SOS Challenge #29 - Digi Image or Recycled Card

Happy Tuesday! It's time for another Shopping Our Stash challenge! This week it's Digis. That means you need to go to your computer and find one of the OMG I NEED TO OWN THIS RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE digi files that you have never used, print it, and USE IT to make a card. If your digi file is from Bugaboo - our sponsor this week, it doesn't have to be a virgin image. So digi or Bugaboo. Got that?

Don't have any digi files? How about a sentiment you've always wished you had, but couldn't find on a stamp! Type it into your computer, print it out, and there you have it: a digital image. At least in MY world that counts as digital. :) Also, one time I printed words as a background on a card. You could do that, too.

No printer? No problem! You can use an old card you got and recycle it into a new one! LOTS OF OPTIONS, people. LOTS.

Well, I just happened to have a virgin Bugaboo image! I DID! Okay, maybe I have a lot of them, but work with me here.

Here's my card:

This card is all stash, and yes, I am very proud. I die-cut the green scalloped rectangle and the pink circle from remnants of Lucky Limeade and Regal Rose, respectively. The patterned paper was from a piece of Basic Grey olivia paper that is still out because ... I don't know why. It just is.

I colored the image with Copics and Touch Twin markers (I'm an equal-opportunity collector). Gus needed dark socks and a white T-shirt. I added stripes to his boxers using a Copic multi-liner and colored just the stripes green.

The froo-froo-y die was used because it fit the random size of the printed sentiment; plus, I don't think I've ever used it, so there's another no-longer-virgin item. The Lucky Limeade layer under the patterned paper was also cut from a remnant, and the Lucky Limeade ribbon is from an "I must have these in all colors" shopping moment, so it is totally "stash".

Finally, I took out one of my "oh, I must have these, all of them" Sakura glitter gel pen sets and used the hot pink one to color the heart and to add dots around the sentiment. You just never know when you might need a glitter pen. I had to have them. HAD TO. (did, too)

There you have it - a virgin Bugaboo digi file, and an irreverent anniversary card I hope to sell this weekend.

Now, it's your turn! Find an un-used and forgotten digi file (or create one, like we've already discussed above), or use parts of an old card, make a new card with it, then come on over to Shopping Our Stash and link us so we can see what you've made!

Thanks for stopping by!

A Car, A Card, and Some Shameless Commerce

Another gorgeous day in Maryland, and I actually left the house today! I DID! I drove to my storage unit to retrieve the walls I use for the larger craft shows - my big (and final) show is this weekend at Bauer Drive Community Center, Rockville, MD. Here's the back of my car:


And no, it's not full, not even close. See all that space behind the tables where I stuck the legs for the walls? LOTS of space. And I can still see out the back window, so nope, not full. But it is as full as it will get this time. I've actually cut way back on the s-crap I haul with me to these things. I need to streamline. And in case you're wondering, my car ALWAYS holds that stuff, except for the wall sections on top, which is what I picked up today.

So to celebrate that feat (leaving the house... I tend to be a recluse when I don't need to be somewhere), when I got home I made this card:

I followed this two-week-old sketch from Twisted Sketches, sortof, but it doesn't matter since it's two weeks old, and doesn't count for anything anyway. Pffth. It's all about the idea, right?

This card actually started with the Poinsettia I made using my now-opened Poinsettia stamps and dies from Taylored Expressions. LOVE! I stamped them in Cherry Cobbler onto Cherry Cobbler card stock. The leaves are stamped in Wild Wasabi onto Wild Wasabi card stock. The red in the SU papers is Real Red, but I think this works okay.

And I don't know about you, but having made a Christmas card a week for 48 weeks has me kinda Christmas'd out in the card category. So after this weekend I won't be making any more this year. Well, unless I decide to actually SEND cards this year - hahahahahahahahahaha *wipes tears of laughter* ... but hey, it could happen. Maybe.

In other news, I spent some time today making chipboard pieces covered in pretty paper to use to hold my massive yardage of twine that I'm selling in my Etsy shop. I do not need 400 yards of twine. So if you'd like a 20-yard length of twine, check it out here. :)

That's it. I need to mentally prepare myself to go back to work tomorrow. This could take all night.

Thanks for stopping by!

