Winter Bird

Hello again, y'all!  I told you I might be back with a second blog post today and I am currently procrastinating about putting up Ryan's laundry since the dryer just beeped that it's done.  In a minute, dryer.  In the meantime, another card:

I liked the sketch at TGIF Challenges:

Which I paired with the colors from CAS Colours & Sketches:

I hope I kept it CAS enough...I have a lot of white (navy blue) space, but we do have some layers going on.  I did forego putting any embellishments on it though.  You can send the Challenge Police after me if necessary.

Okay, laundry is calling...cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Winterly Tree Tops
Ink:  Secret Sea, Mossy Meadow, Stampin' Blends in Pecan Pie, Mossy Meadow, Bronze, Ivory, Night of Navy
Paper:  Secret Sea, Mossy Meadow, Thick Basic White, Mossy Meadow DSP
Accessories:  Winterly Tree Tops dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Textured Notes dies, Dimensionals

Peony Petals

Mornin' y'all!  I've got to get Ryan out the door in just a couple of minutes because we're both going to the DENTIST.  Wish us luck, it's been far too long since our last dental appointments.

I have a quick card to share today:

I stuck very closely to the Freshly Made Sketch this time:

And here's the Color Hues Challenge to go with it:

I went with Petal Pink and Gray Granite thanks to the retired Peony Garden DSP.  I personally think Petal Pink is more peach than pink but...it does have pink in the name?  And I liked the floral prints with this sketch.

Gotta go, wish us luck at the dentist!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora
Ink:  Gray Granite, Petal Pink
Paper:  Petal Pink, Thick Basic White, Peony Garden DSP
Accessories:  Stylish Shapes dies, Textured Notes dies, Mini Dimensionals, Petal Pink foil gems

Doubly Regal

Hey y'all, and happy last day of 2024!  I am ready for this year to be done with and hope that 2025 is a bit kinder.  And right now we're going to focus on the positive, like how I got some craft room time today and made not one, but two cards.

There's the first one, and here's the second:

The challenge graphic from TGIF Challenges made me think of Regal Flora and I had to ink it up at least one more time before it's retired.  Here's the challenge:

And here's the CASE-ing Tuesday challenge which is based on Facebook:

I was using scraps of the Regal Winter DSP (I love this DSP so much, I bought a second pack even though I still have quite a bit of the first pack left), and I couldn't decide if I wanted the fancy floral pattern to be the big square or the smaller square, so I did both.

What do you think?  I'm partial to the purple but that tracks for me : )

I need to take Daph out for her walk, usually we go in the morning so she's been very patient, and then I need to go to the store and pick up some extra tortillas because we only have one tortilla and it's Taco Tuesday.  Cheers!

Supplies, Blackberry Bliss card:
Stamps:  Regal Flora, Simply Zinnia
Ink:  Pretty Peacock, Wild Wheat, Blackberry Bliss
Paper:  Blackberry Bliss, Thick Basic White, Regal Winter DSP
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Dimensionals, Tinsel Gems

Supplies, Wild Wheat card:
Stamps:  Regal Flora, Simply Zinnia
Ink:  Pretty Peacock, Wild Wheat
Paper:  Wild Wheat, Thick Basic White, Regal Winter DSP
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Dimensionals, In Color Gems

Regal Strength

Mornin' y'all, how's it going?  I got my two cookie doughs made yesterday and one of them I already know the recipe is not a keeper because I don't want to spend 30 minutes finely chopping up dried cranberries.  So I'll be baking those two doughs today and we'll see if I make the two bar recipes or not.

I have a special card to share today that I made for my friend Krissy, who lost her heart dog last Saturday after he suddenly collapsed.

I usually send her a card a week as part of my routine, but I wanted to send her extra love this week.  I used this week's Atlantic Hearts sketch:

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the filigree shape on the right until I remembered the Cupcake Inspirations challenge:

Coincidentally, both challenges are on the same number : )  A bow was just the thing I needed for my card.  I knew I had that Pretty Peacock and gold ribbon from last year or the year before (I had never actually opened it, and this is why I rarely buy ribbons anymore) so I actually started my card design with that ribbon and paired it with the Regal Winter DSP since it has Pretty Peacock in it.  And from there the card came together pretty fast.

