Elegant Hydrangea

Mornin' y'all and happy Friday!  I've been working in my craft room, but still focusing on scrapbook pages, so I've made just one card this week.

I was inspired by the Color Throwdown challenge to pull out these elegant colors!

I used Night of Navy, Pretty Peacock, and Crushed Curry for my colors.  I stamped off once for the Pretty Peacock leaves or else I think they would have overpowered the Crushed Curry hydrangea.  Which reminds me, I need to re-ink my Crushed Curry and Night of Navy ink pads.

I also used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

I traced a dinner plate and just cut with scissors to get the curve.

I chose the birthday sentiment so this would fit with the Global Design Project theme challenge:

And as luck would have it, Just Add Ink is doing the same theme!

I like the picture on their graphic, maybe I'll make time this weekend to make a card using the picture as inspiration.

Hope you have a great weekend, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Beautiful Friendship, Seaside Notions
Ink:  Crushed Curry, Night of Navy, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Night of Navy, Shimmery White, Pretty Peacock DSP
Accessories:  rhinestones

Holyrood Palace & Abbey

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Wow, did we have a humdinger of a storm come through in the wee hours of this morning.  I was afraid that Ryan would start crying with all the thunder and wind, but he either slept through it or didn't get scared, so yay!  I was still up early this morning and got in a workout and a bit of cross stitching before anyone else got up.  Oh!  I also did some work on photo organization yesterday so woo on that!

For today's scrapbook offering, I have two more layouts from Edinburgh.  I think these are the last two layouts for that 2012 trip.

See the original pictures here.  I broke out some textured Pale Plum for my page bases, I love it.  I don't have a lot of that Enchante' DSP so I'm trying to make the most of it.  When I do pages from castles or abbeys or whatnot, it's usually a lot of gray in the pictures, so I can play around with all kinds of colors because gray is a neutral and goes with everything.  Except brown.  I don't like gray and brown together.

For example, see the floral pattern on the right page?  It looks like it would be one solid block under the pictures, right?  Nope.  I only had a little bit of it left so I cut creatively so it would show where I want it, but it's scraps under the pictures.  I also used a full sheet of that striped pattern between the two layouts.  Not like I don't have an enormous patterned paper collection.

Today's color palette is straight out of the DSP:  Pale Plum, Perfect Plum, Certainly Celery, Sage Shadow, and Very Vanilla.  All of the colors are retired except the Vanilla.  I wouldn't put the two greens together on my own, but they do seem to work here in combination with the purples.

Hope you have a great week, y'all.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet Upper & Lower, Rough Edges Alphabet, Carte Postale, Angelic
Ink:  Perfect Plum, Certainly Celery, Pale Plum, Basic Gray Marker
Paper:  Pale Plum, Perfect Plum, Certainly Celery, Thick Very Vanilla, Enchante' DSP
Accessories:  None

And Now a Baby Ewok

Hey hey hey it's Friday!  Hope your week is going well.

I said yesterday that I needed two baby shower cards this week, so here is the second one:

Oooh non-SU stamp on this one! I'm going to a baby shower tomorrow for a gal who loves Star Wars about as much as I do.  I got this Ewok stamp set to use in my future nephew's baby book and of course I had to use it for this card too :)  I used the same congratulations stamp as yesterday because it was already out on my table so that was convenient.

Here's the Global Design Project sketch I used:

And the color palette from Color Throwdown:

I used Crumb Cake for the card base, Soft Suede for the Ewok, and Old Olive for my green.  I pulled out some retired epoxy dots for a touch of gold in the upper left corner to help balance out the Ewok and sentiment on the right.  Very quick card, but since I'm a naptime crafter, I have to be fast!

Hope you have a great Friday, y'all.  Cheers!

Supplies:

Stamps:  First Frost, Confetti, Furball stamp set from The Ink Road
Ink:  Soft Suede, Old Olive, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Old Olive, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  gold epoxy drops, Dimensionals

Wee Baby Panda

Mornin' y'all!  I have been hard at work on my scrapbooks lately but yesterday I sat down and made cards for two upcoming baby showers.  So up first is the one I made for my sister-in-law, whose little boy is due on my kid's 3rd birthday :)

My brother used to collect panda stuff when he was younger so I thought this stamp from Wildly Happy was just perfect.  I stamped the image with Memento Tuxedo Black ink, then colored with watercolor pencils.  Pretty quick and easy.

