SUO Challenge 34, Merry and Happy and Everything Joyous!

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It's mid-December, and all around me I hear holiday greetings. The greetings I most frequently hear are, "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays." But there are many other holiday greetings that we hear this time of year – Happy Hanukkah and Joyous Kwanzaa are just two more. Whatever the greeting, though, invariably they begin with Merry, Happy, or Joyous. And it's so much fun to make cards that express those bright, cheerful and joyous feeling of the holidays. So that's what our Design Team has done for our Stampin' Up! Only Challenge 34 – some card to inspire us to be happy with whatever we're celebrating this time of the year.

And we'd love to have you join in our fun! Just create a card to celebrate a December Holiday and add a link to it at the bottom of this post. I'm sure that there are quite a few of us and many of our readers will be thrilled to have some great ideas for last minute celebration cards!

Please remember, use ONLY Stampin' Up! products and share only something that you've made in response to this challenge. For a complete list of the guidelines for the SUO Challenges, please refer to our write-up down on the left.

SUO Challenge 33, My Favorite Holiday Colors

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I can't even imagine all the various colors that are around this time of year to help us all celebrate a time of the year when the great outdoors supplies so little color (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). I know that I just love to brighten up my home and my paper crafting with colors that sparkle. "Bright" is definitely a word that defines the December holidays for me.

That said, I'm sure that there are some of you who love to celebrate with more subtle colors, or darker regal colors. Hmmm. Those sound a lot like three of Stampin' Up!'s color families. Brights, Regals, Subtles – even Neutrals!- what are YOUR favorite colors for celebrating your favorite December holidays?

Our design team members have created some projects using their own personal favorite colors, and our challenge for you this time is to create a card or any other holiday project that shows off your favorite December holiday colors. Please share your project with us by adding it to our blog post using the link at the bottom of this post. We can hardly wait to see what you have to show off! If recent entries for the SU Only Challenge blog are any indication, there are going to be more than a few that I'm going to want to try myself!

Please remember, use ONLY Stampin' Up! products and share only something that you've made in response to this challenge. For a complete list of the guidelines for the SUO Challenges, please refer to our write-up down on the left.

To help you get started, here is some inspiration from our talented Design Team members!

Cindy's Card

Mary's Card

Heidi's Card

Jennifer's Card

Michelle's Card

Pam's Card

Robin's Card

Deb's Card

SUO Challenge 32, Our Top Three

11 / 29 / 11

The holiday season's just started and already I'm beginning to feel a bit frazzled! But I have so many people and projects for which to be thankful – including all of you who entered our last challenge, "Thankful," with your delightful projects which all of us on the design team thoroughly enjoyed!

But we try our best to pick a Top Three, reflecting a consensus of our Design Team members about whose projects did a special job of perking us up – although, as always, we love them all.

Kris Lynch. OK, we all want to know how people like Kris come up with these ideas! Just, wow! My favorite comment from our design team was, "I think what I like about the punch art turkey lady is that she's obviously FAT and cute and motherly!!" followed closely by, "You have got to be KIDDING!" This punch art is beyond cute and made us all smile (even a giggle) when we first saw it. After focusing on that, we were also impressed by the use of the DSP for the apron and gloves, and the Sizzix frame for the platter. Well, well done!

Denise Pustelniak. This is simply a delightful My Digital Studio gatefold card, with warm colors that made us feel, well, warm – and cozy. We especially like the diamond orientation of the front panel of the card. Just a nice card!

Lisa Martz. We definitely liked the whole layout of this card, and especially the flower that accents all the colors in the DSP so well. The use of the ribbon in the flower to accent the pieces of ribbon over on the side is so very artistic – a gorgeous card as yours always are!

SUO Challenge 32, Thankful

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Here in North America we're right in the middle of our traditional Thanksgiving celebrations, with our Canadian Stampin' Up! community having already celebrated their annual Thanksgiving Holiday in October and our United States Community planning to celebrate their traditional Thanksgiving in just a bit more than a week. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

But Thanksgiving is not the only time or season for thankfulness. We frequently have something for which to be thankful, whether it's for a plentiful harvest for the community or for a simple act of kindness for us personally. So our challenge to you this week is to make a card or gift to express your thankfulness – for anything or anyone – and share it with us here at Stampin' Up! Only Challenges!

To help you get started, here is some inspiration from our talented Design Team members!

Deb's Card