SUO Challenge 34 – Our Top 3!

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I can't believe that the holidays are almost over – but I continue to be inspired to be in the holiday spirit by looking over all the fabulous projects that you all submitted in our final holiday challenge of the year – Merry and Happy and Everything Joyous! As you read earlier, the SUO Challenge Design Team is all of that – at least the Happy and Joyous! – to have Cindy Coutts back among us!

But you all outdid yourselves to show off projects that put a smile on the face of everyone who looked at them. And that certainly is a hallmark of a successful holiday project!

As always, though, we do pick three of your submissions to our challenge as our "Top Three." That's not to say that every project isn't just wonderful. But these three artists caught our special attention, and all for much different reasons:

Julie Gearinger, whose oh-so-detailed Christmas card makes us want to reach out and touch all of those textured elements! The pearls, the embossing and the vintage distressing – all these details make this just a stunning piece of art!

Winnie Hon, who made a lovely basket of goodies and decorated them so well that I would be afraid to open them to get at the treats inside for fear I'd damage them. Well, maybe not. But still – texturizing the card stock for the boxes before constructing them, and then adding on the die-cut snowflakes makes this a delight to look at!

Paula Sievers (from Australia where there aren't that many snowflakes this time of the year!) impressed us all with the way that she used the same basic layout to create some Clean and Simple pieces of art that anyone would be happy to receive in the mail!

A big "Thank You" to these three and ALL of you who submitted entries for this challenge.

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, Our Top Three!

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Wow, isn't that title for this post a convergence of threes! Maybe just for giggles, we'll have a top 4 when we get to post 44. Or maybe not – just a wild thought that popped into my tired little brain!

And what a top three we have this time around! We always have trouble picking out three because all members of the design team pick THEIR top three and I have to work from there. This time, while we had lots of different opinions as usual, there was one name that was on EVERYone's list.

But that doesn't mean that each and every project shared for this challenge wasn't wonderful – they ALL are and we appreciate all of you who enter our challenges. I hope those of you who haven't clicked on the links in last week's post will take some time to do so today – it's well worth the effort!

Now for our Top Three for Challenge 33:

Kris Lynch. I just cannot imagine how anyone could look at Kris' project and not say, "Wow!" This picture is just the outside of the Peek-a-Boo Nativity that Kris created with scraps that she never throws away. You have to visit her blog post (click on the picture at the right) to see all the detail behind the doors!

Marlene Peters was also on many of our lists with her Snowflake and Scallop Circle Cards. Yes, it's cards plural! She made the same card with different colors and we were just amazed at how different each one feels. This card is my favorite among the three that she displayed on her blog.

Bonnie Klass shared with us a card that is so simple yet definitely elegant. This would be a great card for a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator to use in a workshop, and a great card for any of us to make when our time is short but we just have to have something well, elegant! The traditional Christmas colors in this card are stunning, again in their simplicity. But we could see this layout used in cards for many different occasions!

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