The $50 Card

Once again, I found myself lost in the Silhouette Cameo this morning. I saw this card a while ago, but just saw it again and decided I needed to re-produce it. But being averse to all that cutting with a craft knife, I had the idea I could do this in the Silhouette software, then cut them at will. So that's what I did. First, my finished card:

Well, almost finished. There's no sentiment yet. I have until Friday to figure that out.

Easy, peasey, right? WRONG! This card took me 6 HOURS to make, people. SIX HOURS. That's how long it took me to figure out what I was doing wrong in the software. Each time I failed, I learned something else, then went back to apply that. I cut, I cried, I searched for knowledge on the Interwebz, I found knowledge on the Interwebz, I applied that knowledge, I failed again, but I persevered until I GOT IT! I...GOT...IT! FINALLY!

Then I showered, changed the linens, started the wash, and went back in to make the actual card. My first attempt sukketh:

Meh. I intensely dislike it. Then I remembered the Striped Wipe technique and made this using a variation of it:

WAY better! I took a wet wipe, added a few drops of one color re-inker, and schmeared it across a piece of glossy card stock. Then I moved on to the next color. No two backgrounds come out the same, so it's kinda fun. I didn't get the full effect of the look until I placed the die-cut tree over the background. Wow, I really like how it came out!

Here's the second of the two I made:

So door-to-door - 6 hours. Based on my hourly rate I need to sell these for $50 each. Or else I need to sell a squillion of them. Next weekend is my last craft show of the season, so if you are local, please stop by Bauer Drive Community Center and introduce yourself! I'd love to meet one of my local readers! :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Jingle Belles Rock #48 - FOOD

This was not the card I intended to make for the last Jingle Belles challenge for 2011. However, it is the perfect example of why I have so much advantage over all you neat freaks who put things away after every card! I do not understand this concept, and I couldn't live like that. Half my inspiration comes from all the s-crap laying around on my work table. SERIOUSLY. This card could not have happened if I had put away all this stuff.

First, here's my card:

Second, I'll talk about all the happy accidents, then I shall endeavor to explain how it fits this week's challenge.

I started out by standing at my work desk thinking how I need to maybe clean the growing pile of stamps that I've used for the past week or so, so I can put away all the stamp sets laying around waiting for their brethren and sistren to be cleaned and come back to join them in their respective cases, when I spied the remaining felt stickers from this card I made for the JBR challenge two weeks ago! I had that wreath and several leaves left, and the mental gears started turning.

Then I started to toss the old sketches I've not gotten to in the past two weeks, and one of them made me stop. This one from Clean & Simple:



I envisioned the felt wreath in the center and the leaves for the button elements. But what about that horizontal piece? Remember I mentioned in my earlier post that I'd cut a bunch of JOY tags out of Naturals White? HELLO! Horizontal! And a card was born.

I cut two circles with my Nestabilities as the nest for the felt wreath and stuck it down to the card base. I then put dimensionals under the JOY piece and put it down, and stuck on the branches. Berries, it needed red berries, so I used my Distress Stickles to add them to the wreath and above the branches.

One Christmas card - DONE! But wait! The theme for the Jingle Belles card is holiday food. There was no holiday food on my card. Enter: THE BIRDS! This time of year I think about loading up the bird feeder for the birds that stick around here all Winter, so I decided that berries = bird food, and stamped, colored and fussy-cut the birds (Paper Smooches), then placed them where there was food! The guy on the ground is making quick work of all his buddies' discarded berries!

So there you have it! I totally backed into this one, didn't I? :)

Now go forth and make a card inspired by YOUR holiday food! The Jingle Belles want to see!

Thanks for stopping by!

More Silhouette Play

As you know by now, my new time-waster is figuring out my Silhouette Cameo. Fortunately for me, there are a bunch of How To videos on YouTube that I can watch over and over again until the information registers in my pea-brain. Then as I'm trying it out myself, I go back to watch it again.

I just made this card with stuff I cut out using the Silhouette Cameo:

The hills were cut by hand, and the trees are actually stamped (shocker, I know!), but the silhouette kids and the JOY tag at the top were done in the Silhouette software.

Both these images are from the SU Welcome Christmas stamp brush set. I brought the image of the kids into the Silhouette Studio software and sized it to fit on a card. Then I chose to Outline it and the software drew the outline around the whole image. I then had the machine cut it out of Early Espresso. Done.

I got the How To's from this video by Kristina Werner. Mine was a bit easier since I only wanted the outline. I'm pretty darned excited about this.

