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

Inked Flowers

Hey y'all!  I'm back with a third Inked & Tiled card from my play session with this bundle last year.

I layered a couple of the stamps to make my distressed flowers and added some Polished Dots to the flower centers.  Again, just playing with the stamps, dies, and paper.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Inked & Tiled
Ink:  Petal Pink, Calypso Coral, Pool Party
Paper:  Calypso Coral, Thick Basic White, Inked Botanicals DSP Stack
Accessories:  Nested Essentials dies, Polished Dots, Dimensionals

Catty Inspiration with SUO Challenges

 Hey y'all, it's time already for a new challenge from SUO Challenges!

And here it is:

If you need it, here's a bigger pic, we're on page 66 of the SU! catalog:

My eye was immediately drawn to the Pretty Peacock card on the right, so I used that as a starting point and made this:

I do love the Inspiring Snapdragons bundle and I want to see more stuff made with it so that's why I chose it for my card.  Plus do snapdragons come in pink?  Doesn't matter if they do in nature because they do in my craft room!  I found the lovely Pretty Peacock wash in the Thoughtful Journey DSP Stack and used it for the background for my snapdragons.  I chose a sentiment from Inspirational Sketches just because it was smaller than the ones from the snapdragon set and I could cut it apart like the card in the catalog.  I used a few long-retired Noble Peacock Rhinestones for accents as well as a dragonfly because why not.

You have three lovely cards to choose from for this CASE the Catty challenge, so I hope you'll share over on the SUO Challenges blog.  Have fun!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Inspiring Snapdragons, Inspirational Sketches
Ink:  Pretty in Pink, Granny Apple Green, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Pretty Peacock, Granny Apple Green, Thick Basic White, Thoughtful Journey DSP Stack
Accessories:  Inspiring Snapdragons dies, Mini Dimensionals, Noble Peacock Rhinestones

Eisriesenwelt Ice Cave

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Continuing with my Alpine Adventure series, I have THREE layouts to share today!

Eisriesenwelt is the world's largest ice cave, tucked away near Werfen in Austria.  We lucked out, they were closed for all of 2020 with the pandemic, and had only reopened for tourists on July 1.  We got tickets for July 3, and it wasn't busy at all.  So you start out taking a steep, windy road up into the mountains, park at the visitor center, and then do a 25-minute hike up to a gondola.  The gondola ride is only 3 minutes, but it's pretty zippy and also nearly straight up.  Then there's *another* 20-minute hike to get to the ice cave, so you gotta WORK to visit here.  But man oh man, the mountain views!

Our tour guide, David, was really great and conducted the tour in both English and German.  He said that it's about 1400 stairs each time he takes a group through, 700 up and 700 down, and when they're running at full capacity he would do several tours in a day, I forget how many.  But every day is leg day if you're a tour guide here, that's for sure!  Our only illumination was carbide lanterns and the magnesium flares that David carried, so taking pictures inside was a challenge.  Usually you're not allowed to take pics in there but since it was a small group we got the go-ahead to do it.

And of course after the ice cave tour, you have to do all the hiking to get back down to your car!  We stopped at a restaurant on the mountainside to eat lunch and we all got dessert because we deserved it after all that physical activity.  Ryan did great with it, he only asked to be carried towards the end of the ice cave tour and did a good job with all the hiking.

So for the first and third layouts, my color palette includes Balmy Blue, Azure Afternoon, Calypso Coral, Mossy Meadow, Granny Apple Green, and Whisper White.

For the Ice Cave layout in the middle, I kept Balmy Blue, Azure Afternoon and white, but used Blueberry Bushel as my accent color.  Plus snowflakes to really sell the ice theme.

Have a great day, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!, first & third layout:
Stamps:  Alphabest, Art Gallery
Ink:  Azure Afternoon, Calypso Coral, Granny Apple Green, Mossy Meadow, Night of Navy marker
Paper:  Balmy Blue, Azure Afternoon, Granny Apple Green, Awash in Beauty DSP
Accessories:  Floral Gallery dies

Supplies, all SU!, second layout:
Stamps:  Alphabest, Snowflake Wishes
Ink:  Azure Afternoon, Blueberry Bushel, Night of Navy marker
Paper:  Balmy Blue, Azure Afternoon, Blueberry Bushel, Thick Basic White, Snowflake Splendor DSP
Accessories:  So Many Snowflakes dies

Friday Flashback: Apple of My Eye

Friday Flashback, y'all!  Today's stamp set is Apple of My Eye and I have a few cards to share, all of which were inspired by this card that paired Apple of My Eye with the Color Theory DSP.  So let's go!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Apple of My Eye
Ink:  Pear Pizzazz, Cinnamon Cider
Paper:  Dapper Denim, Cinnamon Cider, Thick Basic White, Color Theory DSP Stack
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes dies, Dimensionals

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Apple of My Eye
Ink:  Versamark, Cinnamon Cider, Garden Green
Paper:  Real Red, Thick Basic White, Color Theory DSP Stack
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes dies, White EP, Dimensionals

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Apple of My Eye
Ink:  Berry Burst, Old Olive, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Old Olive, Thick Basic White, Color Theory DSP Stack
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes dies, Dimensionals

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Apple of My Eye
Ink:  Grapefruit Grove, Night of Navy
Paper:  Grapefruit Grove, Thick Basic White, Color Theory DSP Stack
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes dies, Dimensionals

That's it for me today, peeps.  Cheers!