A Stampin' D'Amour challenge

Have you checked out Stampin' D'Amour yet? If you love vintage as I do ... please take the time and see what they have to offer!! Lyneen has posted a Christmas challenge **With a RAK** on the message board and I've finally found time to play. The challenge is open until December 12th.

We are to use: 1) theme of Christmas, 2) traditional red & green, 3) with a Christmas tree, 4) some sparkle [bling, stickles, etc.], 5) card, tag, ATC ... whatever you desire!

On a past challenge **with a RAK**, posted by Kris Dickinson (parkerquilter), I was the lucky winner! WOW, you should see all the cool stuff I got ... I couldn't wait to use a little of it here. Why not come play along ... I guarantee you won't regret it!! Thanks for stopping by!!

Stampin' D'Amour challenge with a RAK

Kris Dickinson (parkerquilter) over on Stampin' D'Amour has posted a "Get Ready for Christmas" challenge! (Yikes! Christmas is only 45 days away!!!) Kris is giving us until Nov. 17th to make/post a card and qualify for the awsome RAK she is putting together for this challenge. How great is that!!! If you are not familiar with Kris's work, please check out her BLOG which is jam-packed full of wonderfully creative projects. I am always in AWE of her work ... such a talented artist and sweet, sweet lady!!!

Anyways, back to the challenge! All you have to do is make a card, tag or ATC following these three simple guidelines: 1) Must be a Christmas Theme ... 2) Must use RED somewhere ... and 3) Lets see some sparkle or bling. That's it! So, what are you waiting for??? Get those sparkley, red, holiday card juices flowing and "show us what's you've got!!"

Oh yea, here's my contributions to the challenge. I used the same Stampendous image on both the tag & card.

The tag is sponged using SU real red ink ... image stamped using versamark then embossed with gold sparkle ep. Edged with a gold Pilot marker ... added a couple sprigs of ribbon and ta dah ... tag!

My card is whisper white and the Christmas red cs has been bordered using a gold Pilot marker. The image was stamped with Versafine Black and embossed with clear ep. I stamped the image again on whisper white and using my swivel craft knife, cut out the baby Jesus so I could use pop dots for dimension and focus! The ribbon is Jo Ann's gold organdy and the gold gems are from Michael's.

Thanks so much for stopping by and saying hello! I always LOVE hearing from you all!!

Rusty Pickle Challenge

Here is a card I did for the Rusty Pickle challenge put up over on the Stampin' D'Amour message board. I had used up all the Rusty Pickle paper I had in stock ... so, I HAD to order some from Stampin' D'Amour (and a few other things of course) in order to play along with the challenge! They have some wonderful 2-sided holiday papers available and here I have used both sides of the same paper (cool, huh!).

The challenge is to use 80% Rusty Pickle product and the theme is "something you are grateful for". As you can tell by my sentiment, I am MOST grateful for FAMILY!! I can't even imagine how lonely people who don't have family around them must be ... I am blessed with a large, loving family and so thankful for it!!!

I bordered each layer by using a ZIG real red marker (saves on layer weight) and made a little awning with the sentiment panel. The reindeer is a clear stamp I found for $1 somewhere and I've added a few punched out snowflakes. EASY PEASY with this awesome paper ... don't need to add much more!!! What do you think??

Stampin' D'Amour Challenge #51

This is my submission for the weekly challenge over on the Stampin' D'Amour message board. Kris Dickinson (parkerquilter) is our hostess this week and she has really put together a great challenge. We are to 1.) create a chipboard Halloween tag or ornament ... 2.) must include black & orange ... 3.) at least one embellishment. The challenge will run for 2 weeks until Sept. 28th at which time there will be AMAZING Halloween RAK for the lucky winner of the drawing on Sept. 29th. How exciting is that!!!

I haven't done much with chipboard in the past but I think I'll be doing more with it in the future!!! Here is what I came up with: I've used a Darice chipboard circle ... inked it with SU "summer sun" ... rimmed it with "pumpkin pie" ... inked up the Inkadinkado (Halloween Trails) witch with Palette noir black and embossed with clear ep ... punched a hole with my Crop-a-dile to add the black grosgrain ribbon for hanging and sewed on a fall leaf button.

Not bad for a 1st but I think I'll have to give this challenge yet another try over the next week! Thanks for stopping by!!

Stampin' D'Amour Weekly Challenge #50

Yippee ... I get to host another challenge over on the Stampin' D'Amour Message Board. This is challenge #50 and for this week, I'm asking the ladies to do a 2-part challenge;

first part - Make an ATC using "birds" as the theme

second part - Use that ATC as the main image on a full sized card.

