Happy Little Rainbow

Hey y'all, how's your Wednesday starting off?  I spent some time yesterday organizing our storage closet (for the third time!) and today's plans include grocery shopping and organizing my personal cookbooks.  I have two giant binders of recipes; ones I've used and liked, I type up on the computer, print them out, and put them in plastic page protectors in the binders.  I tend to make a mess when I cook, so the page protectors keep the recipes clean : )  And then any recipes that I find on the internet that I want to try, I print them out and put them in the appropriate section of the binders so I can find all the chicken recipes in one place.  But I have a giant stack of recipes to try that I haven't put in the cookbooks yet.

Anyway, enough yapping about my cookbooks.  I have a card to share today!

A couple of months ago, I joined a group on Facebook for buying and selling retired Stampin' Up! products, thinking that I would thin out some things that I just don't use...but really all I've done so far is buy several stamp sets ; )  Rainbow of Happiness was the first thing to come to mind when I saw the Paper Players color challenge:

I used Gray Granite for the greeting stamp on my rainbow and otherwise kept strictly to the challenge colors.  I thought that Stitched So Sweetly die shape was perfect with the rainbow, so I floated that on some stitched rectangles but the card still needed something.  Happily I found some Lemon Lolly baker's twine in my stash, which was just the touch this card needed.

When I was little (like under the age of 7), my bedroom was painted yellow very similar to Lemon Lolly, and I had an accent wall done with rainbow wallpaper, so this card reminds me of that bedroom.  It's already out in the mail to my parents.  Adult me absolutely loathes wallpaper though so good thing there isn't any in our house or I'd be stripping it off post haste.  Still want to paint everything though.

Okay, time to get the kiddo ready for school.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Rainbow of Happiness
Ink:  Flirty Flamingo, Lemon Lolly, Soft Sea Foam, Gray Granite
Paper:  Lemon Lolly, Soft Sea Foam, Thick Basic White, Flirty Flamingo DSP
Accessories:  Stitched So Sweetly dies, Stitched Rectangles dies, Dimensionals, Lemon Lolly baker's twine

SUO Challenges: Favorite Technique

Happy Tuesday y'all, are you ready for a new challenge from SUO Challenges?

'Cause here it is!

I had to think about this one for a while because I don't really think I do a lot of techniques per se.  I mean, does coloring with Blends count as a technique?  (Maybe not the way I do it, I know there are a lot of way more incredible alcohol marker artists out there.)  But as it happened, when I made this card back in June (I was working ahead, knowing that we were moving to Colorado in July), I had done a couple of cards with watercoloring.  My StazOn stamp pad is bone-dry at the moment, so I have to use something different to stamp with.  Memento ink is great for alcohol markers but not watercoloring, so I like to ink up my outline stamp with Versamark, then whatever color I want for the outline, stamp it, and then emboss with clear embossing powder.  (Here is a card where I used different colors for the outlines so you can see what I mean.)

So having chosen my technique, I needed to choose a stamp set, and here's what I made:

I totally love Musical Jamboree, which is hiding out on page 125 of the catalog.  This singing coyote and his musical compatriots just make me smile every time.  So I used Versamark plus Early Espresso to stamp the coyote and the campfire, embossed with clear EP, and then went to town watercoloring everything.  Basic White isn't a great choice if you want your watercolors to actually blend, but it worked for the style I was going for on this card and I am particularly proud of the freckly texture on the coyote's fur.  So there's my technique!

I hope y'all have lots of techniques to share with us on the SUO Challenges blog, I'm always down to learn new things.  Have fun!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Musical Jamboree
Ink:  Versamark, Early Espresso, Pebbled Patch, Peach Pie, Lost Lagoon, Pretty in Pink, Pumpkin Pie, Pecan Pie, Misty Moonlight
Paper:  Pebbled Path, Gray Granite, Thick Basic White, Lily Pond Lane DSP Stack
Accessories:  Deckled Rectangles dies, clear EP, Dimensionals, In Color Shimmer Gems

Salzbergwerk Salt Mine

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I just did my first workout in over a month so now I feel like we're finally getting back to a "normal" routine.  I'll have to start back kinda slow since it's been so long, but it feels good to get moving in the morning!

Okay, on to today's scrapbook pages.  Today's adventure:  a salt mine.

This is not our first visit to a salt mine; the hubs and I went to one in Krakow in 2014 (and I've scrapped that too, see it here).  This mine was cool because you ride around on a little train (hence my train accent), you slide down two giant wooden slides, and you take a little cruise across an underground salt lake.  I don't think we were allowed to take pictures in the mine itself, which is why we bought the two pics from the salt mine; the other four pics are of the front of the building and then the mountains across the way.

