SUO Challenge #48 – Our Top 3!

7 / 9 / 12

Oh, my, you all seem to love our Stampin' Up! Birds! From chicks to chickadees and robins to roosters, you used at least 15 different Stampin' Up! Bird stamps and even a few punches! What fun it was for us at the SUO Challenges Design Team to review all of them. And, as always, it was a challenge for us to come up with a Top 3!

But we did manage to select three of the entries for our ""For the Birds" challenge as our favorites, though we really did love them all!

Diane Vander Galien. This is a perfect stamp for the spotlighting technique! And the card itself is beautiful overall, especially with the way that Diane used the Delicate Designs Embossing Folder and the Large Scallop Edgelit on the mat as well as on the stamped/embossed layer!

Vicki Parson. What an elegant card, with all those perfectly coordinated neutral colors! The understated tone and simplicity of this card is accented beautifully with that carefully designed bow.

Crystal Langton. What a gorgeous vintage-style cover for this journal! The collage is just done perfectly. I, for one, find something new and different in this project every time I look at it!

SUO Challenge #47 – Our Top 3!

6 / 25 / 12

Fun and frilly was definitely the name of the game with all of the fab projects that our entrants showed off for our Fancy Frills challenge! I read the word, "CASE," on several of our SUO Challenge Design Team voting ballots this weekend, and I've got my eye on a couple of your projects for that, too!

So, with a fancy drum roll, we are pleased to announce our Top 3 for SUO Challenge #47:

Melissa Davies. This Black and White design shows off Melissa's frills beautifully! And can't you just imagine the whole project in another single color of your own choosing? This is such a classically elegant card, with so many perfect little details – especially the new Doily Sizzlit with the black behind it showing off the details of the die.

Vicki Burdick. There are so many lovely details on this card, also! It was hard for our team to pick out any one feature – the way all the details go together in the card's layout just made us smile! If we had to pick a favorite detail, it's the way that the flowers are colored.

Diane Vander Galien. Oh so feminine! The muted colors and embossing would have been gorgeous all by themselves; but adding the ruched seam binding ribbon over the Edgelits border, and then the pleated paper underneath just sent this card over the top!

SUO Challenge #46 – Our Top 3!

6 / 11 / 126 / 11 / 12

First of all, I and all the members of the SUO Challenges Design Team would like to express a delighted, "Thank You!" to our first ever Guest Designers! It has been wonderful having them as members of our team, and they participated throughout the entire course of the last challenge, even providing their input to the voting for this week's Top 3! We can hardly wait to do this again, probably in late Fall 2012. All of our entrants are eligible to be invited to be Guest Designers, with those who have contributed the most to the challenges given top priority.

Speaking of "top," here are our Bright Summer Days Challenge Top 3:

April Jackson. This card certainly shows off the "Bright Summer Days" theme with the sunshine. And what a delightful way of displaying the tree from the "Season of Friendship" stamp set. Those bright flowers seem to love the sun shining down on them and that little bird reminded one of our Design Team members of the mockingbird singing outside her window – such a happy little fellow!

Patty Corriere. What a beautifully designed and executed card! All of the card's elements go together so well – the colors, the layout and the little piece of ribbon. And we definitely wanted to taste those cherries – they certainly look good enough to eat!

Diane Vander Galien. Diane did a fab job of showing off one of Stampin' Up!'s newest Hostess Sets and some of its newest colors and papers with this lovely window card. What makes this card especially easy on the eyes is the beautiful balance of all the elements that make it up.

SUO Challenge #45 – Our Top 3!

5 / 28 / 12

What a gorgeous bouquet of flowers you all brought to the SUO Challenge Blog! We all loved looking through all the entries, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of CASEing going on! As always, it was hard to "pick" our favorite flowers, but we think that you'll all love the bouquet we chose. So here are our Top 3 for the 3-Dimensional Flower Stampin' Up! Only challenge! Just click on a picture to find out more about the card from the designer's blog.

Sandi McIver. Look at all the different Stampin' Up! tools Sandi used to make this gorgeous flower! The textured petals take this to a whole new level – we'd love to have a bunch of these flowers in a vase our our desks!

Bonnie Klass. This is a delightfully folded flower for this card, and we especially liked the way that Bonnie tied the leaves of the flower together with the knotted accent ribbon. "Inspire" is the perfect word for this card!

Christine Blain. This is definitely not your basic Simply Sent kit card! We love how Christine really kicked it up a few notches with the beautifully matching flower, the layers and the bow.