Then I played with two other images from the same SU set - I brought in the JOY and the tag. I then erased the inside of the tag, leaving only the edge and dotted inside line. With the software I drew an outer offset so when it cut out, the original outer edge would show. I then sized the JOY to fit inside the tag.

Then it got fun! One of the things the Silhouette can do is print then cut! YEP! I first told it to print the tags, and part of this exercise creates what's known as "Registration Lines". These are later used for the cutting step.

Once you've printed, you put your card stock on the cutting mat and the machine will align itself based on the printed registration lines, then it will cut out your images perfectly. Of course, me being me, I didn't get it right until attempt #5, but still here's the end result:


That is a sheet of vellum, stuck to the mat and already cut out. I printed it on vellum, heat-embossed it since ink jet ink doesn't dry on vellum, stuck it to the mat, then it cut. Here's the registration lines I'm blathering on about:

The marks in red were printed when I printed the whole thing. I did not make these - the Silhouette did! It uses these lines to align itself so it will cut correctly. The blue lines show you the edges of the vellum.

You can see where I'd picked up the bottom left image to use on the card. :)

Here's that finished beauty again:

The kids are stuck on with Dimensionals to give it more ... dimension. I attached the tag by putting in eyelets and tying baker's twine through them. The only thing left for me to figure out is how to change the color of the image from black to brown. I tried many things, but alas, nothing worked. I figured the black on vellum wasn't so bad, but I still want to learn how to do that!

The reason I went with vellum is because the tags I cut perfectly out of Naturals White card stock covered up all the trees, and we can't have that, now, can we?!?! So I went through the whole exercise again with vellum. THIS is why it took me 4 hours to make this card. Non-stampers have no idea what we go through for our craft. NO idea. *wipes brow*

Okay, now that my day is almost over, I need to go play some more. Who knows what I'll cook up next! :)

Thanks for stopping by!

New Toy

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US readers, and Happy Thursday to everyone else! Today is day 1 of a 4-day weekend for me! :) I used to always work the Friday after Thanksgiving since it's the BEST day of the year to work. No traffic, practically no one at the office, no ringing phones, and all sorts of time to catch up, or clean your desk, or organize your work-a-day life, or whatever. But the past few years I've been taking the Friday off as a vacation day, since the first weekend of December is my biggest craft show of the year, and I'm never mentally prepared for it. I NEED this 4-day weekend for that last gasp of preparation.

So where have I been all week? PLAYING! I got a new toy: a Silhouette Cameo. I DID! I'm still in the neophyte phase, like learning to line up the paper (!) but I've watched several videos over and over and I finally tried a few things. I thought I'd show you what survived the card stock massacre.

First, I watched this video that includes instructions on how to cut out words as negative space in a card front. I have so many ideas for this, but let me tell you - it ain't easy. Well, maybe it is, but not for me.

Anyway, here's my first card:

I cut out the cute and butt n with the Silhouette, and I got 4 out of one piece of 8.5x11. A lot of these videos are all about technique, but they cut the card front out of the middle of the card stock, which I SO do not do.

I hacked some of my vast rub-on collection for the as a instead of cutting smaller letters like in the video. Maybe next time I'll cut them out of white.

I put a piece of Baja Breeze DSP behind the cut-out words, and also used a piece at the top. The ribbon I've had forEVER, and the button is from my box of SU Neutrals.

Please note that I took the extra step of cutting a chunk out of the b and the e so the cutter leaves the center of the letters in place. It took a while to do, but I think I've got it down now.

For my next trick, I cut out letters to use for this card:

I got distracted last night and downloaded a bazillion fonts, including this one, and I just cut the j and y out of both Ridinghood Red and Wild Wasabi. One nice thing about SU is all the matchy-matchy. That piece of DSP is from Holly Berry Bouquet, and Ridinghood Real Red and WWasabi are two of the coordinating colors. Also, the button is from the Holly Berry Bouquet button pack. TOO EASY!

I knew the green would disappear into the background, so that's why I did the red, too, to act as a shadow. It still blended into the background too much, so I added a piece of Crumb Cake seam binding behind the letters, and that worked out great!

The letters and button are held on with mini glue dots.

I have more ideas for this gizmo, so I'm off to play some more. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

SOS Challenge #27 - Christmas/Winter

This week's challenge at Shopping Our Stash is to make something Christmas- or Winter-related. Think: penguins, polar bears, stockings, wreaths, angels, presents, snow, ice skating, tree, Santa, nativity scenes, etc! LOTS of options for you!