Oh yeah, just like his dad, Ryan had to lick the wall in the salt mine to see if it really did taste like salt.  (It did.)

Today's color palette:  Petal Pink, Grapefruit Grove, Cucumber Crush, Shaded Spruce, Basic Gray, and white.  I don't use Petal Pink as a page base very often since I live with two dudes, but it seemed to work here.

Ryan will be off to school in about a half hour and then I'll be sorting through some things that we want to sell, so I've got a busy day ahead.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Alphabest, All Aboard
Ink:  Shaded Spruce, Basic Gray, Evening Evergreen marker
Paper:  Petal Pink, Grapefruit Grove, Shaded Spruce, Cucumber Crush, Thick Basic White, Painted Seasons DSP
Accessories:  None

Strawberries for You

Hey y'all, happy Friday!  We had some drama last night--Ryan bonked a loose tooth with his toothbrush at bedtime last night, and after a lot of tears he managed to pull the tooth himself.  And I think he totally forgot to check this morning if the Tooth Fairy came to visit or not!

Anywha, I've been having fun getting settled in my new craft room and today I played with a retired stamp set.

I had strawberries on the brain from the Color Throwdown inspo pic this week, but I decided to use the Hand Stamped Sentiments inspo pic for my colors:

I love having Basic Beige as a color, I think it fills the hole left when Sahara Sand retired and I like that it's softer than Crumb Cake.  I also used Pretty in Pink, Regal Rose, Lemon Lime Twist, and Granny Apple Green to mimic the colors in the inspo pic.  And I had to have another go at the Freshly Made Sketch:

That's it for me right now, peeps.  Ryan is off school today as they're doing assessments for all the elementary schoolers; his appointment is in an hour and a half so he could have totally slept in this morning, but nope, he was up at 6:30.  We're going to run some errands after his appointment and tonight we get to have dinner with some friends.  Hooray!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Sweet Strawberry
Ink:  Pretty in Pink, Regal Rose, Lemon Lime Twist, Granny Apple Green
Paper:  Basic Beige, Thick Basic White, Bright & Beautiful DSP Stack
Accessories:  Perennial Postage dies, Strawberry builder punch, In Color Shimmer Gem, Mini Dimensionals

Don't Stop Me Now

Mornin' y'all, how's your Thursday so far?  The high temperature today is 17 degrees lower than it was yesterday so I'm going to be making a cuppa tea here soon : )

And here is today's card:

This week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And the Color Throwdown:

Those two challenges together made me think of a stoplight, and then it combined in my brain with the challenge from Cupcake Inspirations:

I was searching through all my birthday greetings when I came across the belated birthday from Turtle Friends and thought it went perfectly with the stoplight!  What do you think?

I'm off to do drop Ryan at school and then do grocery shopping.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Turtle Friends
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Real Red, Daffodil Delight, Granny Apple Green
Paper:  Smoky Slate (card base), Thick Basic White, Classic Garage Stack
Accessories:  Radiating Stitches dies, Stylish Shapes dies, black rhinestones, Dimensionals

Insert Clever Message Here

Hey y'all, how's it going?  I'm back to writing posts in real time, whee.  Also I feel like I'm starting to come down with something again, I had strep throat a couple of weeks ago right after we arrived here in Colorado.  Ugh.  BUUUUUT to focus on the positive today, my craft room is up and running and here is the very first card I've made in Colorado:

Had to start with the Paper Players challenge:

I didn't want to dig through all my retired stamps for something beachy, so Sea Turtle it is!  Plus I've started sending my friend Missy sea turtle cards.  I think she expressed an interest in sea turtles at some point but my brain could be making that up, but regardless, every time I make a sea turtle card, I send it to her.  And if I don't have any sea turtle cards on deck, the USPS recently released sea turtle postage stamps :)  All that to say, I know who's getting this card!

And also congrats to the Paper Players for making it to more than 700 challenges!  Wish I could have played along last week but it's taken a while to get unpacked and organized.  Sooooo do you want to see my new crafting CASTLE?  Stay tuned, but first here's the recipe for the card:

Stamps:  Sea Turtle, Saying Hey
Ink:  Azure Afternoon, Blueberry Bushel, Night of Navy, Lemon Lime Twist, Garden Green, Whisper White
Paper:  Basic Beige, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Adhesive Glitter Sequins, Wink of Stella, Dimensionals



Okay, just to get this out of the way, my craft room is the master bedroom in this house.  We had wanted a four-bedroom house (master, Ryan, guest room, craft room), but this one is three...however, the master suite has a huge bedroom and a sitting area separated by a wall with a dual-sided fireplace on it.  All our bedroom stuff fit in the sitting room side just fine, so here's my craft room which I realize is RIDICULOUS.

