City Walls Bike Ride, Part 1

China Sunday again already!  Finally got the mouse recharged and the hubs is supervising bath time for the kiddo so I can write this :)

Our first activity in Xi'an was an eight-mile ride around the city walls on a bicycle built for two (pictures here).  Like LA, Xi'an is set in a bit of a hollow so air pollution tends to be an issue there; you can see all the haze some of the pictures.  Also if you look closely, you'll see that my seat on the bicycle was set way too low (I didn't realize how low at the time) so the day after we did this my knees were absolutely not happy with me.

Today's color palette includes Groovy Guava, which was a long-ago In Color, Ruby Red, Certainly Celery, Night of Navy, and Whisper White.  We took a lot of pictures during the bike ride so I'll share more scrapbook pages from this next week.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Rough Type, Circle Circus
Ink:  Night of Navy, Certainly Celery
Paper:  Groovy Guava, Night of Navy, Certainly Celery, Whisper White, Ginger Blossom DSP
Accessories:  circle punches

So Ready for Fall

Okay y'all, it still feels like a swamp where I live, but I'm keeping hope alive that temperatures will drop to something comfortable and I won't mind the 9000% humidity as much when it's not also 95 degrees.  I'm so ready for fall, y'all.

The good news is that my craft room is actually pretty chilly a lot of the time, so at least it feels like fall when I'm in there :)  So I made a fall card to share today.

I need to bust out Rooted in Nature more often.  I made this right before the hubs and I took the kiddo out to get dinner last night so I kept it pretty quick and simple, which I was able to do thanks to the Fall-To Layout I used:

It took me no time at all to choose colors for my card; I love the way Grapefruit Grove (the patterned paper strip) plays with Cajun Craze, and Mint Macaron plays well with almost everybody.  I was glad of a reason to use that big cross section stamp even if I did cover up over half of it with my leaves ;)  Actually I had to stamp the cross section and the leaves twice; some of my ink pads are still overly saturated so my first try looked like this:

You can't see nearly as much detail on these pieces, particularly the cross section and the Cajun Craze leaf.  For the cross section, what worked better for me was to ink up the stamp as usual and then use a sponge to take off a bit of the excess ink.  The Cajun Craze ink pad was SO juicy that I used a sponge to ink up the stamp rather than pressing the stamp into the ink pad at all.  I did the Mint Macaron leaf the same way I did the cross section, ink up then sponge off.  I love my sponges, but SU! changed theirs a few years ago to where they have sharp edges rather than tapering and I don't like them nearly as much.  I need to check out a craft store and see if they have any of the type of sponges that I like.

Anyway, y'all have a great weekend.  I just had to make a card for today since I missed posting on Thursday...I hope Ryan isn't trying to stop naptime altogether.  I am NOT ready for that!

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Rooted in Nature
Ink:  Crumb Cake, Cajun Craze, Mint Macaron, Early Espresso
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Thick Whisper White, Nature's Poem DSP
Accessories:  Nature's Roots Framelits, Dimensionals

Primary Colors

Happy Friday, y'all!  Man, Ryan must have it in for his mama--on Wednesday he screamed for an hour when I put him down for his nap.  Finally fell asleep an then 45 minutes later a noisy motorcycle woke him up and he started screaming again.  That's why no card yesterday.  Then yesterday he didn't want to sleep but mostly he just bounced around in his crib and sang to himself, so I just left him in there for some quiet time and finally got a card made!

Yup, those are some primary colors right there.  I'll get to that in a minute.  First up is this week's What Will You Stamp? challenge:

Turns out that Oh So Eclectic was the only stamp set I needed to make this card!  All the images, the background bit, and the sentiment are from this one stamp set.  Handy.

Next up is this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

I don't care much for making square cards, so I modified the sketch to a standard A2 size.

Finally, check out the Color Throwdown:

I used Poppy Parade, Pumpkin Pie, and Pacific Point.  Today's blog post is brought to you by the letter P.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Oh So Eclectic
Ink:  Poppy Parade, Pumpkin Pie, Pacific Point
Paper:  Pacific Point, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Eclectic Layers Thinlits, Stitched Shapes Framelits, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella because it's never not a good idea for a bit of sparkle

Country Lane Daisies

Hey y'all!  Happy Wednesday!  Are you thrown off this week after having a Monday holiday?  My hubs was off for four days in a row so it's like we had two weekends here.  Not that I'm complaining.