For my ATC, the flower and sentiment are from an Inkadinkado clear set. The birds are from a SU set, (but for the life of me I can't figure out which set it is from ... if you know, please contact me so I can edit this post). I colored the birds using the new SU [In-Color] "pacific point" blue and the old SU [In-Color] "purely pomegranate", as well as "old olive". I did a background sky using "soft sky" ink with the ALA ART sky image stamp. The actual background is a scrap piece of Crafty Secrets (Radiant) designer paper trimmed out using a gold Pilot marker. The latice looking piece on the left side is Around the Block gold framing tape given to me by my good friend Tammy (stampertammy).

For my main card I used the same flower image and stamped it on the blue bayou using blue bayou ink ... added the gold organdy ribbon from Michaels ... punched out a few little birdies using the Martha Stewart bird punch I purchased at WalMart and Ta Dah ... card complete.

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by ... hope to see you again real soon!!!

Stampin' D'Amour Challenge #48

I've recently become familiar with a wonderful vintage based site called Stamin' D'Amour. The ladies there are so sweet and welcoming and this week I have been tagged by Robin to host the Weekly Message Board Challenge. I've decided to challenge the ladies to use Black & White with one bright accent color, I chose RED.

I recently made a purchase at a LSS and this set of red dress/hat & shoes was a "bonus" gift ... how cool was that! Worked out perfectly for today's challenge. The heart & musical tags were another recent purchase from Archiver's. They come in a little (25) pack from DMD with various sized/vintage printed tags and they were in the "Hot-Spots" $1.99 ... can't beat that!

Feel free to come play along!! The more the merrier!!

Stampin' D'Amour Challenge #47

I couldn't wait to play along with this weeks challenge over at Stampin' D'Amour! (I am so glad a friend introduced me to this site ... it's vintage oriented and I LOVE IT!! ) The challenge was to make something (i.e. card, ATC, inchie, twinchie, altered item, etc) with Christmas as the theme.

W-E-L-L, I just received my Crafty Secrets Vintage Christmas set (which I've been druelling over for months) in the mail Saturday and couldn't wait to ink them up. Which is odd, because everytime I'd see a Christmas card on SCS or different blogs, I thought uugh ... I'm just not ready to do Christmas cards! W-E-L-L, looks like I am now!!!

I've also loaded this card on my gallery over on Splitcoaststampers ... you can see the details there! Thanks for stopping by today ... hope you can come back often!!

An OLYMPIC sized challenge!

Sarah (stampntxn) over on the Stampin' D'Amour blog has challenged us to make a card or ATC with either of the following themes: China or Your favorite Olympic sport. Since I don't have much stash in the "sports" line, I chose to go with CHINA as my theme.

Being "obsessed" as I am, I was thinking about what to do for the challenge half the night! Since it was on my mind, and I had an idea forming, I just had to get up and put it together. The bg paper is from the DCWV (Far East) stack pack and worked perfectly. The twigs & bird image is by Stampendous and to me it has an Asian flare so thought it would work nicely with the dp. The glossy black frame is actually the negative which was cut using my rectangular Nestabilities. The positive portion of this was used on another project. (Can't waste those scraps.) The gems are Hero Arts, the ribbon is from Michaels and the sentiment is actually a Christmas sentiment by Stampendous.

The fan was an after-thought! As I was photographing, I thought it needed a little something "more" ... this scrap piece of red vellum which was already punched, using Martha Stewart's doily lace border punch, was laying on my work table and was just what I needed to create a fan.

School Days Bookmarker

This is my first time participating in the challenges over on the Stampin' D'Amour blog. This is for Weekly Challenge #45, School Days (with a RAK). I love what these ladies do with vintage style and have been wanting to get involved and decided today was the day.

I hope I'm not too late ... today's the last day for entries into this challenge. We are to use the following: 1) school theme, 2) at least 1 stamp and 3) at least 1 embellishment. I chose to do a tag and used an image from the Crafty Secrets Childhood images & journal notes booklet. I then stamped the watch (Rubber Stampede) on the bottom along with some clear sticker letters. The ribbons are both from Stampin' Up and I inked around the edges with Ranger (vintage photo) distress ink to give it a more aged look to coordinate with the image.

The little girl next door (Olivia) is going to Kindergarden this year and I think she would like to have this as a book marker. She can either use it at school or at home. She has several books that she, her sister (Emily) and their Mom & Dad read every night at bed time.