Simon Says Stamp, Layering Circles dies, Dimensionals, Cute Stars Sequins

It's Wednesday, so how about a Work In Progress (WIP Wednesday) update on my stitching project?  Here it is:

I've been a little bit obsessed with working on this because I think the pattern is SO cute and I finished the first block last night (there will be twelve blocks total).  This pattern was released by Shannon Christine Designs as a Stitch-Along (SAL) where one part was released each month over the course of a year; I also have her Spooky Houses SAL and I bought the floss for that already.  I'm going to go through SO MUCH black floss, but that's okay because I bought a cone of it several years ago and that should cover both of these Halloween projects.  Anyway, I finished off this square last night and started a little bit of the curlicues around the Frankenstein bucket that will go to the left, but I took this picture before I moved my stitching frame so you could see the jack o' lantern in all his glory.

And here's my stitching buddy last night, I don't know how she could breathe laying like that.  It's a rainy day today so she was staring morosely out the window because she knows I won't take her for a walk if it's actively precipitating; now she's facing the opposite direction because she's mad at the weather.  I will take her later if the rain lets up, we go if it's just wet outside but not if it's still falling from the sky.  Anyway, Daphne likes to hang out with me while I'm stitching, we've been rotating between episodes of Smallville, Pushing Daisies, and Scooby-Doo while I work.  She's the best couch companion.

Going in Circles

Mornin' y'all.  Urgh, I haven't been sleeping too well the past couple of nights but I am going to do my best NOT to take a nap today because then maybe I'll actually sleep tonight.  I have some projects I really want to work on today, including the new cross stitch project I started last night.

But for right now, I continue my quest to make the Painted Pumpkins stamps/stencils/dies in every color of the rainbow:

At this point I think Painted Pumpkins is my go-to stamp set for when I'm not sure what to do with a color challenge.  Check out this pretty spring palette from CAS Colours & Sketches:

I just didn't want to do a springy card, so pinky purple pumpkins it is!  Next up is the Addicted to CAS challenge, which was a good excuse to use my Spotlight on Nature dies:

I layered on a retired Stitched Shapes die because the circles in Stylish Shapes weren't the right size to nest in the Spotlight on Nature circle and even if the die is retired that doesn't mean I can't use it.

And since I was doing two CAS challenges anyway, that makes it real easy to enter at Inspire. Create. this round too:

I've been making my pumpkins in so many nonstandard pumpkin colors that I haven't used the coordinating DSP much, so I thought I might as well make a DSP-centric pumpkin card while I was at it yesterday:

Oh look, more circles!  I do need to play with that DSP some more, there are some very pretty patterns in it.  Apparently my keyboard didn't get enough sleep last night either; it keeps lagging behind what I'm typing and trying to add all kinds of weird accent marks or skipping letters entirely.  Weird.

Supplies, first card:
Stamps:  Painted Pumpkins
Ink:  Bubble Bath, Highland Heather, Peaceful Pine
Paper:  Bubble Bath, Highland Heather, Basic White
Accessories:  Painted Pumpkins dies & stencils, Spotlight on Nature dies, Stitched Shapes dies, Dimensionals

Supplies, second card:
Stamps:  Painted Pumpkins
Ink:  Secret Sea
Paper:  Petal Pink, Cajun Craze, Pool Party, Painted Patch DSP
Accessories:  Spotlight on Nature dies, Stitched Shapes dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, Painted Patch Dots

Yesterday I really really really wanted to start a new cross stitch project since I finished the Hocus Pocus one (I didn't really like how it turned out though).  I had picked out my next two projects, a pretty fall leaf pattern and a big Christmas pattern, but had to order some variegated thread for the leaf pattern and it wasn't due to get here until Friday (I just got a notification 10 minutes ago that it will be delivered today, but that's beside the point).  And I just couldn't make myself start a Christmas pattern on the first official day of fall, so I did the only logical thing...

I started a big Halloween pattern instead : )  This one has twelve different Halloween candy buckets and I started with the pumpkin on the top row.  So glad I did the eyeball on the first day so this design can stare at me the whole time I'm working on it : p  The fabric is a warm gray called Wolfsbane from Mystic Fabrics, I picked a medium gray so the white will pop on the fabric, especially when I get to the ghost bucket.  I hadn't been planning to make this pattern right now but I was so happy when I started it, so I think I'm going to work on this through October, start the leaf pattern in November, then start the Christmas pattern in December and then I can alternate projects if I feel like it.