I also got all my Christmas cards sent off and mailed off one last package yesterday.  All the presents here have been wrapped; there are a couple of things that might not arrive until after Christmas but they'll just be birthday presents instead.  Feeling like I'm ready for the holiday now : )

Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora, Inspiring Snapdragons
Ink:  Blackberry Bliss, Pretty Peacock, Versamark
Paper:  Pretty Peacock, Blackberry Bliss, Thick Basic White, Regal Winter DSP
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella, Gold EP, Pretty Peacock & Gold ribbon

Love & Holly

Hey y'all!  We've got the contractors here again today to do the grout and caulking on our shower and we MIGHT actually get to USE IT by this weekend!  I'm very excited after 3 months of going down the hall to Ryan's bathroom.  Daphne will be excited when it's done too because she gets locked in her crate while the contractors are here.  She gets stressed out with them coming and going so it's easier for everyone if she's in doggo jail.

I've got a festive card to share today.

I'm mixing old and new on this one, with some super-old Brushed Gold cardstock, a stamp set from 2021, and this year's Regal Winter suite.  First off is the Atlantic Hearts sketch:

I tried to stick pretty close to the sketch.  Next is the Paper Players color challenge:

Cherry Cobbler and Pretty Peacock are both in the Regal Winter DSP so I started there and added gold accents.  Last up today is the Retro Rubber tic-tac-toe challenge:

I went diagonal from the top right with dies - greenery - twine.  I thought for a minute that I was trying to go down the right and had missed doing woodgrain, ha!  As I said before, Christmas Season is 3 years old.  My Brushed Gold cardstock is probably over 15 years old so it's super retro.

Have a great day, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Christmas Season, Regal Flora
Ink:  Pretty Peacock, Cherry Cobbler, Versamark
Paper:  Pretty Peacock, Thick Basic White, Brushed Gold, Regal Winter DSP
Accessories:  Seasonal Labels dies, Gold Glitter Enamel Dots, Gold Twine, Gold EP, Dimensionals

Regal Friend

Hey y'all!  I got to spend some time in my craft room yesterday and Daphne was a Very Good Girl so I got a couple of things done, including a card to share today : )

I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

I piled on a Regal Flora bouquet and a sentiment from Musical Jamboree using this week's Color Throwdown:

I used Crushed Curry, Cherry Cobbler, and Misty Moonlight, with a bit of Night of Navy thrown in.

That's it for me today, y'all.  I'm hoping to get some more crafting done and maybe even work on a scrapbook layout for the first time in a while.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora, Musical Jamboree
Ink:  Crushed Curry, Cherry Cobbler, Misty Moonlight, Night of Navy
Paper:  Misty Moonlight, Thick Basic White, Misty Moonlight & Night of Navy DSP
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Thoughtful Expressions dies, Wink of Stella, Regal Foiled Dots, Dimensionals

Beautiful Change

Mornin' y'all and happy Friday!  Did you have a good Halloween?  The hubs took Ryan (as Iron Man) out trick-or-treating while I handed out candy.  We had LOTS of trick-or-treaters of all ages and despite having a huge bag of candy, we ran out around 7:45...notes for next year.  I thought it was funny how many teenagers looked at our inflatable decorations and talked about how much they love Bluey : )  One girl came up to the porch and I immediately said "Fa Mulan!" and her dad told his wife, "See? SHE knows!" so apparently not everyone knew what the girl's costume was.  But of course I recognized the hero who saved China.

Anyway, Halloween cards may be done for the year but I'm still making fall cards!

I tried twice and could NOT get that sentiment to be straight on the die cut.  I tried stamping first, then die cutting--crooked.  So I die cut, then stamped--still crooked.  So now I'm chalking it up to handmade charm.

Check out this week's Color Throwdown:

Pretty!  I used Crushed Curry, Crumb Cake, and Copper Clay, and grounded those warm shades with some rich Early Espresso for the background.  I turned this week's Freshly Made Sketch on its side:

And now my brain is considering other options for this sketch, so we'll see if anything comes of that.

In other news, I had to go to the UPS Store this morning after I dropped Ryan off at school, and that just so happens to be adjacent to Walmart and they have their Halloween stuff 50% off.  LOOK WHAT I SCORED!

Aaahhhhh I'm so excited to have this up next year.  Even more excited that I only paid half price.  I also bought some Baby Ruths for half price because Ryan only brought me ONE in his entire candy haul last night.  (He doesn't like them so I get to eat them!  Sadly for me he DOES like Twix...)

Have a great day, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora, Autumn Expressions
Ink:  Early Espresso, Crushed Curry, Copper Clay, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Early Espresso, Thick Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Stitched Nested Labels dies, Earth Tones Shimmer Gems, Dimensionals

Regally Missing You

Hey y'all, how's your weekend going?  In about 20 minutes I will be leaving to meet up with a friend whom I haven't seen in I think at least 10 years; we've been friends since middle school : )  So that will be good, and then probably this afternoon we'll take Ryan to a trunk or treat thing.

