Les Fleurs En Francais

Mornin', y'all!  My card today is a bit of a blast from the past.

For some reason, Field Flowers has been on my mind this week so I decided to ink it up for today's triple challenge creation.  I used the colors from CAS Colours & Sketches:

I managed to get some nice depth of color by stamping off some, stamping some things twice, and using sponges, all with just those three ink pad colors.  And the flower has been Wink of Stella'd, though you can't tell from the picture; I added the rhinestones for a bit more sparkle.

Add in the sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch:

I had already decided to use Field Flowers when I saw the Just Add Ink challenge, so obviously it was meant to be:

Lots of Fs on this card:  it's Field Flowers on a French background for a Friday Flashback! :)

Have a great Friday, y'all.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Field Flowers, En Francais, Carte Postale
Ink:  Pear Pizzazz, Pool Party, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Pear Pizzazz, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Stitched Nested Labels Dies, Stitched Shapes Dies, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella, Rhinestones

Friday Flashback: Joyful Christmas

Happy Friday, y'all!  And it IS a happy Friday:  my craft room is clean.  I feel so much better now :D  I cleaned up my stampy area yesterday and this morning I mopped up all the doggy paws on the floor and it looks great and I can't wait to get in there and mess it up again as I create something new.  Only without the doggy paw prints, I'm okay if it doesn't rain for a while.

Anyway, it's time for the Friday Flashback!  Ya know, sometimes I come across a stamp set that I just really like and I can't believe that I haven't used it more.  And I think that happens more with seasonal stamp sets because I, for one, don't make Christmas cards year-round.  But anyway, today's retired stamp set is Joyful Christmas.

ACK!  I love that poinsettia.  The grocery store here (how I love Wegmans!) has some special dyed poinsettias that are, I kid you not, royal blue.  So, so pretty.

Also features En Francais

This Wedgewood-inspired card is one of my favoritest creations ever, I just love it.  I embossed the poinsettia with white EP, and then I watercolored it with white ink.  It took quite a lot of time but I just loved how it turned out.

And that is all I had in my archives for Joyful Christmas, which is a shame because I love love love that poinsettia.  So here's my new creation:

TBH, this is my least favorite of the three cards.  Maybe I'd like it better if I had used Calypso Coral for the card base and then embossed the sentiment in white, I don't know.  I do like the color combination, it *can* be Christmasy with some creativity but it doesn't have to be, thank you ColourQ:

And I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

Okay, kids.  I need to go vacuum the rest of the house and then get going to the post office and the store.  Maybe I'll snap a pic of those royal blue poinsettias for you.  Cheers!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Joyful Christmas
Ink:  Blush Blossom, Calypso Coral
Paper:  Blush Blossom, Calypso Coral, Shimmery White, Gold Foil, Coastal Cabana DSP
Accessories:  Scallop edge punch, Dimensionals, Gold Glitz Dazzling Details

Friday Flashback: En Francais

Happy Friday, friends, and welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  This week's randomly chosen retired stamp set is En Francais, and it just might be one of my most-used background stamps.  Even with picking and choosing just some favorite projects from the archives to share today, this is gonna be a long flashback...let's go!

Also features Artistic Etchings, Circle Circus, I {Love} Love Wheel

It's only natural to pair En Francais with the Eiffel Tower from Artistic Etchings...I did that quite a few times actually, but I picked these to share today because I like the collage effect.

Also features Carte Postale

Here's another French-inspired creation with a fleur de lis.

Also features Baroque Motifs, All Holidays

En Francais also makes some pretty Christmas cards.  I like how this one has the traditional red and green but also Elegant Eggplant for something different.  And I made this card before I learned how to tie pretty knots :)

Also features Illuminations, Bella's Border wheel

I *love* the stamp set Illuminations, love love love it.  This was for one of those annoying all-neutral color challenges.

Also features Stippled Blossoms, Christmas Messages

 Another Christmas card, this one of a more recent vintage.

Also features Joyful Christmas

And this is one of my favorite cards ever.  I love the white watercolored poinsettias.

Also features Stem Silhouettes, Print Pattern, Sincere Salutations

One more less-traditional Christmas card.

Also features Pretty Peony, Lovely Letters Alphabet

And a pretty monogram.

Also features Simply Sketched

This one is a little bit different with the script stamped in such a dark color, so it's a bolder element than most of the cards on this post but I still thought it worked well for a sympathy card.