Okay, I've got to walk Daphne and go do the grocery shopping so I can get to my fun projects.  Cheers!

Florals in Green

Mornin' y'all!  Since the hubs has been sick, I've spent the past couple of nights in the guest room in an attempt to not acquire what he's got (though I'm not sure it's working).  Daphne joined me in there last night and I woke up in the middle of the night with her head rammed into my spine--she and Ryan both like to sleep perpendicularly on the bed.  Just don't tell the hubs she was on the bed with me : )  Usually I agree with him about no doggos on the furniture (other than Daph's chair), but I wanted puppy snuggles.  They're medicinal.

Anyway, here's my card today and we're going all in on my favorite color, green!

As soon as I saw this week's Freshly Made Sketch, I knew I was going to use that Nested Essentials shape for the oval in the sketch:

That's the first one I could think of that was wide but short.  I made this card before I saw this Easter card by my Paper Players teammie LeAnne but apparently we were both riding the same brain wave.

Aww man, I just picked up my tea mug and found it unexpectedly empty.  Time to brew another cuppa!  Anyway, my next challenge is The Card Concept:

My colors don't exactly match their palette, but that inspo pic immediately made me think of the Garden Lane DSP (though I couldn't remember the name so I had to do some hunting for it).  I read their colors as Granny Apple Green, Shy Shamrock, and Always Artichoke, while my card is Pear Pizzazz, Garden Green, and possibly a bit of Mossy Meadow.  Still very green.  I have a mix of still current (Pretty Florals), recently retired (Year of Flowers), and long retired (Garden Lane DSP and Pear Pizzazz as a color) on my clean and layered card.  This is the year of the retired supplies I think, I'm just using whatever I feel like for challenges and who cares if it's retired or not.  (Though I did just get a little bitty order from SU! yesterday evening that I haven't opened yet!)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Pretty Florals, Year of Flowers
Ink:  Pear Pizzazz, Garden Green, VersaMark
Paper:  Pear Pizzazz, Garden Green, Basic White, Garden Lane DSP
Accessories:  Pretty Florals dies, Nested Essentials dies, white EP, Pearls of Beauty, Dimensionals

I came down with a low-grade fever yesterday afternoon and just felt really tired, so I didn't get in my craft room at all but I DID watch a show and finish my latest cross stitch piece:

More green!  I bought this Art Deco Tiger pattern from Etsy and it was a delight to stitch.  For once I'm not sure what I'm going to make next; I have several patterns that I could do but I haven't picked yet.

Okay I feel like I've talked a lot today, so I'm going to take my fresh cuppa and go look at other blogs for a bit, then take Daphne for a walk, then start working on a birthday cake for the hubs.  I'm planning to make a homemade strawberry cake for him, and as much as I cook and bake I hardly ever make cakes so this will be interesting.  Cheers!

Gingerbread Season

Mornin' y'all!  Today Ryan has STEM club after school which means extra crafting time for me : )  I finished my latest stitching project yesterday so I will be kitting up the next one today...I always have *something* I want to make!  And tomorrow, I will be making desserts for a potluck thing at the hubs' work, which leads me right into today's card:

I've had the Homemade Treats bundle for WEEKS and this is the first time I've inked it up!  It's super cute and will coordinate well with the Frosted Gingerbread suite from a few years ago, and of course I still have the papers (and stamps and dies) from that.  I know exactly who this will go to as well, my dino-loving pal Krissy also loves to bake.  We've joked about how we should open a bakery together where she does cakes and cupcakes and I make cookies and muffins.

Very happy that the latest challenge at Addicted to CAS gave me an excuse to finally ink up a few of these stamps:

The first weekend in December, I will be making gingerbread muffins for breakfast.  I don't know that I've ever made gingerbread cookies but I do make muffins and some cream cheese frosted gingerbread bars (which I will be making tomorrow along with chocolate cherry bars and cranberry crumble pie bars).  'Tis definitely the season for baking at my house : )

That's it for now, peeps.  I'm going to finish breakfast, take Daphne for her neighborhood tour (she's already poking me with her nose, doggo loves her walks), and then go kit up that stitching project and work on some more cards.  Looks like a fun day to me.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Homemade Treats
Ink:  Pecan Pie, Calypso Coral
Paper:  Garden Green, Thick Basic White, Timeless Plaid Stack
Accessories:  Homemade Treats dies, Nested Essentials dies, Mini Dimensionals

And if you're curious, here's my newly completed stitching project:

The pattern is from Autumn Lane Stitchery and I got the fabric from Mystic Fabrics.  It's an opal fabric so it's sparkly, which is perfect for this nighttime scene.  I had hoped to finish this before Halloween, but it's done now so it's all good.  And here is my next project, I'm excited to start it!