In the meantime, I made good on my threat and made a second card with the two challenges that I used yesterday:

This time I turned to my favorite Regal Flora stamp set.  Here's the Freshly Made Sketch:

And the Color Throwdown:

This time I did Peach Pie, Very Vanilla, and Crumb Cake, all edible colors (except I actually don't like peaches or peach flavor).  That's a beautiful inspo pic, too.

All right, I'm going to get ready to go.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora
Ink:  Peach Pie, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Peach Pie, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Dimensionals, Polished Dots

October Anniversary

Happy Friday, y'all!  We just had a parent-teacher conference with Ryan's teacher and she said he's very smart (no surprise there) and wiggly (also not a surprise).  She had good things to say about him and said that she's going to give him opportunities to do more challenging stuff, which is good because he gets bored easily.

Anyway, I made a card yesterday and here it is:

Okay, I was silly on Sunday and made a Halloween card for the Paper Players challenge, so I had to give it another go with a more traditional card.  The hubs and I have our 21st wedding anniversary coming up next week, and that sentiment from Silhouette Scenes felt particularly appropriate since he was deployed over our last anniversary.  So here's the Paper Players challenge:

And I love the mood board from Inkspirational:

This was actually the challenge I started with when I made my haunted house card, which is where the Azure Afternoon came in, but it ended up being pretty far away from this mood board which is why I had to have another go at it.  Once again the Thoughtful Journey DSP stack came to my rescue with the Lost Lagoon wash and the background with warm colors, plus just a bit of purple peeking out on one side which I liked because our wedding colors were royal blue and royal purple.  I decided to go with some florals and greenery thanks to the Atlantic Hearts sketch:

This is my first time playing along over there.  I didn't put a bow on my card because, y'know, it's going to a dude, but otherwise I tried to stick close to the sketch.  I did, however, cover the Cajun Craze flowers with Wink of Stella because I just have to glitterfy everything ; )

That's it for me today, peeps.  The hubs has an MRI this afternoon to check how he's healing after his surgery, and then we're taking Ryan to see The Wild Robot.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora, Silhouette Scenes
Ink:  Night of Navy, Lost Lagoon, Cajun Craze, Peach Pie
Paper:  Night of Navy, Thick Basic White, Thoughtful Journey DSP Stack
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Stitched Shapes dies, Stitched Rectangles dies, Dimensionals, Essentials Dots, Wink of Stella

SUO Challenges Is On The CASE!

 Happy Tuesday y'all and it's SUO Challenges day!

And here's our challenge:

We are CASEing page 34 of the holiday catalog! This is the card I chose to CASE:

And then, because I am an overachiever, I had to CASE it two different ways.  First of all, I chose to CASE the layout and switched out the stamps and colors to make this:

I probably would not have put Pretty Peacock, Peach Pie, and Pretty in Pink together on my own, but they're all in the Lily Pond Lane DSP and actually worked for this stamped image from Warms My Heart.

For my second card, I kept the same stamps as the inspiration pic (because I love Regal Flora), and even stamped the images in the same colors, but I switched up the card layout and used different patterned papers to make this:

I arranged the stamped flowers and greenery the same way they are on the original card and kept Blackberry Bliss for the main color on the bottom of the card, but with a different layout.  What do you think?  There's two different ways to approach CASEing the same card.

We hope you'll join us and upload your catty CASE card at the SUO Challenges blog.  Have fun and happy stampin'!

Supplies, first card, all SU!
Stamps:  Warms My Heart
Ink:  Night of Navy, Stampin' Blends in Pretty Peacock, Peach Pie, Pretty in Pink, Petal Pink, Pecan Pie, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Peach Pie, Pretty Peacock, Pretty in Pink, Lily Pond Lane DSP Stack
Accessories:  Countryside Corners dies, Dimensionals, Dappled Dots

Supplies, second card, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora
Ink:  Wild Wheat, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Thick Basic White, Blackberry Bliss, Regal Winter DSP
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Dimensionals, Regal Foiled Dots

Make Like a Tree with SUO Challenges

 Hey hey, you ready for a new challenge from SUO Challenges?