Also features Perfectly Penned, Flower Shop

You can just see the script stamped in white on the background squares.  And that's all I'm sharing from the archives, which is maybe half the cards o.0  Ready for a new creation?

It's Friday Flashback day and I still got to play with my brand-new Watercolor Wings :D  For the white squares, I pressed an acrylic block into my Whisper White ink pad and used it like a stamp--it came out with more ink around the edges and less in the middle without me even trying, which was great since that's what I wanted it to do.  I used three different stamps to make the butterfly (actually four, counting the antennae), but I ended up having to cut it out by hand because where I stamped the butterfly body didn't jive with the matching Framelit.  Note for next time:  cut out the butterfly and stamp the body on afterward.  That baker's twine bow was a pain too, it took four tries to get something that looked halfway decent.

But anyway!  I used this week's ColourQ colors:

I kinda thought that they shouldn't work together, but I did really like them when I had all five laid out on my stamp table.  I also used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And that's it for me this week.  Hope you have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  En Francais, Watercolor Wings, Vintage Verses
Ink:  Summer Starfruit, Concord Crush, Pale Plum, Coastal Cabana, Whisper White
Paper:  Summer Starfruit, Whisper White
Accessories:  white baker's twine, Dimensionals

Celebrate Today

Today we're celebrating Perfectly Penned (sniffle!) and En Francais, which are both on the retiring list.

Actually, the Flower Shop bundle (stamp set plus matching punch) is on the list too, but only because they won't be available bundled together in the new catalog; you'll still be able to get them separately.  That larger flower punch is retiring altogether, though.

I used the sketch from Create with Connie and Mary for my card:

Looks like I missed a layer.  Oops.  This card also counts for the SUO Challenge to use flowers, no cheating on that one : )  I also used the new color challenge from ColourQ:

There should be more color challenges with Elegant Eggplant.  And also Garden Green, because it's my favorite green but it's never on color challenges (or DSP) so I'm kinda scared that SU! is going to retire it and I'm still sad that Baja Breeze is gone.  Problems, y'all.

Thanks for stopping by today and cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Perfectly Penned, Flower Shop, En Francais
Ink:  Elegant Eggplant, Daffodil Delight, Whisper White
Paper:  Pear Pizzazz, Elegant Eggplant, Crumb Cake, Whisper White
Accessories:  Fancy Flower punch (retiring), Pansy punch (not retiring), Hexagon punch (to do the end of the banner, also not retiring), linen thread, retired Elegant Eggplant button

Soft Wisteria Rose

Salutations and greetings!  I have been a busy little bee and having a wonderful time in my craft room lately.  In one day, I created a scrapbook layout, did the journaling on three others, and made two cards.  Pretty dang productive, says I!  And here is one of those cards.

I used a recent sketch from Splitcoast...I won't lie, I thought it was too complicated to start with (believe it or not, I left out a layer) but I do like how this turned out.  I think I might be addicted to Banner Greetings lately too, but hey, we *know* that one's going to retire so I might as well use it now, right?  I also used this week's colors from Dynamic Duos:

They'd be good Easter colors too, but at this point I couldn't mail out Easter cards and have them arrive on time, so I went with this.  I'm thinking it might be a Mother's Day card, that "Thankful for you" sentiment works for Mother's Day, right?  The only problem is my mom reads this blog, so maybe I'll have to make another Mother's Day card and keep it secret.  Or maybe she'll forget this one by the time she gets it in the mail...

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Stippled Blossoms, Banner Greetings, En Francais
Ink:  Wisteria Wonder, So Saffron
Paper:  Wisteria Wonder, So Saffron, Smoky Slate, Whisper White, Watercolor Wonder DSP
Accessories:  Circles Framelits, Wisteria Wonder baker's twine (that color is retired, but you could use plain white), Dimensionals

Sending Good Thoughts

I think we'll just continue on with Flower Week because it sounds like fun and we've had some lovely, sunny, and dare I say springlike weather here in England of late (though it rained this morning).  So here's a floral card I made a while back:

I'm really glad that Strawberry Slush, Pistachio Pudding, and Baked Brown Sugar will be around for another year, they're beautiful colors.  (That's not to say I won't miss some of the colors that will retire this summer, like Gumball Green and Raspberry Ripple...I like the other three soon-to-retire In Colors too.)