Spooktacular Pumpkins

Hey y'all, happy Sunday.  Per Ryan's request (it was his turn to pick), I made orange scones for breakfast this morning.  : )  I think next weekend it's time for a pumpkin coffee cake.

And today it's time for a pumpkin card!

We're kickin' it old skool today to go with the Retro Rubber Challenge:

I used Elegant Eggplant, Highland Heather, Crushed Curry, Peach Parfait (I think?  We've had three colors with peach in the name and I get them mixed up, I just know it wasn't Peach Pie I used this time), and Tangerine Tango.  Carved & Candlelit was one of the first few Stampin' Up! stamp sets I ever bought and it's been in my collection for 18 years!  Spooktacular Bash (which I used for the greeting) is less retro at only five years old.  Even my embellishments are retro on this card.

I also used the sketch from As You See It:

And I'm quite chuffed to share that my Perfectly Preserved card was the winner of their last challenge : )  See, it's FUN to play with older stamps!  Thanks to the AYSI team for choosing my card, I enjoy playing along with the challenges.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Carved & Candlelit, Spooktacular Bash
Ink:  Tangerine Tango, Peach Parfait, Highland Heather, Elegant Eggplant
Paper:  Crushed Curry, Elegant Eggplant, Thick Basic White, Elegant Eggplant & Highland Heather DSP
Accessories:  1 1/2" and 1 3/4" circle punches, Candy Dots, Sycamore Street ribbon, Dimensionals

When I'm not stamping or scrapping...or reading...my other other hobby is cross stitching, and last week I finished up two projects:

These are patterns by Satsuma Street in the Pretty Little Cities line.  The designer hasn't released any new Pretty Little Cities in a few years though, so I think I'll have to design my own for Texas and Colorado.  They're *called* Pretty Little Cities but sometimes it's not a city, it's a state or a country--I've also made Pretty Little Hawaii and Pretty Little Italy.  Plus more than a dozen other ones.  I've already started a new project that's making my little autumn-loving heart happy, it's a quilt-inspired design in some fabulous fall colors.  The hubs wonders how I can be at the house all day without going stir crazy but I am very, very good at entertaining myself--I always have multiple projects going, either paper or stitching.  I never get bored!

Cozy Cuppa

Mornin' y'all!  I didn't get quite as much craft room time as I wanted to yesterday (I need to work on my time management skills...I get distracted) but I did make a card for today!

Check out this week's fun sketch from Freshly Made Sketches:

And the Color Throwdown:

The inspo pic just looked so COZY and it 100% drove what I chose for stamp sets today.  I used Boho Blue, Very Vanilla, and Crumb Cake for my colors, with a bit of Pecan Pie for the coffee (even though I don't drink coffee, I'm a tea girl).  Some In Color dots from last year's catalog and my card was finished.  Like I said, I don't drink coffee, but a lot of my friends do so I'm sure this will get sent out soon!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Latte Love, Drizzling Droplets
Ink:  Crumb Cake, Boho Blue, Pecan Pie, Stampin' Blends in Boho Blue & Pecan Pie
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Thick Very Vanilla
Accessories:  In Color Dots, Dimensionals

Speaking of cozy, while the hubs and I were out antiquing on Tuesday, I found this:

It's a little quilt about 3 feet square and I bought it to go on my dining table or island counter to decorate for Thanksgiving (I like to host Thanksgiving with as many people as I can because more people = more PIES to make!) and it was only $6.  I recently bought three cross stitch patterns that are quilt inspired and done in fall colors, so yesterday I went out and bought the thread for all three of them:

Most of the reds are on the bottom I think.  Anyway, at some point, I will have those cross stitched pieces done and framed to go on the little quilt.  Most likely not for this Thanksgiving since I haven't started yet, but maybe next year's.  Gotta love starting new projects!