Check out this week's sketch from Freshly Made Sketches:

I like it!  And the theme challenge from Paper Players:

Obviously I went for baby as my something new, ha.  Although I still have a pile of new stamps I need to play with!  However, my goal this year is to focus on scrapbooking rather than cards (I have a large pile of cards I've made and never sent out), so most likely I won't be making as many cards this year.  I'm already up to 10 pages done for my scrapbook goal though, so that's pretty awesome.

Have a great day, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Wildly Happy, First Frost
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Seaside Spray, So Saffron, Thick Whisper White, Pear Pizzazz DSP
Accessories:  Dimensionals, Watercolor Pencils

SUO: Designer's Choice Adventure

Hey y'all!  Happy Tuesday.  After a short break, the SUO Challenges design team is back with our first challenge of 2020!

This challenge is Designer's Choice, which means anything you make with only Stampin' Up! products qualifies.  Easy peasy, right?  Here's what I made:

As soon as I saw the Occasions Catalog, I knew I was getting the Parisian Beauty bundle.  The stamps, dies, and paper are so GORGEOUS!  I've actually used the DSP on a scrapbook layout already.  I used champagne rhinestones on this card; rhinestones never photograph that well for me but they look great IRL.  A friend of mine recently told me that her dream is to visit Paris, so I'm going to send this card to her.  I hope she makes "going to Paris" a serious goal for this year :)

Your turn!  Share your SUO creation with us on the SUO Challenges blog.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Parisian Beauty
Ink:  Cherry Cobbler, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Pool Party, Petal Pink, Thick Whisper White, Parisian Blossoms Specialty DSP
Accessories:  Parisian Dies, Ornate Frames Dies, Champagne rhinestones, mini Dimensionals

St. Giles Cathedral

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I had a productive weekend; I'm up to 6 pages for this year so far and I've got another layout on my table already halfway done.  Working on those 2020 goals!

Today's layout is another one from a 2012 trip to Scotland with my hubs, my parents, and Bennet & Missy.

See the original pictures here.  I reallyreallyreally wish we could buy single color packs of 12x12 cardstock because I neeeeeed more Shaded Spruce!  And Balmy Blue.  I would use both of those for a LOT of layouts if I had an unlimited supply.  I keep running out of Mango Melody too.  Anyway, this is yet another example of a page with Missy on it where the primary colors are Baylor green and gold.  Apparently I can't help myself.

Today's color palette:  Shaded Spruce, Crushed Curry, Ballet Blue (long retired but I still love it), Early Espresso (not black, I promise), and Whisper White.

I'm ready to start this week off right--going to HIIT class at the Y this morning.  How's your morning looking?  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet Upper & Lower, Rough Type, Timeless Textures, Bella's Bloom
Ink:  Early Espresso, Ballet Blue
Paper:  Shaded Spruce, Early Espresso, Ballet Blue, Crushed Curry, Thick Whisper White, Country Lane DSP
Accessories:  Circle punches

Ikebana and 2020 Goals

Happy New Year, y'all.  I didn't get as much time in my craft room as I wanted to yesterday because the hubs asked me to help him wax my car, and I couldn't say no since it's my car ;)  I did work on finishing up a scrapbook layout yesterday (well, it will be done when the hubs does the journaling on it) and I will be ready to start a new one during naptime today provided *I* don't have to take a nap.  Ryan was afraid of the noise from the fireworks last night so I ended up sleeping on the floor in his room, which means I didn't get enough sleep : /  Ryan, of course, is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this New Year morn.  (I started writing this post at 7:30 this morning, but didn't finish it until after 3:30 in the afternoon.)

Anyway, let's start out with a scrapbook layout from Okinawa.  I don't have a whole lot of layouts left to do from our time in Okinawa...on the one hand, that means I can finish up those scrapbooks; on the other hand, that means no more Japan pictures.

You can see more pics here.  Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement, but you know how I like macro shots of flowers so most of my pictures are closeups instead of the whole arrangement.

Today's color palette includes Pink Pirouette, Elegant Eggplant (it's dark purple, not black, I promise), Lemon Lime Twist (I put Granny Apple Green in the palette but it's actually Lemon Lime Twist), Highland Heather, and Whisper White.  I've done Pink Pirouette as the page base for floral pages several times, something about that soft pink just appeals to me with flower pictures.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Morning Post Alphabet, Strength & Hope, Carte Postale
Ink:  Pink Pirouette, Elegant Eggplant, Highland Heather, Lemon Lime Twist
Paper:  Pink Pirouette, Elegant Eggplant, Highland Heather, Whisper White, Botanical Butterfly DSP
Accessories:  None




Okay, so now it's goals time.  First, let's check in on my 2019 goals.

