The Great Wall of China, Part 1

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Hope your weekend was good.  Ours was pretty quiet, other than going to see Captain America:  Civil War on Friday night--that was loud ;)  I love movies where stuff blows up.

Anyway, I bring to you today some scrapbook pages from our trip to China, which will make Missy very happy.

See the original pics here.  I printed out SO MANY pictures that I ended up doing FIVE layouts from our first time on the Great Wall (we went back a couple days later for the marathon, though we only walked the 5K no matter what the other three try to tell you) but I'm only sharing two of them today.

You might have noticed that we're all wearing our Baylor shirts in the pictures, so I wanted to use Baylor's colors for the pages.  Luckily for me, green and gold worked pretty well with our Great Wall photos :)  I've been hoarding Handsome Hunter and now I know why--well, after five layouts I don't have a ton of it left but this was definitely the place to use it.  I have a ton of 12x12 Summer Sun though.  Anyway, that dragon might seem like an odd choice for the focal point photo since it's not of the wall, but it was the very first picture we took when we arrived at the Great Wall and I kinda got used to seeing it first every time I flipped through the pictures so I just had to put it there.

And here's the second layout:  absolutely no finesse involved here, it was all about getting in a bunch of landscape shots and some journaling.  I still wanted the green and gold on there, so the journaling is written in Handsome Hunter ink and I sponged some Summer Sun around the edges of the journaling block.

My color combo for all five Great Wall layouts:  Handsome Hunter, Summer Sun, Crumb Cake, Chocolate Chip, and Very Vanilla.  I'm not a huge fan of Crumb Cake, even though there's lots of people out there who love it like crazy, so I was a little surprised when I liked it so much for these layouts.  I wish SU! still sold 12x12 cardstock in single-color packs...even if they did the 3-color variety packs to match patterned paper like they do in the 8.5x11 size I'd still take it.  I use some colors a lot more than others and it sucks to have to buy a combo pack to only get two sheets of what color I want when I already have 20 sheets of the other colors :p

Anywha, it's not raining right this minute (minor miracle) so I think I'll go take my doglets for a walk.  Good thing Sadie can't read what I'm typing or she'd be all up and excited and trying to shove me out the door already.  TTFN, peeps!

Supplies, first layout:
Stamps:  Rough Type, Timeless Textures, Symbols of Solicitude
Ink:  Crumb Cake, Handsome Hunter, Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Handsome Hunter, Chocolate Chip, Summer Sun, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Lettering template, circle punches

Supplies, second layout:
Stamps:  Circle Circus, Asian Art
Ink:  Crumb Cake, Handsome Hunter, Summer Sun
Paper:  Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Circle punches

A-Team Baby Book: May

So last weekend I forgot to do a baby book post on Saturday--didn't even think about it until Sunday so at that point I just decided to give it a skip and here we are today.  Get ready to see my hubs' favorite baby book pages of all time.

He, uh, really likes blue, so this blue-blue-green color combo makes him happy.

Clara was born in Texas, so what would be more appropriate than a Texas bluebonnet layout!  I love these stamps, they're from Deadbeat Designs.

The wee Texas stamp is from the same company; they have lots of Texas-themed stuff that's pretty cool.  I like it.

And some teeny bluebonnets for the journaling block :)

Color palette du jour:  Brilliant Blue (I'm almost out of 8.5x11 cardstock in this color, sadface), Wild Wasabi, Bashful Blue, and Whisper White.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps:  all stamps from Deadbeat Designs
Ink:  Brilliant Blue, Wild Wasabi, Basic Black
Paper:  Brilliant Blue, Wild Wasabi, Bashful Blue, PTI White, Brilliant Blue DSP
Accessories:  Sizzix alphabet, circle & scalloped circle punches, Prismacolor Pencils

Friday Flashback: Best of Sale-a-Bration

A rainy Friday morning to you, friends!  Seriously, I'm going to need a boat to get to the gym today, and my little girl dog is going to be very sad when she realizes we're not going for a walk in the wet.  But you're not here for a weather report, you're here for the Friday Flashback.  And today's stamp set is Best of Sale-a-Bration, which shoulda been called Best of Flowers Part 2 because every image but one is a flower.  I was a total lemming and bought all 12 of the Best Of sets a few years ago.