I'm so ready for some fall weather here, yo.  It was in the 90s and 8 billion percent humidity yesterday.  My husband loves the summertime and I'm just like UGH it's trying to kill me.  Fall is obviously the best season.

The inspiration for today's card was courtesy of the photo at Fusion:

Which I paired with the Global Design Project sketch:

I made my main image panel a bit too wide, so I had to slightly edit the rest of the sketch to accommodate because I didn't want to start over :D. I wish I had some buttons or something to put on that little tabby bit on the upper left of the main image panel...I needed some Espresso up there so I ended up using a retired Candy Dot (I miss those!!) because it just HAD to have some Early Espresso up near the top or it looked unbalanced.

Have a great day, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Painted Harvest, Tropical Chic
Ink:  Whisper White, Granny Apple Green, Crushed Curry, Early Espresso
Paper:  Sahara Sand, Crushed Curry, Country Lane DSP
Accessories:  retired Candy Dot, white EP, Dimensionals, linen thread

The Greatest Octopus

Hey kids!  Are you having trouble getting up and moving after the long weekend?  I only missed working out yesterday but I feel like I missed more than that.  Probably has something to do with the iced pumpkin coffee cake I made for breakfast on Sunday.  Ha!

It's been a little while since I made a card with this octopus and I am still totally stuck on what to name him/her.  Any suggestions?  I mean, as this card says, this is the GREATEST octopus.

Say hello to the Inkspire Me color challenge:

I think this is the first time I've seen Gorgeous Grape crop up on a color challenge and I am HERE for it!  Actually all three of these colors are new as of this summer's color revamp.  Balmy Blue and I are very good friends, and I used Soft Sea Foam on a recent scrapbook layout.

Here's the latest sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch:

Pretty cool, huh.

Okay, I'm gonna go feed everyone breakfast and then Ryan and I are gym-bound.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Sea of Textures, Magical Mermaid, Tropical Chic
Ink:  Soft Sea Foam, Balmy Blue, Gorgeous Grape
Paper:  Soft Sea Foam, Balmy Blue, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Under the Sea Framelits, Dimensionals

Holyhead

Mornin', y'all.  I'm extra sleepy this morning and the dogs are uncooperative and Ryan just flipped his lid because he spilled Vader's food all over the floor and my hubs put Ryan in his playard to clean up dog food and Ryan thought that was Not Acceptable.  So ya know, it's a Monday morning here.  But I still have a layout to share!

This layout is from our road trip through Wales; see the original pictures here.  I really like how this layout turned out, though I did have to completely redo the yellow strip on the right where the title is.  I'd started out with a different flower on it and I just didn't like it, so I did it over.

Today's color palette includes lots of retired colors:  Elegant Eggplant (it's purple, even if it looks black on the computer screen), Regal Rose, Rose Red, So Saffron (not retired), Lucky Limeade, and Whisper White (also not retired, because why would we retire WHITE).  Anyway, my colors were inspired by the pretty flowers in front of the church and I love them.

I'm going to go find myself something for breakfast and hopefully start waking up a bit more.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Jayne's Type Alphabet, Painted Petals
Ink:  Elegant Eggplant, Rose Red, Lucky Limeade, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Elegant Eggplant, Rose Red, Lucky Limeade, Sweet & Sour Specialty DSP, Lovely Flowers DSP
Accessories:  None

China: Sofitel

Mornin', y'all!  Once again, it's China Sunday and today we start the scrapbook pages from Xi'an.

Once again, these pictures of our hotel rooms are courtesy of Missy.  This was a five star PLUS hotel and definitely the nicest one I've ever stayed in, though Bennet and Missy had a room with a wall of mirrors that was next door to a maintenance room or something so that was kind of creepy (somebody's watching meeeee!).  We also had some laundry done while we were here, and the clean laundry was delivered in a very fancy basket and wrapped up all pretty.

I busted out a real old favorite here--Baroque Motifs!  Man I loved that stamp set.

Today's color palette includes Fresh Fig, Baja Breeze, Baked Brown Sugar, and Very Vanilla.  Three of those colors sound like part of a dessert recipe and the fourth sounds like it could be some kind of mixed drink, don't you think?

Well, since it is now officially September, I'm going to go make a pumpkin spice coffee cake for breakfast.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, mostly SU!
Stamps:  Baroque Motifs
Ink:  Fresh Fig, Baja Breeze, Early Espresso marker
Paper:  Fresh Fig, Baked Brown Sugar, Very Vanilla, Baja Breeze DSP
Accessories:  Lettering template