Verve Challenge for the month of May - 5 Cards

All five of the cards in this post are for the Verve Stamps Sketch Challenge for the month of May, called Viva la Verve; each week a new sketch was listed to design around. The first card of the five is a birthday card for my son-in-law that I am also entering in the "Anything Goes" Woodware Challenge at http://woodwareusa-clearstamps.blogspot.com/ and the "Masculine" StampingScrapping Challenge at http://stampingscrappingchallengecentral.blogspot.com/ .
Once again, I'm not too happy with the blurry quality of the first picture...still saving for a new camera! The layout was a sketch I had to follow for a challenge at Verve Stamps which was not an easy one to deal with for me. I have had for some time now some beautiful printed die cuts that came as a set, called "Que Sera Sera" from K&Co. I took them out and compared them to lots of printed cardstock I have and realized I have a whole tablet of cardstock that matches them so I wanted to incorporate some of them into this card. THAT took even more time! So for ingredients:

• all the die cuts are K&Co.
  


• the stamp on the front is Inkadinkadoo
  


• the Bible verse on the inside is Verve
  


• the birthday sentiment is Stampabilities
  


• the DP is from my stash
  


• the navy pearls are Queen & Co., the rhinestones (??)

***The 2nd card's picture is the wrong format (taken with my cell phone) and Blogger won't load it so I have to get another picture of it somehow ....should be interesting since I already gave it to someone!***
OK, I got a not-very-good copy to download and I guess that will have to do! This B-day card has another of the printed die cuts on it and more inside. Actually the little flower on the tag is one too. I had to scan a picture of this card and it made it look like the paper is "warbly" at the top but it wasn't. The ribbon was rose and lime green...not sure why it looks yellow on the side. The die cuts have copper stamped on them in places, that is why I went with the peach colored rhinestones. It really did turn out quite nice. Sorry about the awful picture! Ingredients:

• Printed die cuts- K&Co.DP- Imaginesce, K&Co.
  


• Scalloped circle die cut- Spellbinders
  


• Stamp, ribbon, gems, brad- all from my stash


• This is the 3rd card, from the Week 3 Sketch at Viva la Verve May 2011 Challenge. (It IS possible I have the weeks mixed up! I'll check their site again and fix it if I have it wrong.) This is also a Birthday card, and with several summer birthdays coming up it will go out to some one soon. Here's the list of ingredients:
  


• Stamps: Verve, Stampabilities (2), and (??-"Best Wishes")
  


• DP: Imaginesce, and from my stash
  


• Flower: StampingScrapping.com
  


• Border punch: Martha Stewart
  


• Ink: Memento, Stampabilities
  Ribbon: my stash

Now for the last 2 cards. The Week 4 card is a Sympathy card and will also be entered in the Magnolia challenge: "Dry Emboss Background" at http://magnoliastamplovers.blogspot.com/ The ingredients: the Rose is a Maggie stamped image, colored with colored pencils; the swirls are Leafy Swirls from Woodware USA, the green cardstock is embossed with a Sizzix folder, the DP is from K&Co., the rhinestones are Queen & Co., ribbon is from my stash.

This last card is, obviously, another birthday card, probably for my oldest daughter Kate. Her birthday is not until June 10 but she is so busy with "life" that she never gets on here so I'm safe showing it! I hope. This sketch was a little hard to work with too, for me anyway. The 3 different color panels at the bottom seemed too busy for me but I did want to try making a background DP using the Woodware USA Leafy Swirls stamps...so that was a good place to use that. Ingredients: Spellbinder die cuts- Standard Circles Lg, Scalloped Circles; HB stamp is Stampabilities (I think); House Mouse stamp is Feeling Rosey, Leafy Swirls is by Woodware USA; DP is DCWV and from my stash, as are the ribbon and charm.
Thanks for looking at this looooong post! Take care!

Now for the BAD news...because I'm new to the Verve site(s) I did not enter my cards correctly into the May2011 Challenge! I did not know we had to link them (again) in a post to the group so NONE of mine are actually entered...they are just sitting in their gallery. Lesson learned. The instructions for "newbies" did not include that last part about linking them in a post...I found that later on my own. Oh well. I still have some nice cards to give away. Have a great day!

Class Pictures and Another New Card

Okay, I got the "Go Ahead" from Cindy to post pictures of the projects we made in Friday's two classes. Here they are! In this first picture the card in back has a scalloped circle on it that we used a "shaving cream" technique to get that neat marble look!

I love that sanded, embossed paper!

Just a note: everything we used is available at Cindy's online store

http://www.stampingscrapping.com/

The 2nd picture shows a bird cage card on which we had made the bird cage look like old metal by using an acrylic paint dabber made by Adirondack, called Metalics - Silver. The tag in the background has the same stuff but in Pearl on the butterfly. Gives off a nice soft shimmer (which you can't see in my photos!)...very pretty!

The 3rd picture shows the mini page layout we did using several different die cuts and punches and a Tim Holtz blending tool (with felt) to softly ink the Color Me Flower and the scalloped circle AND the background border paper. I'd never used one of those and liked it so much I HAD to buy one on the spot!

