Butterfly Smiles for the Nachos

Howdy friends!  Are you ready for another awesome color challenge courtesy of Nacho Average Challenges?  I hope so, because here it is:

I thought these colors would be perfect for a little boy birthday card and then...I did something totally different instead : )

I went kinda CAS this week; it's hard to tell in the picture but there's a touch of Marina Mist ink on the little tiny spots along the outside edges of the butterflies' wings.  The butterflies were embossed with black EP for a nice crisp look (and also because then I don't have to worry about the black ink bleeding when I watercolor).

Stop by the Nacho blog to see what beautiful projects the rest of the design team has cooked up, and then give it a whirl yourself.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Best of Butterflies (only available until March 31!), Happy Day
Ink:  Versamark, Pumpkin Pie, Marina Mist, Wild Wasabi, Baked Brown Sugar (on the butterflies' bodies, if you were like "umm...where?")
Paper:  Whisper White, Marina Mist
Accessories:  Black EP, rhinestone

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

Friday Flashback: Best Blossoms

It's Friday Flashback time!  This week's randomly chosen retired stamp set is Best Blossoms, a Sale-a-Bration stamp set from several years ago (probably back when it was still called Sell-a-Bration).  I think that I tend to use the SAB stamp sets much less frequently than the main catalog ones, probably because they're current for such a short time, so today's Flashback is once again on the short side.

Horrible picture, it's very old.  So there's my one previous card with Best Blossoms, I kinda like how I did the color in the flower centers.  Here's my new one:

There's a larger flower in the set that I was trying to use around the punched-out sentiment, but I couldn't get it to work right so I went back to the trio of small flowers instead.

I turned to the latest challenge at Freshly Made Sketches for inspiration today:

And also the color challenge at Inkspirational, how could I resist when green and purple are my two favorite colors?

So that's it for me this week, folks.  I didn't study as much as I wanted to yesterday because I had a dog not feeling well and then I got a giant headache...little boy dog seems to be doing better today but my headache has stuck around.  Bleargh!

Hope y'all have a great weekend free of headaches and dogs who don't feel well.  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Best Blossoms
Ink:  Almost Amethyst, Pistachio Pudding, Concord Crush (stamped off once)
Paper:  Almost Amethyst, Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White, retired Concord Crush DSP
Accessories:  Deco Label punch, Dimensionals

Gumball Birthday Wishes

Just a quick birthday card to share today...

And now I'm back to studying.  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Happiest Birthday Wishes (retired)
Ink:  Gumball Green
Paper:  Smoky Slate, Whisper White, Winter Frost DSP, retired Gumball Green DSP
Accessories:  Gumball Green stitched satin ribbon

Okinawa Highlights

I spent a good chunk of the day yesterday working on tea party decorations with my two cohosts, I think this tea party is going to be really awesome :)  Fear not, I shall be posting our decorations on here in due course, but that's for later.

My friend (and tea party cohost) Jen asked to see some of my Okinawa scrapbooks yesterday, so with that on my mind I thought I'd share an Okinawa layout I did a while back.

The photos are from when hubs' parents visited us, so we did all the usual tourist stuff--Churaumi Aquarium, Peace Prayer Park, pedicures at Cocok's with the Silent K (just me and hubs' mom, not the boys, they went golfing), Cape Zampa lighthouse and Shuri Castle.  I have (or will have) separate layouts for all those locations elsewhere in our scrapbooks so I kept this one just a highlight reel.

Since I pretty much took Monday and Tuesday off from studying, I'd better get with it today.  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:
Stamps:  By the Tide
Ink:  Always Artichoke, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Marina Mist, Always Artichoke, Primrose Petals, Very Vanilla, Haiku DSP
Accessories:  Modern Label punch, old Sizzix alphabet

Teatime with the Nachos

Happy Tuesday!  Are you ready for another Nacho sketch challenge?  Here it is!

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned here that I'm planning an Alice in Wonderland-style Mad Hatter tea party for later this month (eek, still so much left to do!).  Last year I planned it all by my onesies but lucky for me this year I have two cohosts!  So I needed a couple of tea-riffic thank you cards.

Honestly I'm not sure I like Tempting Turquoise with Coastal Cabana...I know, usually greens and blues are like peanut butter and jelly, but...I don't know about this one.  Hmm.  Well, it was an older color challenge from Splitcoast.

Go check out the Nacho Average Challenges blog for more sketchy goodness and then show us what you've got.  In the meantime, I'll be drinking some tea while I study : )

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tea Party
Ink:  Early Espresso, Coastal Cabana, Crisp Cantaloupe, Tempting Turquoise
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Tempting Turquoise, Whisper White, Coastal Cabana DSP, Sweet Sorbet DSP
Accessories:  Oval & Windows Collection Framelits, Dimensionals

Copper Clockworks

Guess what?  Today for the first time in over a week, I'm sharing something that's not remotely floral.  I posted a Clockworks card a while back, and my mom liked it so much she asked me to make one for my uncle's birthday in colors to coordinate with something she made for him.  So here's what I did this time:

She said oranges & browns, but I have some old copper EP (long retired by SU!) and thought it would be great for the pocket watch, so I used the copper instead of any orange.  I used up a bit of my stash of Brushed Copper cardstock (love that stuff, wish it hadn't retired) and a few copper brads.  The inside of the card is lined with Very Vanilla and stamped with the gears like on the envelope.  Great thing about clear mount stamps--I put all three gears on one block and then just had to stamp twice instead of six times : )

Hope Mom likes my redo!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Clockworks, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Ink:  Early Espresso, Soft Suede, Versamark
Paper:  Early Espresso, Brushed Copper, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Copper EP, copper brads, Dimensionals