Ryan's First Snow and New Year Goals

That most benighted year 2020 is finally OVER!  Let's all work on making 2021 extra super totally amazing and fun, k?  There's a lot of superstitions that what you do on January first sets the tone for the whole year so you shouldn't do things like laundry or take out the trash.  So far today, I've done a yoga workout with a focus on BALANCE (I think that might be a word to focus on this year), and I bought a couple of books because I just can't stop doing that.  So let's start the new year off right here and have a look at a scrapbook layout:

Aww, Ryan was so tiny!  The pictures were taken in March 2017, when he was just a month old.  That polar bear onesie was one of my favorite things I bought for Ryan clothes-wise and he only got to wear it a couple of times, so I'm glad I have these pictures to remember it.  I used my all-time favorite SU! color, Baja Breeze, and the longtime favorite Ski Slope DSP.  I bought like a zillion packs of it and love it every time I find a place to use it in my scrapbooks.  The letters on "snow" are from the Mod Alphabet, which I've had forever but rarely use because even a short title takes up a lot of space, but I liked it on here and it inspired me to do my journaling in a circle on the other page.

Today's color palette:  Baja Breeze, Real Red, Whisper White, and Early Espresso.

Supplies:
Stamps:  Back to Basics Alphabet, Festive Flurry, Mod Alphabet
Ink:  Early Espresso, Real Red, Baja Breeze
Paper:  Baja Breeze, Early Espresso, Thick Whisper White, Ski Slope DSP
Accessories:  circle punch, Festive Flurry Framelits

Okay, so, on to the goals portion of today's blog post!  I posted my 2020 goals here, so let's revisit those and set some intentions for 2021. 

1.  2020 goal: make 200 pages (100 two-page layouts).  Later I amended this to 100 pages, thinking that we were supposed to get to Germany in April and I'd get a job, but then the pandemic hit and everything when haywire.  In the end, I DID achieve my original goal and finished the year with 208 finished pages.  Woo! 

2021:  I have a tentative job offer for the arts & crafts center here, but it is currently shut down because we're in lockdown until I think mid-January.  So I'm going to leave this goal TBD for now until I can get started on the new job and establish a schedule and figure out what might be reasonable here.

2.  2020 goal:  organize and pare down pictures...once again a fail.  I am consistent with not reaching this goal, so there's that.  I did fairly well with organizing as we took new pictures throughout the year, but I did not go back and work on older photos.

2021:  I almost always make something fun for breakfast on Sundays (muffins, waffles, what have you), so every time I do that, I'm going to take my fun breakfast in the computer room and spend 30 minutes or more working on organizing the pictures.  If I can do just that little bit of time once a week, then I should be able to make some good progress by the end of the year.  Wish me luck.

Reading:
2020:  no goal for reducing the size of my TBR pile (good thing, because it grows ever larger), so I just tracked what I did read.  I read 86 books and 2 novellas; I did not track the zillions of kids' books I read to Ryan at bedtime every night ; )  My favorite book from 2020 was Liza Mundy's Code Girls; it was an incredibly fascinating look at the role women played in WWII and it inspired me to read several other nonfiction books about the war, especially female British agents working in occupied France.  I also read two books about WWI because I didn't really remember much about it from my history classes and I'm a giant nerd.

2021:  I liked what I did last year, just tracking what I was reading and not trying to pressure myself into shrinking my TBR pile, which seems to grow no matter what.  So I'm going to do the same thing this year.

Cross Stitching:
3.  My goal was to get to 40% done on my huge Scarlet Quince project.  By the end of December, I had actually just passed FIFTY PERCENT on it!

I'm thrilled with the progress I made on this one.  I also finished several other small cross stitch projects, and I managed to get to 50% even with putting this aside for a couple of months while we moved.  So my goal for 2021 is to get to 65%.  I recently bought a whole bunch more SQ patterns but I'm making myself wait to start any of those until this one is finished.  Better get to stitchin'!

Fitness:
2020 was my first full year of doing Missy's fitness cult and I have lost over 30 pounds since November 2019.  I did gain a couple of pounds at Thankgsiving that I have yet to work back off, but I'm still in a lot better shape than I was and pretty happy about it.  My one specific 2020 fitness goal was to do a full chaturanga (like a slow tricep pushup) and guess what?  I CAN.  I did one during my yoga workout this morning.  There's still room for improvement, and I'm going to work on that, but I CAN DO IT!  So I think my 2021 goal is to continue to improve that chaturanga and maintain my weight loss.  Get rid of that bit of Thanksgiving fluff ; ) but otherwise just maintain.  Doable!

So that's my start for 2021.  Best wishes to you for the new year!

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!