Also features Petal Parade, Four You

So the Best of Sale-a-Bration stamp on this card is the smaller red flower (and there's my favorite Fresh Prints of Bel Air paper!)

Also features Petal Parade, Banner Blast

Same stamp on here.  It was actually a smaller version of a flower in Petal Parade, which was a SAB offering that same year the Best Of stamp sets came out.

Also features Morning Post Alphabet, Rain or Shine, Papillon Potpourri, Artistic Etchings

And here's the labels I made for my cross stitch projects because I'm a dork :)  The flower stamp on the Quarry label is the Best of Sale-a-Bration stamp on here.  Each one of the images has something to do with the cross stitch picture I'm working on:  Rain Blossoms is a scene of people in kimonos with Japanese parasols walking across a bridge; Eilonwy is a fairy with a crown of butterflies; the Quarry is a sort of Impressionist scene with lots of bluebonnets; and the Accolade is a famous Pre-Raphaelite painting of a lady knighting a man who is kneeling before her.

But anyway.  That's it for the Flashback, here's the new card:

Heyyy, I managed to use one of the stamps in the set that hadn't been used before!  Woo.  I used this week's Create with Connie & Mary sketch challenge:

And the Color Throwdown:

I used Pretty in Pink (though it might have worked a little better with a more saturated shade), Bashful Blue, Tangelo Twist, and Peach Parfait.  I can't wait to get the new In Colors in my hot little hands next week--there's a new peach color but what has me really excited are the new green and blue and purple.  And there's a pink.  I'll bust 'em out next week.

That's it for now, y'all.  Have a great weekend and stay dry.

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Best of Sale-a-Bration, Perfectly Penned
Ink:  Basic Gray, Pretty in Pink, Peach Parfait, Tangelo Twist
Paper:  Peach Parfait, Tangelo Twist, Thick Whisper White, Bashful Blue DSP
Accessories:  Lots of Labels Framelits, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella glitter pen

Greetings from the Starfish

Happy Thursday, y'all.  And it *is* happy because my card today is much better than yesterday's train wreck.

I don't know what was up yesterday but at least whatever it was is gone now.  So for today's card, I started out with this color combo from Fab Friday:

I probably wouldn't have put Soft Sky together with Lost Lagoon, but then again I'm still kinda mad at Soft Sky for taking Baja Breeze's place in the color lineup.  But anyway, I thought those colors would make for a nice beachy sort of card.

I also used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

In retrospect I could have made my main panel a little smaller to more closely follow the sketch, but I was using a card base I'd started for something else and had some stamped words on it that I had to cover up.  Waste not!

And because I didn't mention it yesterday...

MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU.  And also happy Cinco de Mayo, let's go eat tacos.  Ole!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Picture Perfect, Timeless Textures
Ink:  Soft Sky, Lost Lagoon, Crumb Cake, Hello Honey
Paper:  Soft Sky, Lost Lagoon, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Pearl

Well, That Was Unexpected

Ya know, art is unpredictable.  Today's card is the poster child for "well, I didn't expect that but let's just roll with it".  But first, I show you the two challenges that I used, starting with the Global Design Project sketch:

And then adding the Just Add Ink inspiration photo:

Add a heaping helping of things not working out as expected, and this is what happens:

Okay, so, I started out with my favorite technique of scribbling on an acrylic block with a marker, misting, and stamping it (I really need to come up with a short name for that) and that's when it started:  I haven't cleaned my acrylic blocks in a while (you really should wash them once a month or so), so I got some light Pool Party ink on the interior of the block, but the outside of it was kind of pinkish from Stampin' Scrub residue.  But I thought ehh, I'm already using Blushing Bride, so that kind of works.

Then I stamped the chevrons from Work of Art, and after I did that I thought really, I should have stamped them off first.  Oh well, let's keep going.

I had been planning on stamping a different sentiment on there, but the chevrons turned into such attention-stealing brats that I switched gears and went with the Larger Than Life Alphabet.  Which was fine, up until...the gold embossing powder.

