fresh & fun

Yesterday I challenged Kimberly VanDiepen to make a card with the same stamp set and designer paper  to see what we would come up with. Kimberly is a wonderful person, sweet friend and a Navy wife. I  admire Navy wives. They have it TOUGH. Kimberly especially. It seems they have moved every year since I know her. She is a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator and is sooooo good, she earns cruises even though she moves so much. Kimberly is an amazing stamper. I love everything she does. She doesn’t only create wonderful cards, she is an incredible scrapbooker as well! Make sure to check her blog! You will put it on your favorite list, if it’s not on there already. I promise!

Well…I wanted to make the challenge fair and not pick the Paper and Stamp set myself. I asked Jenn Balcer to pick it for us. She did, and boy oh boy was it a challenge. I think I hadn’t had a harder time with a challenge since I did Emily’s color challenge: Amethyst, Bashful Blue and Real red.  Jenn picked the Sarah Designer paper and Big Blooms stamp set.

When she first said that I thought….easy peasy. I love Big blooms. Well…..three card sketches into it I almost gave up. Nothing seemed to come together. My trash can was full of rejects!

I finally came up with this one. My card base is Certainly Celery. The top part is dry embossed with the Bodacious Bouquet dry embossing template. Besides the blue designer paper from the Sarah package, I also used a strip of yellow paper from the Spring Flower designer pack.

I am really into round shapes right now. I can’t help myself. And ever since I have been playing with acrylic stamps, I love the look of circular greetings. I stamped hello friend around the main image. Both hello and friend are from Amazing to Zany! So are all the words on the smaller circle on the bottom right.

Besides Big Blooms I used Little Pieces as fillers in the main image and flower center. I used So Saffron, Regal Rose, Brocade Blue, Certainly Celery and Basic Black ink. The flower center is a So  Saffron Brad. I added rose grosgrain on the bottom of the yellow strip as well as a little paper piercing….every card can use a little of that.

I am glad that challenge is over and I kinda like what came out of it. Thanks Kimberly for playing and thanks Jenn for the CHALLENGE!

Make sure you check out Kimberly’s card on her blog. She totally rocked this challenge and made it look easy to boot!

I have the never ending birthday…..Thank you so much. Here are the Birthday greetings that came yesterday in the mail. I also got some amazing thank you cards for Blog candy and a gift to a friend…I will post those tomorrow!

Kandi Williams send me this beautiful bella card. Her SCS name is kandicejo.

Click on more if you would like to see the other two gorgeous cards. Like always…they are listed in alphabetical order.

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Renee Clark Says: April 23rd, 2007 at 11:35 am eI check your blog everyday! Great candy. Right now I keep using Delight in Life a lot! Cheers!

The Random Integer Generator spat out #388. I started counting from the back and Renee was IT!

I made yesterday’s challenge card in Cameo coral to send with the goodies. This time I stamped the Flower in Black Stazon on Cameo coral. I spritzed the cardstock with water and sloppily colored the flowers with Cameo coral reinker before cutting it out and highlighting it with the white gel pen.

Thank you all for playing. It was fun to read all your comments and discover some new great blogs!

My next blog candy will be a “BIG DEAL” and will happen at 200,000. You don’t want to miss that one.