Welcome to Okinawa & 2019 Goals

Howdy, y'all!  I've been enjoying a bit of a break with the holidays but I should be starting back up with the ol' blog next week.  In the meantime, here's a layout that I finally got photographed yesterday:

This was from January 2008, so 11 years ago now and we still have these two crazies.  I used the Wintergreen DSP again and I'm seriously thinking about looking for more on eBay or something because I has a sad when I think how close I am to being out of it.  And there's my favorite paw print stamp, I don't even know who makes it but I use it a lot on my doggy scrapbook pages.  (Yes I am making a scrapbook for my dogs...well really it's for me but it's all dog pictures.  I don't care if you think I'm crazy, I love my fur babies.)

Color palette is almost straight out of the patterned paper:  Certainly Celery, Soft Sky, Always Artichoke, and Night of Navy (navy is not in the paper but I like it with all those greens and blues).  I would never have put Certainly Celery and Always Artichoke together on my own, but I do really like how it looks.

Supplies:
Stamps:  Labeler Alphabet, Whimsical Alphabet Upper, non-SU paw print
Ink:  Always Artichoke, Night of Navy
Paper:  Certainly Celery, Always Artichoke, Wintergreen DSP
Accessories:  Circle Punches





Okay, so instead of resolutions, I have GOALS for 2019 and a lot of them are paper craft-related, so I'm sharing them here so I have them written down somewhere and I can keep myself accountable.

Goals for scrapbooking!
1.  Make 200 scrapbook pages (so 100 double-page layouts).  I got fairly close to that in 2018 (178 finished, 8 more just need journaling but I'm bugging the hubs to do that this weekend), so I think I can do this as long as I keep at it regularly.
2.  Finish Ryan's baby book.  I pretty much finished June so I've got 8 months left to do.  And then I'll start sharing those here when I finish up the China posts on Sundays.
3.  Work on getting my pictures organized.  I've done a lot of organization on them, but I know we have a LOT of extra pictures...like, we don't need 75 nearly identical shots of Neuschwanstein, and I can cull out blurry pictures and stuff too so when I'm looking for something in particular it won't take me forever to find it.  I also need to organize recent photos of Ryan and order them so I have even MORE photos to scrapbook ;)  I'm hoping to make the organization progress a weekly thing, like on Sunday mornings we have muffins or pancakes or waffles or whatever for breakfast, so I can work on the photos for a bit while I eat breakfast on Sundays.  That's my plan.

Goal for reading!
1.  End the year with fewer unread books on my Kindle than I started, so the number to beat is 125.  Basically I want to read faster than I buy books, haha.  Ummm so is now the time to mention that I just got two more books for free with Kindle First and yesterday my friend alerted me to another free book so I'm already +3?  Yeah this goal is going well.  At least those three books were all free?

Goal for cross stitching!
1.  Finish The Accolade.  I started working on this in 2011, and I've put in 18 months of work on it over the past 7+ years, and this year I'm going to FINISH IT.  I've got several projects in mind when that one is done, but here's my progress pic on it:

I'm about 78% done, hope to finish it by this summer.

So.  Five goals.  I think they're all reasonable as long as I keep them in mind as I go along this year.  With that in mind, I have the supplies for my next layout on my craft table right now, so I'm going to go get started.  Cheers, y'all!

The Witch Is In

Well, I had to dust off everything in my craft room, but I did get a card made yesterday so yay me!  (And thank you to Ryan, who took a nice long nap!)  Right before my unplanned hiatus, I ordered pretty much all of the Halloween stuff from the SU! holiday catalog, so I had to play with that first.  Here's what I did:

New stamp set, new paper, even new markers!  I used the Basic Black Blends to color in the witch's hat.  I'm working on my Blends collection but I think this is only the first or second time I've used them.  Anyway, this card is a first for me:  a QUINTUPLE CHALLENGE CARD.  And I didn't pick three Halloween theme challenges either...actually none of them is a Halloween theme challenge.

First up is the SUO Challenge to use something from the holiday catalog.  I am not at all ready for Christmas cards, so I went with Halloween instead and that Toil & Trouble DSP kinda feels like retro DSP because it reminds me of a lot of stuff I had when I first started scrapbooking (which is --gulp-- over 20 years ago).

Next up is the What Will You Stamp? challenge:

I kept telling myself I wasn't going to get this stamp set and then oops, it came to my house anyway.  Um, I bought all the Halloween stuff this year (stamps and paper anyway, not ribbon and embellishments because I tend not to use that stuff although the black glitter ribbon would have been awesome on this card).  I'm a little bummed I missed when they did the Takeout Treats challenge because I own that stamp set and it hasn't been inked up yet.

