Kissin' the Blarney Stone

Wow,  I had intended to make a card this morning for today's post, but I kinda had a headache and the rain lulled me to sleep sometime around mid-morning and I just woke up and here it is mid-afternoon.  Sooo...how 'bout a nice Irish scrapbook layout for today?

As I said in my journaling, sometimes I can't believe all the cool things hubs and I get to do, like kiss the Blarney Stone.  If you're curious, they do disinfect it periodically--not between every person though, so they didn't do it between the four of us in our group so hubs made sure to kiss it in a different spot than Bennet who went before him :)  But you're kissing a ROCK, you can't be too picky about hygiene.

Detail shots!

As soon as I stamped the first letter on my title, I realized I needed to ink up my Night of Navy ink pad, but it was too late.  Didn't want to do it then and have one letter way lighter than all the rest, so they're all a little bit faded.  (I did ink it up when I was working on another layout...and then realized after I'd already put all the ink on that I was using an Island Indigo ink refill.  D'oh!)  The handwritten words are done with Gumball Green marker; I traced over them a second time to make them stand out better.

Little four-leaf clover hidden in the corner :)

I was hoping I had a stamp that was just lips but I don't, so I went with this one from Best of Love instead.  And the end of my journaling says "Pucker up, buttercup!"

And here's a progress shot from my desk, you can see I work in creative chaos clutter (and then I have to clean up between projects).  Lately I haven't been cropping my photos hardly at all, but I wanted to squeeze in all 11 pictures on this one so I had to chop 'em a bit.  I didn't want to crop the photos until I was sure how I wanted to lay them all out, so I used some white scratch paper (the kind that comes in scrapbook sheet protectors when you buy them) and chopped that to the sizes I thought I'd use.  Worked a treat to make sure my placement was okay, and then I didn't have to worry about messing up the photos.  I use that same scratch paper to stamp alphabet letters on and use them for placement the same way; I've got small plastic bags of letters in all my alphabet stamp cases.

If you're interested, you can see the original photos here.

Cheers, peeps!  Thanks for stopping by today.  Erin go bragh!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Broadsheet Alphabet, Hearts & Clovers, Best of Love
Ink:  Gumball Green, Night of Navy, Regal Rose
Paper:  Gumball Green, Night of Navy, Whisper White, DSP from Little Yellow Bicycle (hey, if SU! made DSP that would work on Ireland pages, I totally woulda used that, but they don't)

Inspiration

Mostly it seems like I do sketch and color challenges, but I really like inspiration challenges too.  Sure, some of the color challenges come with a photo of whatever inspired the color combo, but I like these kinds of inspiration challenges:

Just realized this is my second inspiration challenge this week!  This one is from Just Add Ink, and here's what I did:

I won't lie, I wish I had the gold vellum already printed with the chevrons :)  My embossing powder got a little messy on the chevron panel.  The larger flower and the sentiment are also gold embossed.

Still hard to tell, but you'll have to take my word for it.  I used a retired Glimmer Brad from when Pear Pizzazz was an In Color; I figured it looked close enough to a darker shade of Pistachio Pudding.  The other whozit (I can't even remember what these are called?) was a freebie added to a Paper Pumpkin kit a while back, otherwise I probably wouldn't own them.  My post office is SO picky about anything dimensional going through the mail.

I also used the latest sketch at Clean & Simple:

I really like their sketches but haven't played along over there in a long time; sometimes I feel a little ADHD with so many challenges out there to choose from.

Hope y'all have a lovely day.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Secret Garden, Positively Chevron, Perfectly Penned
Ink:  Versamark, Strawberry Slush, Whisper White
Paper:  Pool Party, Strawberry Slush, Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White
Accessories:  Secret Garden Framelits, lots of Gold EP, Dimensionals, retired Glimmer Brad, is it called Boutique Details?  I don't even know.

Nacho Birthday Banner

Mornin', sports fans!  It's time for a brand-new color challenge at Nacho Average Challenges, check it out:

Fun summery colors that just call for a birthday card, am I right?  'Cause that's what I made!

Ok, so I pretty much never used Banner Blast during SAB but now I've used it twice in a week.  It's all good!  I wanted the colors and patterns on the banners to be random, so I tried not to overthink where to place each piece before I glued them down.  Same with the letters, I just picked letters at random to color in and then left a couple white.  I think what took the longest on this card was gluing the banners down, so really the whole card was pretty quick.

Go check out the other Nacho DT creations and get to stampin'!  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Banner Blast, Bring on the Cake (both retired now, I'm pretty sure Bring on the Cake is sold out)
Ink:  Pacific Point, Gumball Green, Daffodil Delight
Paper:  Pacific Point, Gumball Green, Daffodil Delight, Whisper White
Accessories:  Banner punch

High Seas

I've been mostly making cards with soon-to-retire stamp sets, but for today I pulled out some stamps that aren't on the retiring list and I made a MAN card!

I used the sketch from Freshly Made:

And I finally played along in a Stampin' Celebration challenge!

What's funny is I looked at the picture last week and wrote down a few key words (mostly colors and "nautical"), so yay me for putting both stripes and an anchor on my card.  And a map too I suppose, there's a globe on the inspiration pic too :)  I was going to put some kind of sentiment or something on the front, but then I just did the three Candy Dots instead.

