Happy New Year - Challenges

Hello everyone, I've been away a really long time! Boy there just isn't enough hours in the day. I wanted to pop in though and wish everyone the Happiest of New Years. I wish nothing but Health, Happiness and Wealth to each of you out there in cyberland.

My New Year's Weekend has been a WONDERFUL stay at home weekend and so I've found time to stamp. I got to stay around the house last weekend too (Christmas) because Oklahoma had a BLIZZARD, yes you read that right a honest to goodness blizzard! It was crazy, I was so glad I was able to stay comfy and warm in my house with my Puppies and they loved it too.

The card below is a product of two challenges Mary Jo's Monday sketch challenge TSSC102 and the Diva Coffee Breaks Color Challenge #158. I just love this turtle from Stampin' UP!'s Nature's Nest stamp set, he's very fun to watercolor.

I certainly appreciate you stopping by to take a look. I'll try to be more consistent but no false promises, because I'm in the Accounting field and I'm getting ready to enter a very busy stressful time. But posting more consistently is one of my New Year's goal, not resolutions, I have a tendency to break those.

One more quick note, I'm very excited because this weekend I'll be part of a wonderful rescue effort to give new Forever Homes to two sweet sweet Pit Bull doggies. They are traveling from San Diego, California to their forever homes and are laying over in Oklahoma City on there way. Since it's a volunteer effort all the transporting is done on the weekends so they need a place to stay on their trip. I'm the lucky girl who will get to foster them. I'll try to take some pictures and post them so you can see their sweet little faces for yourself.

Remember those homeless pets out there who don't want anything but to be apart of a loving home! Adopt DON'T BUY!! You'll save a LIFE!!

Thanks and talk to you soon.

Color Inspiration #48 & Lunchtime Sketch Challenge #64

Good morning everyone! I'm on a roll and creating again. It's feels great and I'm hoping I can keep it up! I combined a couple of challenges today. I took the Color Inspiration #48 from Kristina Werner's blog and the Monday Lunchtime sketch from the very talented Mary Jo at TechnoStamp, and combined them, both of these ladies are great about inspiring creativity!

I chose the Blooming with Love set for this card. It's a wonderful choice for a Mother's Day card or any cheerful design you might have in mind. The colors were perfect for this stamp. So very pretty. And this sketch turned out perfect to showcase that flowerpot images. I had to laugh at myself as I made this card, advanced math in school was the bane of my existence and as I looked at this sketch I thought wow this won't be hard, then as I tried to decide on the diamond square for the stamping area, I thought how do I decide what size that needs to be??? I'm sure you math geniuses out there could easily tell me what size the square needed to be in relationship to the rectangle it sets on, well NOT ME! I ended up cutting that piece down like 4 times before I found the right size! LOL So if anyone out there has the simple mathematical equation for this take pity on me and share it!!! I've listed all the other pertinent details below the card.

Here is all the stamps that come in the Blooming with Happiness set I used for this card.

Card Details:

• Card Base - 4.25 X 5.5, Rectangle 3.25 x 4.50, center square 3.00"
• Paper - Kiwi Kiss, Chocolate Chip, Baja Breeze, Whisper White
• Ink - Kiwi Kiss, Chocolate Chip and Baja Breeze, Black Stazon
• Accessories - Crafter's Tool Kit, Dimensionals, Circle punches

Well that's it for this post, as always thanks for stopping by and see you soon.

Color Challenge Punch Card

Color Challenges are always great fun. I love colors, in fact I think you could call me a color collector, does that sound familiar to any of you out there?? If there are 100 colors available I MUST have them all! But at the same time I'm a bit color challenged! Colors that I put together don't always look wonderful. I think that is why I enjoy color challenges so much because someone with more color savvy than myself has chosen the colors and they normally turn out much more pleasing to the eye than my choices!! LOL The colors for this particular challenge were Garden Green, Riding Hood Red, Night Quite Navy and Bashful Blue. Very eye pleasing!!! Once again I saw this card on another blog and for the life of me I can't find or remember where I saw it so that I could give you credit. If you see this and it's your design please let me know so that I can give you the credit you deserve. I made two versions of this card the one on the right very simple basically single layer, the one on the left has several layers of matching card stock. They both are very pretty and neither was difficult to put together. Also not much stamping on this one.

This would be a great card to get your feet wet on for a first time card maker, call or email me if you're ready to give it a try!

Thanks for stopping by and see you in a day or two.

Elephant Walk

Yesterday was the Tuesday color challenge on SCS and this card is my attempt with the colors chosen for this week, Old Olive, More Mustard, Bashful Blue. I really love this set and miss that it's not in the current stamp line!

Okay on with the ingredients for this card - the card base is More Mustard the strip at the bottom is Old Olive and it has been stamped with one of the background stamps from the Looks Like Spring set. The Elephant is stamped on Confetti Cream card stock with Chocolate Chip classic ink, this is nested on Old Olive cs and then on Bashful Blue cs. I used two sizes of the circle punches and layered Bashful Blue and Old Olive then cut them in half I used half on each side of the card and added brads to each side. The sentiment at the bottom is from the retired hostess set Warmest Regards (This was a wonderful sentiment set) and is stamped on nested Bashful Blue and Old Mustard cs with a couple of brads added.

If you haven't tried your hand at these color challenges you should, it really makes you step out of your color comfort zones and stretch your creative muscles to design a card!

Thanks for looking and as always yell if you see anything you need to have for your very own! To get a look at the entire Stampin Up! line click here!

Color Challege-Soft Sky and Groovy Guava - 4

I participated in my first ever challenge that SCS's hosts (a different one each day) and this one was a color challenge. The colors we were to use were Soft Sky and Groovy Guava and I really like both of the colors so this sounded fun. Like I said I had never done any of the challenges, I'm more of a CASE it girl, so was a bit nervous going in. A friend of mine from SCS Jana told me to give these a try that she had learned tons about card designs and colors just by diving off and stretching her creative juices so to speak. Well I think Jana's work is amazing so I decided to listen to her! As I said this was my first attempt so don't expect too much but it was fun and I can see how with more of these challenges it will help my creativity!

As I always say.......Thanks for Looking!!

Diane