My card for this challenge may be the ultimate in stash-shopping. Here's the card:

and now I shall bore you with the details of the stash involved. First, I cut five (5) gingerbread men with my A Muse Studio die I bought a while ago and have never used. I cut them from a piece of Core'dinations card stock that is chocolate/brown on one side and a cool minty green on the other side. Why 5? Because 5 fit and I disappeared that remnant from the Heaplet.

Next we'll talk about buttons. A while back I had this idea I needed to organize the bazillion little packages of buttons to get them out of the craft closet and out somewhere so I could see them and maybe even use them. So I took each of the 20+ packages of 40+ buttons each and dumped them all into this jar:

The problem comes when you're looking for one color, and have to sift through all of these to find that one color. I needed black. I started by pouring them into my palm, but when that looked about to overflow, I resorted to this:

Yeah, that's a few buttons. Here's all I needed:

So in this case, maybe organization wasn't the best idea. Or maybe I need to get over it.

I next selected black buttons in sets of 3 until I had them on all 5 gingerbread men:

The rest got dumped back into the jar.

I next glued them down and added the mouths with Liquid Pearls and the eyes with black enamel:

Here's the enamel stuff I used for the eyes:

and one of the drying guys up close and personal:

Then I went on to gather the rest of the card parts. I was following this sketch (last week's sketch from Stamping 411):

As all that other stuff dried, I tried to think of how to make that white panel not so ... white. Then I remembered this stuff I bought and haven't used yet:

So I sprayed it all over the white piece after I'd stamped the sentiment, and it dried like this:

But wait - there's more! YES, there IS!

Here's the card again:

See that back panel? It matches the back side of the gingerbread man Core'dinations. Why am I telling you this? Because I ran out of that color of the Chocolate Core'dinations, but I checked out the Beach Core'dinations (whaaaat, you're surprised I have all of them? Pffth) and they have the same colors in that pack, just a different "other" side. I was home free!

AND, I used one of my SU folders on it and sanded it to try and bring out the other color. I love how it turned out.

AAAAAAND, I used my crimper (had to blow off the dust) to make the black horizontal strip, and the ribbon is A Muse, from the stash. Now even you'll have to admit that's a lotta stash on one card, eh? :)

Now it's your turn! Go into your stash, find some neglected Christmas/Holiday/Winter/whatever stuff, make a card, then come link us at Shopping Our Stash so we can see what you've made!

Thanks for stopping by!

Just Playing

People ask me where I get the weird sentiments I put on some of my cards. Well, believe it or not, most of them are stamps that I've purchased. I must just hang out at different stamp stores than everyone else does. Actually, the scary thing is that someone else thought them up; I just bought them.

Another source for a lot of my irreverent sentiments comes from the Interwebz, and mostly from Twitter. People say the darnedest things, and repeat things they over-hear. I get LOTS of ideas from Twitter. Some of them not suitable for this blog, but I will admit the cards sporting them sold this past weekend. :)

So the other day, one of my peeps and I were talking about something and we were both so riled up, at one point she said, "That brings out the inner trucker in me." I laughed so hard I had to write it down.

Tonight I bring you my inner trucker card:

I used the last piece of orange napkin "paper" I made several weeks ago, so that's off my desk finally. (bonus!) I cut the special characters on my new toy! I caved and got a Silhouette Cameo, and I'm learning I have much to learn about using it. Still, these came out poifectly!

Oh, look, I've managed to make that sentiment crooked. ;/

In other news, I've printed off 17 more sketch challenges to add to the 17 I didn't do last week. BUT, this week ends in a 4-day weekend for me, so I might actually make something. Could happen.

Thanks for stopping by!

Gettin' Scrappy

Not scrappy-scrapbooking! No no no, scrappy-using-up-stuff. I made two cards with pieces of some Webster's Pages paper I had left over from something else. First, this Love You card:

I cut three strips of the butterfly paper, added some twine to the bottom strip, stamped the Paper Smooches sentiment on the center strip - done!

For the second card:

I just stamped Thanks and added some pleated ribbon from my stash. Couldn't be easier. I think I've once again justified the hoarding of pretty paper. You're welcome. ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

Craft Show Schtuff

I had a craft show yesterday in Arlington, VA, and for as small as this venue is (only 10-12 crafters), it always amazes me how much traffic they get. It's a combination craft show & Malamute rescue fund-raiser bake sale & farmers market all rolled into one. It is historically one of my best shows each year, and this year didn't disappoint!