So I wanted just a little bit of speckly accents in gold in the lower left and upper right corners, and I just barely tapped the Gorgeous Grunge splats on the card front.  So far so good.  Only after I dumped on all the embossing powder did I realize that my super-ridiculously-juicy Calypso Coral ink pad meant that the ink on the letters wasn't really dry yet, so all the EP stuck.  But it looked kind of interesting, so I heat embossed it and decided to roll with it anyway.

So there is my "how'd that happen?" card.  I'm hoping my next project is a little more predictable :p

Cheers, yo.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Larger Than Life Alphabet, Gorgeous Grunge, Work of Art
Ink:  Pool Party, Blushing Bride, Calypso Coral, Versamark
Paper:  Blushing Bride, Calypso Coral, Shimmery White
Accessories:  Gold EP

Corfu: Achilleion Palace

Scrappy Monday on a Tuesday, y'all.  It's been raining so much lately that I think we're gonna need a boat by the end of the week, so let's focus on a nice sunny scrapbook layout for today mmkay?

When we went on our Med cruise a few years ago, Corfu was our very first port in Greece (see all the pics here and here).  Achilleion Palace is a place where Empress Sissi of Austria-Hungary used to vacation a lot to get away from the stultifying royal court, and it's themed after Achilles from Greek myth.

And there's a closeup of my title.  I think it was raining the day I took these pictures too because that looks kinda dark and dingy.  Anywha, favorite things to take pictures of at the palace were the statues of the Nine Muses flanking a large patio thing.  Hey, maybe it's called a portico.  I could have made that up.

I've scrapped quite a bit of our Med cruise already, and I try to do just one layout per port but I had SO many pictures I liked from Corfu that I had to do a second layout. 

Today's color palette:  Delightful Dijon, So Saffron, Watermelon Wonder, Cherry Cobbler (I finally got a new Cherry Cobbler ink pad to replace the one with the Dreaded Gold Sheen!), Whisper White, and Basic Gray.  No one was more surprised than I when I chose the Delightful Dijon for my first page base--I like the lighter yellows, like So Saffron and Daffodil Delight, for page bases but this time Delightful Dijon looked pretty good to my eyes.  I used the same colors on the second layout, just switched out the background color for Watermelon Wonder.  At first I was going to use some green on here, but there was so much green in the photos that it seemed like overkill.

Well, that's it for me today y'all.  I've got some packages to mail and a book to buy (the new Rick Riordan book is out today!) and some cookies to make for the hubs to take in to work tomorrow.  How come it is that when I make cookies, HE gets more popular?  Ha!  Cheers, y'all.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Empire Alphabet Upper, Calendar Alphabet & Numbers, Painted Posies
Ink:  Cherry Cobbler, Delightful Dijon, Watermelon Wonder, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Delightful Dijon, Watermelon Wonder, Cherry Cobbler, Whisper White, Lovely Flowers DSP
Accessories:  None

Guest Designer

Guess what?  Today I get to be a guest designer over at What Will You Stamp? because I won their challenge a couple weeks ago :)

Winner winner chicken dinner!  And luckily I had the stamp set to play along in this week's challenge, which is Flower Patch:

Actually I use this one pretty frequently.  Who doesn't love big, bold flower stamps that have matching dies?  So here's what I made:

This was actually the second iteration; on the first card, I got the flowers up too high and the card looked unbalanced, but I'd already glued everything down so I had to make a whole 'nother one.  But this one looks much better and more balanced to my eye.  I was walking with my dogs last week and noticed a whole lot of yards have azaleas blooming (I think they're azaleas?) and they're in all kinds of different shades of pink, so that was the inspiration for my flowers.  On that one in the middle (on the bottom), the center might look orange but really I had stamped the Daffodil Delight flower, and then stamped off with Watermelon Wonder ink before I stamped the flower center and it turned out looking kinda orange.  Which is okay.  I used the sentiment from All Boxed Up because I love that set, I think it's adorable (and cheap!) and I'm a little sad it's retiring.

So that's it for me today!  If you missed Scrappy Monday, fear not--this week it will just be Scrappy Tuesday :)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Flower Patch, All Boxed Up
Ink:  Cucumber Crush, Watermelon Wonder, Daffodil Delight
Paper:  Thick Whisper White, Cherry on Top DSP Stack
Accessories:  Flower Fair Framelits