Pictures aren't the best quality, I think because of all the light coming in from the windows, but I took this one standing in the doorway between the craft room and the master bedroom.

The movers had beat up my old file cabinets sufficiently over the years that they were pretty much done, so I got two new file cabinets that Ryan and the hubs put together for me.  I salvaged one of the old file cabinets (the shorter one on the left) because it's still standing, albeit dented.

My old bookshelves were also toast, but I'd had most of them since high school so they hung in there for quite a while.  So I got these four Ikea bookshelves for all my stamps.

Okay this is a terrible picture but it's the only one I took of this side of the craft room.  I have two giant shelving units in the corners, one with all my 12x12 cardstock and DSP (except I'm missing one of the paper totes and can't find it anywhere), and the other has my completed scrapbook pages and some other miscellaneous items.

So here's the wall between the craft room and the bedroom, you can see through the fireplace if you want to, and the doorway is to the left of the fireplace.

The hubs took yesterday off work to attend to a few things around the house, and we put up artwork in my craft room which makes me so happy.  So above the file cabinets I have Maleficent, The Princess Bride, and Megara (sorry for the glare).  We still have a LOT of things to hang up around the house to cover up that greige paint until we can paint the house something nicer.  Even the ceilings are greige!

And in one corner I have my happy coyote who makes me think of Mercy Thompson (heroine of my favorite book series), and Indiana Jones and Marion on the bottom.

And to represent my first fandom, I have an entire Star Wars wall.  Mostly the ladies of Star Wars, focusing on Princess Leia, but the Mandalorian is in there too.

My two largest pieces that I got on a May the Fourth sale last year and just framed right before we packed out in Texas.  Whee!  This room is YOOOOJ and there's still enough room to put a second 6-foot table in the middle so the hubs could work on projects in there too, though I absolutely drew the line at him hanging up a giant RC plane from the ceiling anywhere in here.  Well, really, anywhere in the house.  I think giant planes hanging from the ceiling would be claustrophobia-inducing, and I don't want something that 3D on any of the walls either.  That stuff can stay in the garage, thankyouverymuch.

So yeah, there's my crafting castle.  Guess we'd better stay here awhile because I don't know how I'd fit all that in a smaller space...

Cheers, y'all.

Hohenwerfen

Hey, y'all.  This is the first post that I'm actually writing in Colorado--we got here less than a month ago and we're working on getting everything unpacked and organized.  To be honest, I'm having a difficult time with this transition--Ryan already started school and I absolutely loathe the school and its administration.  We bought our house sight unseen and so far we're having to replace the floor in the master shower (which looks like a poorly executed DIY job), and we've had a mouse AND black mold in the garage so that's fun.  I'm already hoping that the hubs' job will have us move again next summer.  I was not expecting to dislike Colorado so much.

Anyway, I have another layout from our Alpine adventure in 2021.  How about a castle:

The top left picture was taken on our hike down the mountain after we toured the ice cave; Hohenwerfen is on a big hill/small mountain and you access it via gondola.  We explored the castle from the basement to the clock tower, saw a falconry exhibition and some sword fights, Ryan had a look down Ye Olde Toilet (gardy-looooo!), and you can see from the picture of the teeny window how THICK the walls of the castle are.

I pulled colors from the pics of the hubs and Ryan on the right page, doesn't the hubs look good in a dress?  So my palette today is Watermelon Wonder (so fun to play with this color again), Mossy Meadow, Kiwi Kiss, Blushing Bride, and white.  I had intended to use some yellow as an accent color but I forgot when I actually put the pages together.

That's it for me today.  I'm going to go hang up some pictures, maybe swinging a hammer will make me feel better?  And I'm going to organize Ryan's bathroom upstairs because we're all going to be using that shower pretty soon.  Later, y'all.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Alphabest, Country Bouquet
Ink:  Mossy Meadow, Watermelon Wonder, Blushing Bride
Paper:  Watermelon Wonder, Kiwi Kiss, Blushing Bride, Thick Basic White, Birthday Bouquet DSP
Accessories:  Country Bouquet punch