I forgot my real camera, so please excuse the cr@ppy phone photos. Here is my set-up:

The organizer gave me an end spot which let me grab a little extra space. I know it's not fair, but with those two card racks, you can't get to my tables any other way. I never set up the same way twice; this is a constant work-in-progress, even after 8 years!

Here is the second table:

I tried something different this time - I have a two-tiered set-up on that table! Here's the side view:

That's a shelf from a big box hardware store (under $5), and it's on top of some boxes I covered with another table cloth:

It was perfect! It let me put one of my Plexiglas card racks up high and left the front of the table for all my framed stuff. Oh, and I actually sold one of the ribbon wreaths! (whoot)

One of the vendors sells T-shirts like these:


(hee hee)

And the vendor across from me sells gourd art. She grows them on their farm, then makes them into ornaments and other items. Here's the one I snagged:

She burns the design into the gourd, then stains and paints them. Isn't this too cute?

Here's another one I snapped yesterday:

and here's some more from the ornament section of her Web site:



And a larger non-ornament gourd:

The best thing about these is they don't break! Nope! I know because there was a minor craftastrophe yesterday while setting up, and one of her display trees came crashing to the floor - gourd ornaments EVERYwhere. As we all ran to help her recover, we saw they don't break; they bounce! I found that cat one and called it mine. :D These would be perfect for anyone with small children, as they are not fragile at all!

I think you should contact her and tell her you want a bazillion of these for gifts this year. :)

In other news, I cooked my Thanksgiving turkey breast today since I bought it too early and it was fresh, so my place now smells fantastic. I'll wait until Thursday to eat it, but that's one thing done ahead. Most people make the pies ahead, but not me; I make the turkey ahead. ;/

I'm also back to my old trick of printing out 17 or 20 sketch challenges so I can be inspired to toss them when there's 17 more next week, but hey, maybe I'll actually do one or two in what's left of this afternoon. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Jingle Belles Rock - Not Christmas

This week's Jingle Belles Rock challenge is to make a card for our friends who do not celebrate Christmas. Well, guess what? I do this ALL THE TIME since *I* don't celebrate Christmas, AND I know several people who celebrate/observe the solstice, so I can do non-Christmas.

I just cranked out four of these babies:

I CASEd this card, but naturally made it my own by changing it up a little bit. Okay, the only thing I changed was where I placed the sentiment. You know I have issues with white space, and this card was so white! And truth be told, it was a way for me to justify purchasing that Memory Box die last night from the LSS when I went to pick up my Tim Holtz Winter inks and, well, Oh, Shiny! Sigh.

But I'm telling you: if you're short on ideas for a card to mass-produce, this is it. Get this die and some white card stock and you're home free. Just put that white layer over any color base and you are done!

Gotta go link up this baby, then head to bed. I have a craft show tomorrow and it is faaaaar away, so I need to get up at the crack of cranky. I'll report back on how it went.

Thanks for stopping by!

From The Ashes

One of the partial projects on my desk last week was a stacked image I made into this card:

I got the idea from this post by my bloggy pal Lydia (understandblue), and I liked it so much, I had to play. I used my SU Leaves of a Tree stamp (from the Holiday mini) and stamped it several times in both Lucky Limeade and Island Indigo. I then cut graduated ovals with my Nestabilities and stacked them with Dimensionals between each layer. This is VERY thick.

It was at this point I realized I hadn't trimmed the base layer it was on, and at 3" thick (I'm only slightly exaggerating there), it no longer fit in any of my paper trimmers, so I tossed it onto the top area of my desk and there it languished.

Fast forward a few days or a week and I needed to send a card in a package, and what better excuse to figure out how to salvage this beast. I decided to trim what I could to make it mostly even, and worked with that size like I meant to do that. A few layers, a little corner-rounding, a few die-cuts for the sentiment, a few pearls from the stash to cover the holes on that label die - and there you have it!

In other news, I tagged along with a co-worker and went to a department store at lunch time today. I was desperate to leave the building, and *I* wasn't shopping, so it was okay. (Ordinarily, I'm allergic to shopping). So she was looking for a camisole to wear under those not-for-work V-neck things they make these days (what's up with that, anyway? Is it a plot to sell camisoles? cuz it's working!) and ever on the lookout for grievous grammatical errors, I saw these words on a tag on a camisole:

no panty line promise

Um, say what? They don't promise you won't have a panty line if you wear this? Or do they mean if you wear this you won't have a panty line? If it's the latter, then it should be something like no-pantyline promise. And how would a camisole create a panty line anyway?