These next 2 pictures show the last 2 projects we made: another card and a "gift bag". The card shows another fun technique we used to get a softer marble look on the scalloped circle using a bowl of water and a few drops of Smooch! I love that heart stamp! Its from Cindy's Spellbinders-matching What a Swirl set.














The gift bag was pre-cut and pre-scored for us from a large die (I think Sizzix, correct me if I'm wrong, somebody!) All we had to do (hahaha) was fold it correctly then "fill" it with the Tootsie Rolls and embellish it with the cute die cuts and a sentiment. Oh, and get that string through all those holes. But it turned out SO cute everyone was saying "Aaawwww"!

So, both classes were fun and we learned "stuff"!! THANKS, CINDY!!

WARNING! This is going to be the longest post I've ever done, I'm afraid!

On Saturday I took one of Janine Blackwelder's classes: the McGill flower punch class!!

We each received a tool set and mat (to keep!) as part of the class and then were taught how to use the paper shaping tools and make beautiful flowers! Janine is a good teacher and showed us techniques and amazing little "tweeks" to make the flowers look natural. She also showed us how to emboss a large (8"x8") piece of paper to make that adorable box lid. The flowers are begonias and we used petals from the "Floral Petals" punch. The centers are several layers of the tiny "Daisy" punch. Janine had everything punched and neatly divided into little baggies for us so we could spend our time forming lovely flowers.

The 2nd project we made in Janine's class was the Lily flower name tag. Janine showed us how to color the inside of the petals and add the dots to make it look real. I think it does! So I learned alot and am SO glad I took the class! THANK YOU, JANINE!

Now, the last part of this post is a new card I made last night. I gave out 5 sympathy cards yesterday at church which completely depleted my supply!

So I made 2 very similar and am posting one of them and entering it in Anary's Gilli Challenge,

at http://houseofgilli.blogspot.com/ , the challenge is "Black plus one other color". I'm not sure I followed that properly because I did use white also. Hope that's OK, Anary!

Oops...it is now late afternoon and I looked back at this post and just realized I didn't list any "ingredients"! So...

The DP is by K&Co called Black & Ivory Fusion, the Spellbinder dies are Labels 15 and Fleur de Lis, the sentiment is a Bible verse by Verve Stamps, the little branches are a Martha Stewart punch (?) and the handmade flower is another of the ones Karen Stark sent me! (Can't remember the border punch name/brand)

So that's it! I have been sitting at my computer for over an hour and do need to get on with my day! But I really wanted to share with those of you who couldn't come to the classes some of what we did so you could enjoy it a bit too! We missed you!

Have a great day! Please leave comments on anything in this post. I LOVE to hear from you all!

Happy Mother's Day!

To each one of you moms out there, no matter how old your children are, I say "Happy Mother's Day"! We had four generations here today: my mother-in-law Tracy, my daughters, Kate, Chris, Linz and Emz, and their little ones...plus me...makes four generations celebrating Mother's Day! (Plus all the guys were here too, of course.)

My daughter Chris decided this was the perfect day to tell us all that "number 3" is on the way!!

Now that's an amazing gift for a grandma! So exciting!!

Now about this new card...

The only MD card I made was for my mother-in-law. I got the lovely flowers in the mail from Karen Stark (the ones I won during the Blog Hop) and I just had to put one on a card immediately! They are so pretty and easy to work with...Thanks again, Karen! Such a nice variety of colors! I will be enjoying working with these for weeks to come.

Here is the list of ingredients I used:

cardstock - DCWV

Magnolia image - Tilda with Lilacs (colored with color pencils)

"Thanks Mom" stamp - JustRite

Die cuts - Spellbinder, Scalloped Edge Frame & Big Scalloped Circles; (little leaves & branches I think are Martha Stuart punches??)

the HMD sentiment is computer generated

Stickles used on ALL flowers, both 3D & 2D

small pink roses are from my still growing stash!

I'm entering this card in 2 challenges:

http://stampingscrappingchallengecentral.blogspot.com/ - "Anything Goes"

http://scrappyfrogschallenge.blogspot.com/ - "Anyhting Goes"

Exciting Email Today! I Won!! DOUBLE!

Today I got an exciting email from Janine Blackwelder who is on the StampingScrapping Design Team! She informed me that I am the winner of the "Woodware USA Meets StampingScrapping.com" Blog Hop that was held last week...April 27 through May 1. They looked at all the comments that everyone left and somehow picked me! So I won a prize...can't wait to see the goodies! Is that exciting or what! (There's more!)








But that's not all! I got another message from Karen Stark (also on the StampingScrapping Design Team) that I won her handmade flowers!! I went to her blog again to look at some of her flowers...they are just lovely!! (I "borrowed" the little picture above to show you!)
I feel a little guilty winning both prizes...but I promise I will put everything to good use! So I want to say Thank You again to all three prize-givers!! I feel so blessed!