Scrapbooking:
1.  Make 200 pages.  Well, if I count my future nephew's baby book, I ended 2019 at 188 pages, which is nothing to sneeze at.  Not quite up to the goal, but pretty darn close.
2.  Finish Ryan's baby book.  DONE, BABY!  I'll start sharing those pages soon.  The album is all put together (it's huge, I'm sure it weighs more than Ryan did when he was born) and it is now at my parents' house because I didn't want to chance something happening to it when we move overseas this spring.
3.  Organize pictures.  Uh, this one didn't happen.

Reading:
1.  Have fewer unread books on my Kindle than I started with on this day a year ago.  Yeah, 2020 me is laughing at 2019 me.  I started 2019 with 125 unread books; I ended with 134.  Oops.

Cross stitching:
1.  Finish The Accolade.  DONE, BABY!  I finished this in late July and immediately went on a pattern-buying binge and have a zillion more projects I want to tackle.  I need to clone myself.

So, out of those five goals, two were unequivocal successes, one was pretty close, and two were failures ;)  Still, I did a lot of scrapbooking, reading, and stitching in 2019, and that's good.

And now it's time for 2020 goals.

Scrapbooking:
1.  Make 200 pages (100 two-page layouts).  I was SO close last year, I'm going to keep that as my goal this year.  Might be more difficult since we're moving overseas and I might not have access to my stuff for a couple of months, but I'm really going to have a go at this.  I don't have a specific scrapbook project I'm working on, just plugging away at years and years of pictures.

ETA:  Oh, I have to change this goal.  Plan is for me to find a job once we get to Germany, which obviously will take away a lot of my scrapbook time.  So let's shoot for 100 pages.

2.  Speaking of pictures, I really DO need to get those organized and pared down a bit.  This goal fell by the wayside, and I need to tackle it.

Reading:
I don't think I'll make a reading goal this year because I have a feeling my TBR (To Be Read) pile will only ever increase.  I'll just read as much as I can and give myself permission to not finish books if I'm not enjoying them.  I did read two nonfiction books near the end of last year that I found fascinating, if rather depressing:  The Five and The Radium Girls.  Maybe this year I'll just track how many books I read.

Cross Stitching:
3.  The Accolade is finished (and I finished a couple of other projects last year too), but I have one last Scarlet Quince that I've started and not finished yet:  The Quarry, by Julian Onderdonk.

I pulled this one out after a 5-year timeout and I remember vividly why it was in timeout.  It's 99% blended threads and 99% confetti, which means it is SLOW and it's hard to feel like I'm making any progress on it.  There's a lot of electric blue and purple in the bluebonnets, which I like, but this might just kill me :p  I'm at 31% done, so my goal for this year is to get to 40%.  Might not sound like a lot...might not look like a lot...but it's going to take a lot of work to get there.  This is my odd days project (so I work on it on odd-number days), and I've got another project for even days, because if I worked on this one and nothing else I'd probably set it on fire.  Here's what it will look like probably when I'm 80:

I've completed six Scarlet Quince designs (all large, full-coverage pieces) so this ain't my first rodeo, but this is still on another level even from The Accolade, which may be slightly larger (150,000 stitches vs. 130,968 on this one) but didn't have nearly as much confetti as this one.  This goal is going to be hard to achieve.

Fitness:
So I think I've joked on here that I joined Missy's fitness cult (Missy:  "Stop calling it a cult!") at the beginning of November.  I've worked hard on improving my diet and still working out, and I'm down around 18 to 19 pounds from when I started, so yay me!  I can actually wear my wedding and engagement rings after several years of them being too tight to wear.  I'm wearing pants I haven't worn in years and they're loose so I have to wear a belt (which is now two notches tighter than it used to be, too).  I don't necessarily have a specific weight goal in mind, but I do have a fitness goal:

4.  Be able to do a full chatturanga (which I don't know how to spell).  It's a yoga move, basically a slow tricep pushup.  Since I started this program, I've been working on trying to strengthen my wrists as I've had longstanding issues with both of them (especially the right one) which has kept me from doing pushups and necessitated the modification of lots of exercises.  My flexibility has improved A LOT over the last two years thanks to regular yoga and pilates classes, but this is one thing I haven't been able to do yet.  I'm gonna have to figure out those dang tricep pushups.

So there are my four goals for this year.  I'd better get off the computer and start working!