See, it's these sorts of distractions that dominate my life. Who else could take a camisole-shopping adventure and turn it into a grammatical pondering session? So yeah, she bought a camisole and I got to wonder what they meant.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hambo Hoedown - Framed

I'm getting this week's Hambo Hoedown card posted at the last minute! EEEEP! after the deadline - I forgot they moved it to Monday. :( Oh, well. :( *sniff* (stoopid day job)

This week we were to use their image, which I did not get because I forgot to email them my card, and incorporate a frame. Not a mat (which goes under) but a frame (which goes over). Here's my card:

I was scrambling, so I dug in my UFO pile and found this secret agent dude. Then I cut the frame. Just to show you I didn't cheat, here are the parts-is-parts:

See? One dude and 3 frames. The orange layer of that card is one of the left-over napkin thingies from the other day. I'm slooowly working my way down to the desk top.

I stuck Mr Agent Man onto the card, then layered the three frames over him to (hopefully) look like he's hanging on a wall. The dude is made with sparkly Thickers because they are the only thing that would fit there and be FAST.

Now if you'll exqueeze me, I need to post this, link it and email it before bed. put this in the comments because I missed the deadline. I haz a sad.

Thanks for stopping by!

SOS Challenge #26 - Uninked/Neutrals/Dilly Beans

This week's challenge at Shopping Our Stash is Never Been Inked OR Neutrals. We ask you to use a stamp that hasn't been inked (or printed, for digi stamps) and/or a neutral color theme - think kraft, black, whites, crumb cake, beige, sand, ivory, etc. And since we are being sponsored by Dilly Beans this week, you can alternatively use a Dilly Beans image.

Well, that's quite a few options for you! Personally, I was pretty excited about the un-inked part, since I have boxes and bags of new and un-used stamps scattered about The Captain's Quarters. But I started with this Dilly Beans snowman image called Disturbed Snowman. How perfect is that?! :) Here's my first card with Mr. Disturbed:

That's some of my new Basic Grey picadilly paper, and it's quite yummy! The pearls, button and twine are all stash. The sentiment had never seen ink.

This next card also uses the snowman, and is closer to being all neutrals, but not quite:

I looooooove that SU brought back River Rock, because River Rock+ black, er ROCK! There's a few things I'd like to point out here. First, I broke out my newly arrived Dymo label-maker to make that sentiment. I think I'm in love with this label maker.

Second, see that spot of yellow on Mr Distressed? THAT is why he's distressed! The neighbor's dog came to visit! :)

All papers are remnants - even the card base, SU satin ribbon and neutrals buttons, SU Melon Mambo remnant for the heart (only not-neutral element here), Copic marker for the puppy pee.

Next I went all crazy and broke out another un-inked stamp - the Hero Arts' Branch Background to make this:

I stamped it in Versamark on the top half of an A Muse card stock base (from the Heaplet) and embossed it with white EP. Taffeta ribbon, a simple Thank You (Paper Smooches), and I was done. I'm very happy I remembered I could stamp on patterned paper. This has promise.

Moving on (just this one more), I used two un-inked stamps AND all neutrals to make this:

Yeah, it could also be called "You don't know when to stop". First I stamped the Impression Obsession Wavy Lines cover-a-card stamp (these things are ha-uuuge) in black onto a piece of Basic Grey Kraft paper. I then stamped the HA Branch stamp over that in Versamark and embossed it with white EP. Then I stepped away for a while to let it settle, like a big meal. It was very, very busy.

So I added more. I punched that black border with my new MS punch that SmilynStef enabled me to need here, then filled in three of the holes with white SU brads from my stash.

This was so. stinkin. busy. I needed to cut it, so I made a plain layered rectangle for the sentiment, and it hides a lot of the "busy".

There, that should give you a few ideas of what YOU can do for this challenge. Got some never-seen-ink stamps? USE one or more of them! Or try an all-neutral card. Or use a Dilly Beans image. Or mix it up and combine a few of the options. WE DON'T CARE as long as you come play. So go make something and link it up over at Shopping Our Stash so we can see what you've made!

Thanks for stopping by!