Grateful Greetings

Afternoon, y'all!  Well, since I was last here, I got Ryan to school (he left his backpack at home so we had to come back and get it, but he got into school on time just by the skin of his teeth) and then I took a long nap to make up for last night's insomnia.  The only good part about insomnia is that I got to read for a couple of hours while the house was all quiet since everyone ELSE was asleep.

Anyway, I have another card to share today and here it is:

I have to say, when I first saw the Hand-Stamped Sentiments sketch, I had planned to skip it because I didn't really want to futz with all the layers, but when I actually got in my craft room my brain insisted on making it anyway : )  Here's the sketch:

The easy part was pairing it with the Color Dare Challenge:

Those colors together instantly made me think of the long, long, long-retired Fall Flowers DSP, and that chose my third color for me (and a neutral) because the paper has Really Rust, Old Olive, Soft Sky, and Crumb Cake.  Once I chose patterns for the background bits, this came together really quickly.  There is a Bigz die for the leaves, but since you can't see where you're cutting it (as the name implies, it's a big fat die, not one of the wafer-thin ones you can see through), I almost never use it and just fussy cut the leaves.  Wonderfall is another longtime favorite leaf set and Grateful Greetings popped into my head for a sentiment, and happily there was one that fit perfectly in the sketch.

Okay, Daphne is staring me down because I didn't take her for a walk this morning, so I had better fix that oversight before she takes matters into her own paws.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Wonderfall. Grateful Greetings
Ink:  Really Rust, Soft Sky, Old Olive
Paper:  Really Rust, Thick Basic White, Fall Flowers DSP
Accessories:  Dimensionals, Enamel Dot Essentials

Friday Flashback: Carved & Candlelit

Happy Friday, y'all!  I have an appropriately October-ish stamp set for today's Friday Flashback:  Carved & Candlelit.  Love it!  So let's get to the fun part :)

Also features Rough Edges Alphabet

It's hard to tell from this photo, but the jack o' lanterns' faces are embossed with Iridescent Ice so they're all sparkly.

Also features Cool Cat, Background Basics, All-Year Cheer III

What's more Halloweeny than a cool black cat?

Also features Background Basics, Petite Patterns, All-Year Cheer II

I happen to know a couple of people whose birthdays are ON Halloween, and quite a few more with October birthdays who also love pumpkins.

Ok, so this one is really old:  it's a layout from the first set of baby books I did way, way back.

Also features Bright Blessings (unmounted wheel)

So Carved & Candlelit is a simple little set with a couple of pumpkins and a few faces, but clearly I love it.

Also features Grateful Greetings

Again with the Iridescent Ice EP faces.

Also features Priceless, Falling Leaves

You've seen this layout on here quite recently but I couldn't leave it out.  And that's the Flashback part of today's post, so here's the new creations:

Yep, I made two!  My brother-in-law and his son have birthdays one week apart so I figured I'd make cards for both of them.  And between the two cards, I used every stamp in the set one time.

First up is the grown-up card; I had quite a time trying to get this card to work.  This is actually the FOURTH background panel!  I don't know why but I was just having trouble getting things to gel yesterday when I worked on it.

I used the color combination from The Color Throwdown:

And the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches:

And I think this one counts for the Male Room challenge to make an autumn card for a guy:

So next up, the card for the 6-year-old.

This one didn't quite want to gel either, I don't know what is up with my craft cave lately.  But anyway I used the color combo from ColourQ:

And the sketch from Retro Sketches:

I think this might have worked better for me if I'd made my card more like 5 inches square instead of 4.25".  But I don't have envelopes that size, so what can ya do.

Well, I know what I'm going to do:  I'm going to go back down to my craft room and work on another project, and hope that this time my mojo cooperates a little better.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, next-to-last card:
Stamps:  Carved & Candlelit, Fall Fest, Birthday Wish, Work of Art
Ink:  Pumpkin Pie, Garden Green, Cherry Cobbler, Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Chocolate Chip, Whisper White
Accessories:  Dimensionals

Supplies, last card:
Stamps:  Carved & Candlelit, All-Year Cheer II
Ink:  Basic Black, Kiwi Kiss
Paper:  Basic Black, Kiwi Kiss, Riding Hood Red, Tangerine Tango, Daffodil Delight, Whisper White, Tangerine Tango DSP
Accessories:  circle punch, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Googly Ghouls

*singsong voice* Friday Flashback!!  Today's randomly-chosen retired stamp set is Googly Ghouls, appropriate for October, no?  Let's do the Monster Mash as we flash back!