Y'all seemed to like the single stamp challenge last time, so here's hoping that this challenge is just as popular:

How's that for an inspiration pic?  I was so inspired that I had to make TWO cards (plus I'm an overachiever, and also I wanted to play with my new mini catalog goodies!).  So here's the first card:

Told you I have been having fun with Regal Flora!  I pulled colors from the inspiration photo and the little polka dots are what clinched Regal Flora as my stamp set of choice for this card.  You can't see it, but I used Wink of Stella on the flowers.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora
Ink:  Blackberry Bliss, Wild Wheat, Calypso Coral, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Blackberry Bliss, Thick Basic White, Thoughtful Journey DSP
Accessories:  Regal Flora dies, Faux Glass Dots, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella

Here's my second card:

And my other new favorite stamp set, Splendid Autumn!  And this time I cut into the Regal Winter DSP which coordinates with the Regal Flora bundle but also looks pretty good with these leaves if you ask me.  Once again, I pulled colors from the inspiration pic and this time I lined up the leaves to mimic the line of trees.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Splendid Autumn
Ink:  Blackberry Bliss, Crushed Curry, Old Olive, Cajun Craze, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Pretty Peacock, Thick Basic White, Regal Winter DSP
Accessories:  Splendid Autumn dies, Deckled Rectangles dies, Mini Dimensionals, In Color Dots

Know who else was inspired by our inspo pic?  Walmart.

I saw this display of air freshener last week and thought hey, those trees look familiar! ; )

Hope you'll hop on over to the SUO Challenges blog to see what the rest of the design team has come up with, and don't forget to add your own inspired creation to the linky there.  Have fun!

Those 70s Colors

Mornin' y'all!  The hubs got moved from the ICU to a regular hospital room yesterday and was much more alert (though he still wants to sleep a lot, which is to be expected).  I took Ryan up to visit him last night and we had dinner together in the hospital room and watched a Discovery show about gladiators and ancient Rome.  They might let the hubs out of the hospital as early as tomorrow, which is amazing to me considering he had brain surgery on Wednesday.

Hubs' boss came by to visit last night too, and he said that we are "difficult to help" (they offered to do a meal train but since Ryan is perfectly happy to subsist on Spaghetti-Os and hot dogs, and I've been grabbing food at the hospital, so I said no we don't need meals but thank you for the offer and apparently that makes me difficult?) so they gave us a HUGE gift card to Door Dash to use when the hubs gets sprung from hospital jail.  I'm going to need to make more thank you cards so here's one to start with, using my new favorite Regal Flora:

I made this at the beginning of the week for the Festive Friday challenge:

I used vintage colors, enamel embellishments, jute trim, clean & simple, and stamps.  My vintage colors are harvest gold (Delightful Dijon), avocado green (Old Olive) and a bit of chocolate brown (Early Espresso).  My parents had a dryer for YEARS that was painted harvest gold; they received it used from my grandmother and then they had it for over 25 years.  It took a lightning strike to take that dryer out of commission permanently.  They just don't make 'em like they used to!

Okay, I'm off to get Ryan to school and then go hang out at the hospital for a few hours.  Then Ryan will be going to an event at the rec center tonight so I'll have a bit of time to get the house ready for the hubs to return, hopefully tomorrow.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora
Ink:  Old Olive, Delightful Dijon, Early Espresso
Paper:  Delightful Dijon, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Rustic Metal Dots, linen thread, Mini Dimensionals

Sending Love

Mornin' y'all!  I'm sleepy this morning...the hubs has been having trouble sleeping, which means *I* have trouble sleeping.  Hopefully things will get better after the surgery next week.

Anyway, I mentioned that I had made a couple of cards on Wednesday that I just wasn't thrilled with when I finished, and here's one of them:

I did enjoy playing with the new Regal Flora bundle but I think I was trying too hard to make multiple challenges work together for me.  I do like the sketch from Try a Sketch on Tuesday:

And the floral theme at Inspire. Create. was an easy add:

I think it was the colors from The Card Concept that tripped me up:

I used Melon Mambo, Basic Black, Crushed Curry, and Boho Blue, which look great together--my problem was finding patterned paper that worked with what I was going for and I don't think it really gelled quite right.  But not every card can be your favorite, right?  And I got to practice layering lots of die-cut images for a clean-and-layered style card.

Almost time to get the kiddo off to school and then I get to do the super-fun grocery shopping.  We'll see if the contractor actually shows up today (he didn't yesterday) to fix whatever is wrong with our shower now.  So ready to have our shower back and functional!

Cheers, y'all.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Regal Flora
Ink:  Boho Blue, Melon Mambo, Crushed Curry
Paper:  Basic Black, Thick Basic White, Thoughtful Journey DSP Stack, Full of Life DSP Stack
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes dies, Regal Flora dies, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella, In Color Dots