Moving right along!  Here's the color challenge courtesy of Fab Friday:

I reeeeeallllly wanted to add some Granny Apple Green or Lemon Lime Twist in there but I was a good girl and stuck strictly to the challenge colors.  Great Halloween colors.

Next up is the Sketch Saturday sketch:

I only recently started following this challenge and this is my first time to play along over there.

Last, but certainly not least, is the Just Us Girls trend week challenge:

Because there are stars on my witch's hat.  :D. There's a really great starry pattern in the Toil & Trouble DSP but I think I may hoard it for future use.

That's it for me today, peeps.  Fingers crossed I can pick up some momentum this week and stamp some more schtuff!  Gotta at least get some ink on the Halloween goodies before the end of the month, right?  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Cauldron Bubble, Spooky Sweets
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Pumpkin Pie, Gorgeous Grape, Basic Black Blends
Paper:  Basic Black, Thick Whisper White, Toil & Trouble DSP
Accessories:  Frosted Bouquet Framelits, Cauldron Framelits, white baker's twine, hole punch, glitter enamel shape, mini Dimensionals

 P.S.  Thought you might like to see one of the projects I recently finished stitching as I think it fits in with today's card:

The pattern is by Satsuma Street; I've also done her owls pattern and these are both with my mom to be framed.  I've recently become a fan of dyed fabric for cross stitch pieces; I got this purple from a lady who sells hand-dyed fabrics through Facebook and we won't even talk about how big my stash is already.  I love alllllll the pretty colors!

Friday Flashback: Symbols of Solicitude

Ok, so I'm just running late all week :)  But it's still Friday and we're still doing the Friday Flashback!  Today's featured stamp set is Symbols of Solicitude, which lives in the same stamp case as the similar set Kanji.  Having lived in Japan for almost three years, of course I have to have pretty much all the Oriental stamp sets that SU! makes.  So let's go!

The picture doesn't show it very well, but I stamped the "peace" kanji and embossed it with silver on the left page.

Also features Embrace Life

What is it about Japanese/Chinese stuff and the color red?  Yep, I use them together a lot.

Also uses Kanji

This was a wedding present for a friend of mine; she wanted something Japanese (and nope, they're not Asian at all).  I made both the card and the cross-stitched piece.  And now for today's new card:

Still red, I couldn't help it :)  I'll just need to remember this card next February when my friend Chris' birthday rolls around, I think he'd like this.  I based it on a past Retro Sketch:

The card actually came together really fast once I finally got in my craft room to work on it.  I'm gonna get back in the groove so I can have posts ready ahead of time, it's my new goal.  For now though, thanks for joining me for this week's Friday Flashback and have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Symbols of Solicitude, Four You
Ink:  Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Riding Hood Red, Very Vanilla, Haiku DSP
Accessories:  Hexagon punch (to flag the ends of the sentiment strip), Dimensionals, Square Lattice EF

Stitching Labels

I've been busy for the past couple weeks either working on tea party prep, or studying for my exam retake, or down with a headache (yeah, that lasted three whole days, it was awesome) so I haven't been doing much stamping other than my weekly Nacho cards and Friday Flashback stuff...everything else has been using some draft posts I had (including today's post).  My other hobby has kinda fallen by the wayside too, which is cross stitching.

And today I'll show you how my stamping and stitching hobbies converge.  If you've ever checked out my other blog, you've most likely seen progress posts on my stitching projects (click here to see).  I'm currently working on four very large projects in rotation, so at the beginning of every month I switch to a different project.  I've got four floss cases, one for each project, plus two cases of shared colors, but I thought it would be nice to have labels for the individual project cases so I could tell them apart more easily.

I'd had the idea for a long time and finally made them last month, so there they are.  I just stamped the first letter of the name of each project and a small image that has something to do with the image I'm stitching.  So here's my February project's floss case now:

"Eilonwy" isn't the name of the pattern I bought from Scarlet Quince, it's the name I gave to the fairy in said pattern because "Take the Fair Face of Woman" was far too long and I like the name Eilonwy.  I got the name from Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain; Eilonwy is a princess born of a line of enchantresses who talks a lot and is always described as having red-gold hair.  The second book in the series was made into a Disney movie, The Black Cauldron, so now I've managed to knit together four of my hobbies in one post.  Yay me.

Have a great week, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Morning Post Alphabet, Rain or Shine, Papillon Potpourri, Best of Sale-a-Bration, Artistic Etchings
Ink:  lots of different ones, I'm not even gonna try to remember
Paper:  Whisper White
Accessories:  Deco Label Framelits