I figured these not-at-all scary monsters would be good for baby books, so last year I used them for two books.  Same layout, just different DSP.  The one above was for a girl, and the next one was for a boy:

Because Basic Gray is more manly than Rich Razzleberry, or so I hear.

Frankie here made an appearance not that long ago for a Nacho challenge; I'm really surprised that I haven't used Googly Ghouls more than I have.  Maybe I just got it late in the season last year...sometimes it takes me a while to glomp onto a stamp set and by the time I get it, the holiday is past.  Oops.

Here's today's new card:

Well, I think it's all right but just not as awesome as it was in my head.  Hmm.  Grateful Greetings was last week's Friday Flashback and I just couldn't resist using it again for my ghoulish lineup.  I thought it would be fun to stamp the ghouls in colors instead of stamping in black and coloring in bits of them (the fact that this is so much faster than coloring bits has nothing to do with that decision).  I'd already stamped the ghouls when I went to look for a good Halloweenie paper to go with them, so the stripe is actually Cajun Craze as opposed to Tangerine Tango but I think it still kinda works.

Thanks for joining me for today's spooky Friday Flashback!  Have a great weekend.

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Googly Ghouls, Grateful Greetings
Ink:  Old Olive, Tangerine Tango, Rich Razzleberry, Smoky Slate
Paper:  Basic Black, Tangerine Tango, Very Vanilla, Wicked Fun Specialty DSP (retired)
Accessories:  Dimensionals (under the bat)

Friday Flashback: Grateful Greetings

Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  Today's randomly chosen featured stamp set is Grateful Greetings, which has lots of great sentiments for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine's Day.  Just so happens that I have cards for all four of those holidays today!

How do you like this Parisian Valentine?  (I still just like the word Parisian, it's fun to say.)

One of these was up on the blog last month when I did the Falling Leaves Friday Flashback, so I thought I'd show you the two different versions I'd made of this card.

These were the Christmas cards we sent out the last year that we lived in Japan.

And for today's brand-new card:

Toldja I'd do another Halloween card.  The only problem I had while making this was that I'd picked out a sketch to use, but my main image panel ended up being too large and in charge to work with the sketch, so I kinda just went with this layout based on some DSP scraps I had (yay for using up more scraps).  Weirdly, it's almost identical to the Parisian Valentine card, and I didn't even look at that one before I made this one.  Regardless, I rather like the layout, what do you think?  I think I know who to send this one to.

The jack-o-lanterns' faces are stamped in craft Basic Black and embossed with Iridescent Ice EP, which looks really fun IRL but is kinda hard to capture in a photo.  Well, you can kinda see the sparkle, but it's better in person.  This was the first time I'd used my craft ink pad in quite a while and it looked like the Exxon Valdes in there--I think I re-inked it last time and it's now really, really messy.  Oops.

Anywha, I used the brand new color challenge over at Fab Friday:

Great Halloween colors, don'tcha think.  I like a good purple in the mix for Halloween.  Thanks for stopping by for today's Friday Flashback, have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only, all SU!
Stamps:  Carved & Candlelit, Grateful Greetings (both retired)
Ink:  Tangerine Tango, Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive, Basic Black craft
Paper:  Rich Razzleberry, Basic Black, Whisper White, scraps of Howlstooth & Scaringbone and Cast-a-Spell DSP (both retired)
Accessories:  Iridescent Ice EP

Friday Flashback: Falling Leaves

Happy Friday, ready to Flashback?  This week's stamp set is Falling Leaves, which I love :)  So let's get to it!

You'll see that I love to line up the leaves in this stamp set.  This was for my brother's birthday a few years ago (he was born in November).  I also used French Filigree and the sentiment is from All Holidays.

Here's a card that matches one of the kokeshi dolls in my collection :)  Sentiment is from the eponymous Grateful Greetings.

Here's a baby book layout which also features Wonderfall.

And another baby book layout.  I do believe that Autumn Traditions DSP is the *only* DSP that Stampin' Up! has ever had with Elegant Eggplant in it (aside from the monochromatic stuff that comes in every color).  It's a shame too because I love Elegant Eggplant.  I think I (and lots of other people too probably) would use it more often if it was in more DSP.

Here's a little CAS card; sentiment is from the Bright Blessings wheel that I cut up into a bunch of little stamps.

