Happy Saturday, y'all, and welcome to the 46th Nancy Drew Challenge! Today Nancy is squaring off with The Invisible Intruder.
This cover reminds me of 99 Steps and Crossword Cipher in that it's largely brown/neutral tones, and once again Nancy is in her signature color of pale blue. This time we get Ned on the cover, which rarely happens, and we have a creepy backdrop of a stingray and some skulls. I like it. This is my childhood copy, I have my name written not once but twice inside the front cover.
Case file: Nancy's friend Helen (who last appeared in #20, The Clue in the Jewel Box, and I think this might be her final appearance) organizes a ghost-hunting road trip to investigate odd happenings at five different locations, including a phantom canoe, a medium, and a ghost horse, so this is basically five Scooby-Doo episodes in one volume. The book ends up at the home of an eccentric old man who collects rare shells and also human skulls, which is not my design aesthetic but rock on as long as the skulls and shells are ethically sourced, and Nancy captures the gang behind all of the haunts.
Here's my card:
We get some lectures on different kinds of shells over the course of the book, so I decided to pull out Stippled Shells for my first card. I chose River Rock, Pebbled Path, and Basic Beige for neutral colors and put it all on a Balmy Blue card base for Nancy's dress.
I had done a mosaic card with Stippled Shells a long time ago so I kind of started with that as a jumping off point for this card. Also, I made this one before the vintage traveler card I posted on Wednesday.
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Stippled Shells, Weathered, Stepping Stones
Ink: River Rock, Pebbled Path
Paper: Balmy Blue, River Rock, Pebbled Path, Thick Very Vanilla
Accessories: Layering Ovals Framelits, Dimensionals
And I have one more card:
The first location they road trip to has a self-propelling canoe, and while investigating it Nancy and Ned encounter a mechanical octopus which drags Ned away and that is straight out of a Scooby-Doo episode and it makes me laugh. So I had to make an octopus card, using Nancy's hair and dress for my colors since the rest of the cover is pretty blah.
I did keep Gray Granite as my main color here, which matches the stingray pretty well. I found my blue and gray patterns in the Otterly Adorable DSP, and I matted the Gray Granite pattern on some Gray Granite cardstock on which I colored the edges with a Blend marker to make it stand out against the Gray Granite card base, which is an easy way to get multiple values of a single color. You know what, I miss Mango Melody. It's a fun orange.
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Message in a Bottle
Ink: Gray Granite, Mango Melody, Gray Granite Stampin' Blend
Paper: Gray Granite, Thick Basic White, Otterly Adorable DSP
Accessories: Dimensionals, Sparkly Gems
Like The Scarlet Slipper Mystery, I think this one has too many characters as we have the regular Drew Crew (Nancy, Bess, George, Ned, Burt, and Dave), Helen and her husband, and three other couples whose names I could never remember and they're apparently only around so everyone can rag on the one married woman who believes in ESP and ghosts, which is unfortunate. We have some goofy Scooby-Doo inspired moments, not up to the utterly bananas hijinks of Brass-Bound Trunk or Moss-Covered Mansion, but the five mini mysteries and road trip setup are fun, so I give this one three and a half stars. If you're inspired to create a card based on this mystery, please leave me a comment below! And I'll see you next time when Nancy investigates The Mysterious Mannequin. Cheers!
