Sweet Sunday 113 and SPCC 96

On Sunday, I left for a short trip to Long Island to visit my niece.  To save time on the drive down there, I take the ferry from New London, Connecticut to Orient Point, New York.  It's a nice way to break up the driving and saves a lot of time.  It's only and hour and twenty minute ferry ride, you're never out of sight of land and usually it's a very pleasant trip.  However, on Saturday we had a bit of unsettled weather and the after effects on the sea were something else.  There were white caps on the waves, the sound of the waves hitting the ferry were loud enough to have me spontaneously saying words I shouldn't be saying in public, and I generally felt like I was being tossed around the ocean like the crew of the SS Minnow!  (Remember Gilligan's Island anyone)?

Despite that, the visit with my niece was very nice and the ferry ride home was thankfully uneventful.  But when I got home I decided to venture into my stamp room and try to get back in the groove of things.  I felt a little out of sorts at first, but I finally settled on making a card for the Sweet Sunday sketch challenge and the Scrapmaster's Paradise color challenge.

I really tried to use a different stamp set than my brand new (not yet released) Fabulous Florets stamp set.  I really did.  I even stamped one of the flowers from the Fifth Avenue set before I decided that it just didn't look right and I not-so-reluctantly decided to use the Fabulous Florets instead.

I'm not keeping count, but I'm pretty sure that just about every card I've made lately has been made with this stamp set.  I had a feeling that I would like it, but even I'm a little surprised at how much I like it!  I think it's become the spring-time version of my favorite fall stamp set, French Foliage!

I thought I was running just a tiny bit low on the basic pearls that I normally use on my butterfly cutouts, so on this butterfly I used some Liquid Pearls.  I really like Liquid Pearls and I have them in bunches of colors, but the downside is that they take a long time to dry.  I had to make sure that I took this photo of this card fairly quickly because I didn't want the round pearls to run.  Then I have to set the card aside, lay it flat and just keep it that way until it dries.  It's a little inconvenient, but it's an inexpensive way to add pearl accents to your cards.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have time to stamp today!

Paper Players 43

This week Jaydee's got a really awesome clean and simple sketch challenge at the Paper Players for you to try.

It's no surprise that I'm a huge fan of CAS cards.  There's something about all that white space (even if it isn't white) that really speaks to me.  And with a great sketch like this one, you can really make it talk with color (like I think I did on my card) or you can showcase a really fabulous stamp.

I also liked the colors this week at the Color Throwdown.  The yellow and the teal looked very pretty together.  I don't have any Summer Sun anymore so I substituted Daffodil Delight.  I seem to be using that quite a bit lately.  It must be a subconscious desire to finally have spring make an appearance and stick around a bit!

Well I'm off to Long Island to visit my niece for a few days.  Hopefully the weather  will cooperate.  I've already told her I'm not leaving until we go to the Canal Cafe and have their oh-so-delicious lobster roll!

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to head on over to the Paper Players and give this sketch challenge a try.  The design team has some amazing creations to inspire you!

Sketchbook Saturday 6

As expected, I'm really loving the Fabulous Florets stamp set that is in the new, soon to be released, Summer Mini catalog.  And I'm also loving the new embossing powders that are just tailor-made for this stamp set.  The other day, I played around with the Tangerine Tango ep and for my card today I tried the Melon Mambo.  I've been stamping with Stampin' Up! products long enough that I remember when the catalog carried bunches of embossing powders in a variety of colors and I was sorry to see them retired.  So it's nice to see them back again, and as usual, the quality is excellent!

A few weeks back I discovered a new sketch challenge, Saturday Sketchbook.  This week, the sketch was too cute to pass up!

I challenged myself a little bit with this card.  I used designer paper that was covered with flowers in Pacific Point.  This is one color that I only use sporadically (at best), but it's really quite lovely and I am resolved to use it more often.  I wanted to use the new Beyond the Garden dp so I purposely chose one of the images that was all about Pacific Point, and I'm very glad I did.  I actually think I like it very much!  It's a color that is very far outside of the colors that I normally use, but that's what this stamping journey is all about, right?  You never know if you're going to like something until you try it!

Thanks for stopping by today! 