My computer is being ridiculously slow so I'mma cut this short.  Thanks for stopping by today! 

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Too Kind, En Francais
Ink:  Strawberry Slush, Pistachio Pudding, Baked Brown Sugar
Paper:  Strawberry Slush, Pistachio Pudding, Baked Brown Sugar, Whisper White, Venetian Romance DSP
Accessories:  Fancy Fan EF, Dimensionals

Favorites Showcase 2013, Part 2

2013 is almost over, so here we are with the second half of the 2013 favorites showcase.  Let's go!

Here's one of my picks for July, I love this card.  Always good to have some masculine cards on hand.

My second July pick; July is when I really started to get back into scrapbooking and had loads of fun with it.  I can't wait to dive back in once my exam is over on January 13th!

Here's another scrappy pick for August, from when hubs' truck got squished almost 10 years ago.  It wasn't fun at the time, but I get a kick out of looking at this layout now.  The title makes me giggle every time.

My choice for September was this awesome leafy card, I love those colors together!

Another scrappy layout for October with lots of blues for my mama!

Another great color combo for November's card, love the aquas and purple together.

And we'll finish it up with my favorite December card, this Wedgwood-inspired poinsettia creation.  Once again, I've linked up the original posts for each card or scrapbook layout if you want to see more.  Tomorrow is Nacho Average Challenges day and then we're in to 2014!  Seems like I just got used to writing 2013...

Friday Flashback: Watercolor Winter

Happy Friday!  Are you ready for another festive Friday Flashback?  Today's featured stamp set is last year's Watercolor Winter, which I wish had carried over to this year because I really like it.  I suppose that doesn't matter though since I can still use it : )  So let's flash back!

The fun part about stamps is you can make things any color you want, so in my world, there are blue poinsettias.  This was a birthday card for a friend of mine last year, the same one who got the hedgehog snowman card from earlier this week.

I think this one might be my favorite of the flashback cards for today; I like the CAS layout and the little pops of pink.

And this is probably my least favorite one...it was a combination SCS sketch/color challenge card and I think I was just trying too hard.  Bleah.

I kinda like the layout on this one, which was another sketch I'm sure.  I almost always do sketch challenges for my cards, but I branch out a fair amount on my color combos.

This was my attempt to make a Watercolor Winter card *without* using the poinsettia stamp : )  So that's it for the cards from the vault, here's my brand new creation:

The layout is courtesy of Retro Sketches and the color combo was from an SCS challenge a few weeks ago.  I was prepared to hate Cameo Coral paired with Real Red, but when I stamped off the coral once and then layered the Real Red over it, I kinda liked how it turned out.  But I think if I'd used any more coral on here then I wouldn't like it as much; I kept the traditional red for my card base and then balanced it with lots of neutrals.

Here's the sketch, which for once I think I followed it pretty closely!

So that's it for me today.  I haven't decided yet if I'll do another Christmas-themed Friday Flashback next week since Christmas Day will be in the middle of the week, hmm.  I don't need any more Christmas cards this year, but I will need some post-Christmas thank you cards...

Have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Watercolor Winter, Petite Pairs
Ink:  Real Red, Cameo Coral, Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White Craft
Paper:  Real Red, Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake, Whisper White, retired Old Olive & Chocolate Chip DSP
Accessories:  Dazzling Details (on the flower center, though somehow I ended up with clear glue and not much glitter), Apothecary Accents Framelits (probably my favorite set of Framelits ever), corner rounder punch, Dimensionals

Joyful Christmas Wedgwood

I'm finally back in my craft room again making some new projects so yay!  I'm pretty excited about how today's card turned out.  Take a looksie:

In October when the hubs and I went to Liverpool for the weekend, we stopped by the Wedgwood factory on the way there.  Now, when I think Wedgwood, I think of the blue ceramic with white designs on it, so I was surprised (and I won't lie, more than a little disappointed) to find out that the factory nowadays does mostly china and very little jasperware (which is what that style is actually called).  Oh sure, the museum was pretty interesting, and they had lots of china and jasperware on display (and the jasper comes in green, purple, and black too), but not much of the jasper was available to buy.  Wahh.