So that's it for the past projects, here's the new card:

Yep, I lined up those leaves again!  Though this time I think they're a little crooked, I was kinda in a hurry.  This is based on some old SCS sketch and color challenges; the sketch turned out much better than I thought it would (though it's still a bit overcomplicated for my taste) and I love the colors together.  Again, I used the Autumn Traditions DSP though even in that there's not a print that features Elegant Eggplant as the dominant color.  That Riding Hood Red print and the acorn print are two sides of a single sheet of paper.

That's it for today, hope you enjoyed this Friday Flashback!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Falling Leaves, Express Yourself
Ink:  Riding Hood Red, Elegant Eggplant, Soft Suede
Paper:  Soft Suede, Elegant Eggplant, Very Vanilla, Autumn Traditions DSP (retired)
Accessories:  Corner rounder punch, Elegant Eggplant brad (I'm using up some old brads instead of using the new Candy Dots)
Stamps:  Falling Leaves

Friday Flashback: Dream Gardens

Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  Today I get to feature one of my favorite stamp sets, Dream Gardens.  Since I used to live in Japan, I pretty much buy every Oriental stamp set Stampin' Up! makes ;)  So let's flash back!

I discovered pretty early on that I love this lady stamped in craft ink on patterned paper and then heat embossed.

I did Japanese Christmas cards one year.  See, you can use a non-Christmas stamp set and make perfectly festive Christmas cards.

Alternate Christmas card design; my hubs liked this one because he said the layout reminded him of kimonos with the obi around the middle.

Quick and easy thank you card for some friends of ours whom we met in Okinawa.

I shared these pages a few months ago and I was unhappy because I did the title and then decided to mat the kimono lady instead of stamping her directly on the paper, so it looked out of whack to me with too much space above the title.  It stuck in the back of my head for a while and finally I got it back out and added the little origami crane from Gifts from the Orient and voila!  Fixed.

And here's today's new card:

I love blues and greens together, they're very peaceful to me.  Something about using shades of those two colors together just makes me happy...which might be why 98% of the stuff we own is blue and/or green ;)  Anyway, I pulled out my favorite Baja Breeze (sniffle! please don't really be retired forever) and I picked the two stamps I'd never used from the stamp set.  I love that dream kanji stamp, don't know how it hadn't been used on something before.  And I used a couple of DSP scraps on this too.

Thanks for joining me for this week's Friday Flashback.  Have a wonderful weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Dream Gardens
Ink:  Baja Breeze, Always Artichoke, Midnight Muse
Paper:  Baja Breeze, Midnight Muse, Very Vanilla, Always Artichoke retired DSP, retired Green Tea DSP
Accessories:  circle punches, Dimensionals

Favorites Showcase 2012, Part 1

My humble little stamping blog here is less than a year old so I didn't realize the year-end favorites showcase was a thing until I saw everyone else was doing it and so I'm hopping on the bandwagon slightly late because I wanna go to the party too.  I'm a teensy bit hampered by the fact that it looks like I was a bit sporadic in uploading to my SCS gallery this year, but I've got a few fun cards from the first 6 months of 2012.  (Detailed supplies lists for all my cards are included in my gallery.)

This one uses Curly Cute and Mixed Bunch and I think that might be this year's SAB paper?  Hope I have a hoard of that somewhere ;)

Here's a Valentine card with nary a heart to be seen, but the Eiffel Tower is romantic, right?  This one uses Artistic Etchings, Grateful Greetings (retired), and En Francais.

I didn't have a whole lot in the gallery for around March, but I thought this kid birthday card was tolerably cute.  I like how the background came out--it's just scribbling on the acrylic block with markers, spritzing with water, and smooshing it around on the paper.  This one uses Dinoroar and I forget the alphabet.

So this uses the retired sets Bronc Buster, Wanted (which now live in the same stamp case because I almost always use them together) and Cute & Curly.  I needed an encouragement card for my dad who is a die-hard Oklahoma State Cowboy.

Here's something more CAS-y, again with Mixed Bunch and Curly Cute.  (I kind of love both those sets.)

I couldn't pick just one for June so I've got one manly card and one girly card.  Love this one with French Foliage and one of the retired All-Year Cheer stamp sets; I think I need to use this layout more often 'cause I love it.

One more CAS creation with Kindness Matters and the (sadly retired) Thank You Kindly.  That Beau Chateau DSP is now on the clearance rack...and I am resisting buying any more retired DSP because I think I've hit critical mass when it comes to patterned paper o.O

Stay tuned for the second half tomorrow and Happy New Year!