Mystery of the Tolling Bell

Happy Saturday and welcome to the latest Nancy Drew Challenge!  This week's book is #23, (The) Mystery of the Tolling Bell, and I have three different covers for this one.

The Russell Tandy cover on the left features Nancy in her signature blue, I like her pleated skirt and that hairstyle is SO 1940s.  I wonder why this is the only one that has "The" at the start of the title; the second book is the same text as this one but the title slightly changed.  Hmm.

Next we have Rudy Nappi's first cover for this one, which is clearly based on Tandy's but now Nancy has her signature 1960s flip hairdo and I really love that pink and red outfit.  10/10, would wear.  Also, this is the very first original text book I ever bought!

Last up we have Nappi's revised cover, which is kind of a combination of the collage style and also features the same scene as the first two versions but Nancy's outfit is far less interesting than either of the original text covers.  This one is my childhood copy.

I'm choosing the middle one as my favorite cover, both because of the awesome pink outfit and also it makes more sense for Nancy to have her trusty flashlight rather than carrying a clutch purse with her.  So let's take a look at the story!

Case file:  Nancy, Bess, and George are in the seaside town of Candleton to help Carson with a case; his client Mrs. Chantrey was duped into buying worthless stocks in a cosmetics company.  In addition, there's a mysterious cave in the seaside cliffs from which emanates the sound of a tolling bell and the locals think it's haunted.  Naturally, Nancy solves both mysteries and catches all the bad guys with Ned's help as strongman.  This one is like The Whispering Statue in that it's set in a seaside town, and perfume is a major plot point like in The Secret of Red Gate Farm.  But Tolling Bell also has some really whackadoo elements, like when Nancy gets drugged and has a dream that she's carried away by two elves.  It's bonkers.  And Carson gets drugged this time too.

Here's my card for the first cover version:

I just *had* to buy Fanciful Fragrance on eBay just so I could make a card for this book, and who knows how many other Nancy Drews feature perfume as a major plot point so really it was an investment, ha.  Anyway, I do love this image with the fancy perfume bottles and the set has some nice sentiments and some other fancy images too.

I ended up with Baja Breeze and Tranquil Tide to try to color match to Nancy's outfit on this one.  The brownish strip is the Earthen Toned Metallic Specialty Paper but it wasn't reflecting much when I took my photos.  I used champagne-colored rhinestones to make this card a bit fancier, and also that lovely Filigree background stamp, love it.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Fanciful Fragrance, Filigree
Ink:  Tranquil Tide, Baja Breeze
Paper:  Tranquil Tide, Baja Breeze, Thick Basic White, Earthen Toned Metallic Specialty Paper
Accessories:  Squares Collection Framelits, Dimensionals, Champagne Rhinestones

On to the next cover!  This one is the original text again.

And here's my card:

The flimflam cosmetics company is Mon Coeur, which means "my heart" in French, so I wanted to do a heart image for this book to coordinate with Nancy's pink and red outfit on the cover.  As soon as I came across Living Large, I knew I had to use it.  Look, the stamped girly even has Nancy's signature 'do!

Once again I tried to work in the colors on the cover, so I ended up with Cloud Cover, Polished Pink, Cherry Cobbler, and Pebbled Path for my neutral.  I love that Wild Hearts background, this was a great excuse to break it out along with Living Large.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Living Large, Wild Hearts
Ink:  Pebbled Path, Polished Pink, Stampin' Blends in Polished Pink, Timid Tiger, Petal Pink, Cherry Cobbler, Cloud Cover
Paper:  Cloud Cover, Polished Pink, Thick Basic White, Cloud Cover DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Rectangles dies, Stitched So Sweetly dies, Stitched Shapes dies, Dimensionals, Rhinestones, Cherry Cobbler Quilted Satin Ribbon, Wink of Stella

And now for the revised text:

The story is the same as the original text, just condensed a bit with no major changes that stood out to me.  And if you've been wondering how I could make multiple cards for the Mystery of the Tolling BELL without using any bells, well, here you go:

Midway through the book, the crooks decide that the Mon Coeur name is getting too hot with Nancy and Carson on their case, so they plan to change the brand name to Sweet Chimes with a logo of bells.  I had to look through my To Sell? stamps to find these bells in Best of Brides & Babies.

Once again I used Pebbled Path as my neutral, and I used So Saffron for the warm colors of Nancy in the center of the illustration.  There are some hints of blue in the rocks around her, so I chose Boho Blue for my card base, and hey, blue goes with a wedding card, right?  No one gets married in this book, though Ned definitely has it on his mind and Nancy politely ignores it because she's more interested in solving mysteries than canoodling.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Best of Brides & Babies, Occasional Quotes
Ink:  Versamark, Pebbled Path, So Saffron, Peach Pie, Boho Blue
Paper:  Boho Blue, Pebbled Path, So Saffron, Thick Basic White, Bella Bleu DSP
Accessories:  Layering Circles dies, Circles Collection Framelits, Mini Dimensionals, Clear EP, Pearls

I hope you enjoyed (The) Mystery of the Tolling Bell, this was another one I really liked from my childhood and still enjoyed a lot on this read through.  Four stars for all the bananas elements of the story (I rather enjoy it when the Nancy Drew book is a bit off the rails).  If you're inspired to play along (hooray!), just leave me a comment below!  I'll be back next week to search for The Clue in the Old Album.  Cheers!