So anyway, that jasperware is where I got the idea for today's card.  I embossed the Joyful Christmas poinsettia with white EP and then watercolored it with watered-down Whisper White ink refill.  It was hard to get the right consistency, and the ink kept sinking to the bottom so I had to stir it up frequently with my Aquapainter, but I do like how it turned out in the end.  Actually it's still wet; I painted the flowers after I already had it adhered to the card base.  Painting the flowers was a bit time-consuming so I wouldn't do this for mass production, but I will totally keep this idea in mind for some scrapbook pages in the future.

I got the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches:

And that's it!  I hope this card dries pretty soon here because I've got a package ready to go and I want to send this card along with the Christmas present.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!

Stamps:  Joyful Christmas, En Francais

Ink:  Pear Pizzazz, Versamark, Whisper White Craft ink refill

Paper:  Pear Pizzazz, Marina Mist, Wisteria Wonder, Whisper White

Accessories:  Apothecary Accents Framelits, White EP, Dimensionals

Christmas Rose

Honestly, I don't want to think about making Christmas cards yet; I'm having too much fun with fall cards.  But last week's SCS color challenge was definitely Christmasy so here it is anyway.

Dude, I think that picture is practically life-sized.  I'd stamped a couple roses tone-on-tone with Cherry Cobbler ink when I thought hey, I wonder how this would look with the 2-step stamping done with gold EP?  So here's the answer, and I still have a pair of cherry-red roses waiting for the next project to come along.

The sketch is courtesy of the folks over at Freshly Made Sketches, I love sketches like these with lots of room for the imagination.

So there you have it, an early Christmas card.  Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Stippled Blossoms, En Francais, Christmas Messages
Ink:  Sahara Sand, Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler, Early Espresso, VersaMark
Paper:  Sahara Sand, Early Espresso, Very Vanilla, Season of Style DSP
Accessories:  Gold EP, Dimensionals

Nachos: With Sympathy

It's time for another fabulous Nacho challenge, and this week it's a lovely sketch:

Lots of possibilities for this sketch, but for today I opted to go with a simple sympathy card.

I don't need any sympathy cards right now but it's always good to have a few in your card cache I think.  Instead of the bow on the sketch, I used three Old Olive Candy Dots to separate the bird image and the sentiment.  Then all I needed was a bit of sponging and I was done.

So now let's see what you can do with the sketch.  Join in the fun at the Nacho Average Challenges blog!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Simply Sketched, En Francais
Ink:  Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake, Old Olive
Paper:  Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake, Old Olive, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Brights Candy Dots

Friday Flashback: Grateful Greetings

Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  Today's randomly chosen featured stamp set is Grateful Greetings, which has lots of great sentiments for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine's Day.  Just so happens that I have cards for all four of those holidays today!

How do you like this Parisian Valentine?  (I still just like the word Parisian, it's fun to say.)

One of these was up on the blog last month when I did the Falling Leaves Friday Flashback, so I thought I'd show you the two different versions I'd made of this card.

These were the Christmas cards we sent out the last year that we lived in Japan.

And for today's brand-new card:

Toldja I'd do another Halloween card.  The only problem I had while making this was that I'd picked out a sketch to use, but my main image panel ended up being too large and in charge to work with the sketch, so I kinda just went with this layout based on some DSP scraps I had (yay for using up more scraps).  Weirdly, it's almost identical to the Parisian Valentine card, and I didn't even look at that one before I made this one.  Regardless, I rather like the layout, what do you think?  I think I know who to send this one to.

The jack-o-lanterns' faces are stamped in craft Basic Black and embossed with Iridescent Ice EP, which looks really fun IRL but is kinda hard to capture in a photo.  Well, you can kinda see the sparkle, but it's better in person.  This was the first time I'd used my craft ink pad in quite a while and it looked like the Exxon Valdes in there--I think I re-inked it last time and it's now really, really messy.  Oops.

Anywha, I used the brand new color challenge over at Fab Friday:

Great Halloween colors, don'tcha think.  I like a good purple in the mix for Halloween.  Thanks for stopping by for today's Friday Flashback, have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only, all SU!
Stamps:  Carved & Candlelit, Grateful Greetings (both retired)
Ink:  Tangerine Tango, Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive, Basic Black craft
Paper:  Rich Razzleberry, Basic Black, Whisper White, scraps of Howlstooth & Scaringbone and Cast-a-Spell DSP (both retired)
Accessories:  Iridescent Ice EP