That's it for me today, I'm leaving in a bit for a picnic lunch with some friends to take advantage of today's gorgeous weather.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  The Open Sea, World Map
Ink:  Midnight Muse, Soft Suede, Sahara Sand
Paper:  Midnight Muse, Real Red, Sahara Sand, Very Vanilla, retired Midnight Muse DSP
Accessories:  Window Frames Framelits, Neutrals Candy Dots

Friday Flashback: Friends Never Fade

Well, my dogs are now in the air on their way to Texas...I already miss them so much!  But we'll soldier on with this week's Friday Flashback.  Today's featured stamp set is Friends Never Fade.  It's one of the bazillion flower stamp sets I have (even though I just got two more yesterday but we talked about that).  So let's go!

Also features Full of Life

So I got that photo corner punch because I kept seeing other people do fantastic things with it and I. Can't. Make. It. Work. on my projects.  It always looks like an afterthought, rather than an intentional part of the design.  Bleargh.  But that color combo is pretty fun, I like that.

Yeeeeaahhh, this was my only other project with Friends Never Fade; I stamped the index card for the Splitcoast gallery.  So not one of my more favorite floral stamp sets?  But I did make something new!

If you look in the top right corner, those are not Candy Dots--I broke into my stash of totally neglected brads!  I used to use brads pretty frequently but then they came out with the Candy Dots and those are the coolest things since Betty White, so now I have lots and lots of brads in my stash.  I'm not going through the Candy Dots super-fast though because I think my natural craft supply hoarding tendencies are working. 

Anywha, I used this week's ColourQ challenge:

If you're wondering, I used Calypso Coral to shade the petals on the flower, so really all the colors are on there.  Plus Early Espresso.

I also used this week's sketch from Unscripted, been a long time since I played along with them:

That's it for me this week, peeps.  Have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only, all SU!
Stamps:  Friends Never Fade
Ink:  Versamark, Pretty in Pink, Calypso Coral, Pumpkin Pie
Paper:  Whisper White, Early Espresso, some scraps of long-retired DSP but I know for sure the Old Olive pattern is from Raspberry Tart, the other one I can't remember...oh wait it's Petals & Paisleys DSP
Accessories:  Early Espresso EP, Dimensionals, white organza ribbon, retired brads

Because I needed more flower stamps?

Every year, it happens.  There's a stamp set or two in the SU catalog that I haven't given a second glance all year long, but when it goes on the retiring list, all of a sudden I *must* have it.  Because I am a lemming.  So this lemming jumped off the cliff and got the Secret Garden bundle *and* Simple Stems from the Occasions catalog.  I think I must have seen some card or project somewhere with one of those items on it that made its way into my subconscious and prompted me to buy them, but I have no idea where that might have been so I'll just blame the Internet in general.

So anyway, here's a card with some new toys that are now retiring--and in the case of the Secret Garden bundle, I'm pretty sure it's already sold out.  Probably because of lemmings like me.  We travel in packs.  Wait, pack of lemmings?  Herd of lemmings?  After an exhaustive 5-minute Google search, I came across the suggestion that it be called a plummet of lemmings.  And also found out that lemmings are usually pretty solitary and they don't jump off cliffs of their own accord, so this whole paragraph is a waste of space except for that first bit.

I digress.  Peekture!

I tried embossing that flower on So Saffron cardstock with Pool Party EP and it just didn't do anything for me, so Pool Party on Basic Gray wins.  This card took me forever to make, it was just a pill from beginning to end but I think it ended up okay.  I picked the hexagon embossing folder only because I hadn't used it yet.

My colors are courtesy of the last-ever challenge at Dynamic Duos:

And I used the sketch from the Paper Players:

Sooo I didn't put the sentiment in the same place as it is on the sketch.  Oh well!  I'm going to move on to something that's less persnickety with me today.

Thanks for stopping by.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Simple Stems (largest flower), Secret Garden (smaller flower around sentiment), Blessings from Heaven, Gorgeous Grunge
Ink:  Versamark, Smoky Slate, So Saffron
Paper:  Pool Party, Smoky Slate, So Saffron, Basic Gray, Whisper White
Accessories:  Pool Party EP, Secret Garden Framelits, Hexagon EF, Subtles Candy Dots, Dimensionals

Baby Love

Anybody else out there make cards and also scrapbook?  And do you have trouble moving back and forth between the two?  I think I do sometimes.  I've been working a lot on my scrapbooks lately and I've made a couple of cards that just didn't quite work to me.

This was the first card I made for yesterday's Nacho sketch, and it just didn't seem really finished to me.  I don't know why.  So I made the leaf card I posted yesterday.  Here's the sketch again:

Well, I'm off to take my doggos to the vet so they can get their fit-to-fly health certificates.  Sadly, that means that they're flying out of here on Friday.  I'm going to miss them, even if they're both constantly getting in the way because they like to lay down under my craft table or right behind my rolling desk chair ;)

Cheers, peeps!  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Baby Prints (retiring), Banner Blast (from this year's Sale-a-Bration), past My Paper Pumpkin kit (small chevron pattern)
Ink:  Pink Pirouette, Pistachio Pudding
Paper:  Pistachio Pudding, Sahara Sand, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Labels Collection & Banners Framelits, Festive Paper Piercing Pack, banner punch, Dimensionals