Friday Flashback: French Filigree

Felicitations on this fine Friday!  And welcome to this week's Friday Flashback, featuring the background stamp French Filigree.  That's a lot of F's :)  But no failing grades today, just some cards!  So let's visit the archives for some French Filigree artwork.

Also features Falling Leaves & All Holidays

This was my little brother's birthday card one year.  You knew that I was only going to go without leaves for one day :)

Also features Fabulous Flowers

 This one was created when Fabulous Flowers was the featured Friday Flashback stamp set.

Also features Medallion & Occasional Quotes

And here's a birthday card for my hubs from a few years ago.

Also features Well Scripted & My Matryoshka

When we went to Russia, we looked long and hard at the matryoshka dolls and would have loved to buy them, but all the really pretty ones were SUPER expensive so we didn't do it.

Also features Sage Advice & Hearts a Flutter

And there's another former Friday Flashback card.  But now it's time for today's all-new creation:

Hubs' aunt and uncle are hosting us for a big Thanksgiving hooferah next week, so I thought it would be nice to make a card for them.  I used the color challenge from Create with Connie and Mary:

I admit, I was not at all sure about Tangelo Twist on my card...it's just so BRIGHT.  But I think it works because there's so much Hello Honey on there.  I also used the sketch from Just Add Ink:

Easy peasy!  I cut a piece of Hello Honey cardstock to 3 3/8" by 5", stamped it, and then cut it into three strips that were 1 1/8" wide for my background pieces.  Then I pulled out some other wonderful retired stamp sets for the sentiment and leaves, and bing bang boom my card was done.  Which is good, because now I can tackle some other items on my to-do list :)

Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  French Filigree, Day of Gratitude, Curly Cute (all retired)
Ink:  Hello Honey, Blackberry Bliss, Tangelo Twist
Paper:  Hello Honey, Blackberry Bliss, Tangelo Twist, Whisper White
Accessories:  Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Heartfelt Thanks

This week's Friday Flashback stamp set is Heartfelt Thanks, which is probably one of Stampin' Up!'s most popular stamp sets ever (at least based on the fact that there are 7,000+ cards in its Splitcoast gallery!).  I had several Heartfelt Thanks cards in my archives so rather than inundate you with all of them, I just picked a couple older creations to share and then one new one.

This was for a Ways to Use It challenge to use inchies.  It was also for a color challenge because I hardly ever reach for Bravo Burgundy by choice : )

Stamps:  Heartfelt Thanks, Paisley, Holidays & Wishes
Remaining supply list can be found here.

This one uses all the same stamps as the card above with the addition of En Francais.  The technique for the background squares is called Serendipity and it works like this:

1.  Start with a piece of white or vanilla paper and ink it up with two colors of ink, direct to paper.  Start wondering if you picked colors that don't go together at all.
2.  Stamp over it with a background stamp in a third color just to add to the mess.
3.  Heat emboss the flower all over on top of everything and think to yourself that this is going to be really, really not pretty.
4.  Cut or punch it into squares and somehow magically it looks much cooler.  Act like you're not surprised and that you knew it was going to be okay from the start.
5.  Rearrange your pieces on a mat however you like and build the rest of your card from there.

Stamps:  Heartfelt Thanks, Paisley, Holidays & Wishes, En Francais
Remaining supply list can be found here.

And here's my new Heartfelt Thanks card, which was oddly enough inspired by a card I made years ago using Carved & Candlelit.  I chose a sketch & color challenge I hadn't done yet and voila, here it is.  I wanted the sentiment to be in the middle of the flower image, but that left me with a lot of empty space on the bottom right so I added a Glimmer Brad.  The sketch is a little on the complicated side for me, but on the whole I like how this turned out.

Supplies:
Stamps:  Heartfelt Thanks, Occasional Quotes
Ink:  Versamark, Soft Suede, Blushing Bride, Certainly Celery
Paper:  Blushing Bride, Certainly Celery, Whisper White, Attic Boutique & Twitterpated DSP
Accessories:  clear EP, retired In Color Glimmer Brad, Fancy Fan embossing folder

I recently went through and organized all my card and scrapbook project photos (hence why I was looking at that old Carved & Candlelit card) and I noticed that for the first several years, I hardly ever used patterned paper.  Instead, I used a lot of background stamps.  Now I think it's mostly DSP, sometimes embossing folders, and rarely do I break out the backgrounds.  Note to self:  use more background stamps : )  Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed this Friday Flashback!