Color Lab Challenge 37

Thursday is ColorLab challenge day!  I hope you can join us to create something with these fabulous colors!

For my card, I decided to do a birthday card.  I always seem to run out of those!  Rose Red and Regal Rose seem to want to inspire me to do some kind of floral card, but I make tons of those already so I really wanted to challenge myself to do something a little different.  I thought the latest MOJO sketch was quite interesting so that's what I used for my layout.

I ended up combining some designer paper from the Sweet Pea designer pack and a retired 6x6 pack called Patterns Pack II to make a birthday card.  The Always Artichoke provided some nice contrast to the layers and I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out!

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to pop on over to the ColorLab and check out the challenge this week.  The design team has some great inspiration for you!

PPC55 Color Challenge

The color challenge this week at Picture Perfect Creations is what I consider to be a nice combo for a masculine card.  I hardly ever make those, so it's a nice change for me!

I'm not sure why I always seem to associate a beautiful color like Not Quite Navy with a masculine card, but I do.  And for some reason I also seem to reach for the Seeing Stars stamp set, when I need to make one.  It's a very versatile set for kid's card, masculine cards, or even patriotic cards.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have time to stamp today!

ColourQ 80

The big brown truck arrived at my house today and dropped off a box full of SU! goodies!!  To celebrate, I broke out one of my new stamps sets and got to work on the ColourQ challenge.

I have a love/hate relationship with color challenges that include Kiwi Kiss.  I love them because Kiwi Kiss is (in my opinion) one of the best greens Stampin' Up! ever came out with.  I hate them, because I'm down to one full sheet plus some scraps for the sum total of my Kiwi Kiss cardstock supply and I hate to part with it!  But I'm a slave to these color challenges so I used a small scrap for my card.

One of the stamp sets I got today is the Fabulous Florets set in the new Summer Mini.  I knew the minute I saw it that I had to have it.  The combination of solid flowers and outlined flowers is very versatile and I think I'll be reaching for this set quite a bit.  For this card I went with a Tangerine Tango flower and as expected it looks very pretty!  The layout I chose for this card is one from "the binder."  It's from the Taylored Expressions sketchbook, which used to be a Friday sketch challenge, but I think is now defunct.

Thanks for stopping by today!

SSSC112 and Stamping 411 Color Inspiration 154

As usual on Sunday, I check out the Sweet Sunday sketch challenge.  Then I began hunting around for a color challenge to go with it.  I remembered that the Stamping 411 blog has a sketch challenge too and the colors were pretty awesome, so I combined the two.

Pretty early on I knew that I wanted to use flowers in place of the stars on the sketch graphic.  The dilemma was which one.  I tossed around a few ideas then I spied one of my all time favorites:  the flower from the long-retired Best Blossoms stamp set.

I'm fairly certain that I will always have this stamp set.  If only to keep my hands on this fabulous flower.  I rarely use any of the other stamps in the set, but that's okay because this flower makes up for it.  I'm not sure why I love it so much, but I do!

I think this is the first time I've participated in the Stamping 411 color inspiration challenge and the funny thing is, that I almost messed it up.  The card was made, I was almost done typing this post when I looked again at the graphic for the challenge and realized that I completely forgot the Chocolate Chip!  What's a girl to do?  Well, I pried off the Always Artichoke buttons that I had adhered to the card and put some Chocolate Chip ones on instead.  Whew!  That was a close one!

Thanks for stopping by!

Paper Players 42

Today we've got a wonderful color challenge for you at the Paper Players!

We've been enjoying some fabulous spring time temperatures here in Massachusetts so I'm in a springy mood.  And Poppy Parade is such a fabulous red, well suited for spring.  It fell right into my plans to make a nice floral card for the challenge.

I wish I had more Baja Breeze designer paper.  The one I've used here as my background is an oldie but goodie from the Urban Garden paper pack from a few years ago.  The color is quite soothing to me and helped to set a nice soft tone for my card, which I then kicked up a notch with the splash of Poppy Parade.  I love doing that.  Your eye is immediately drawn to the dramatic flower as it takes center stage against the soft background.  And I think the vintage brad, just sort of finishes off the look.

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to head on over to the Paper Players and give this color challenge a try.  The design team has some amazing creations to inspire you!