SUO Challenge #46 – Our Top 3!

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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!

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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.

SUO Challenge #44 – Our Top 3!

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We are finally getting around to a review of all of the gorgeous projects entered into our Mother's Day challenge, now that the SUO Challenges Coordinator has recovered from a bit of jet lag. Gosh that's getting harder the older I get!

It's also getting harder and harder for the SUO Challenge Design Team to come to an agreement on our Top 3 for our challenges. We are SO thrilled to have Stampin' Up! only projects of such quality all in one place! Of course, for Mother's Day, the projects were no exception. And here are the Top 3 on which we have finally decided. Congratulations to them all – and be sure to click on the photograph of their projects to go to their blogs or galleries to learn more about them!

Jonia Smith. The word that popped up on several of our ballots was, "Wow!" This set for Mom is beyond spectacular. And those 3-Dimensional flowers are just gorgeous! We do hope that Jonia will join in our next challenge (which, as you all now know is to make a project with 3-Dimensional flowers).

Gayle Wheeler. We all loved the details on both the card and the envelope. This is a delightful use of a color combo, showing how it works on both a light and dark background. We especially like how Gayle decorated the envelope for this ensemble!

Diane Vander Galien. There are so many delightful little details on this pop-up card that make it just beautiful to look at! The ribbon, pearls, and the spritzing have help to create a soft and feminine feel which is just perfect for Mother's Day!

SUO Challenge #43 – Our Top 3!

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Thanks so much to all of you who joined in our challenge to say "Goodbye to the Occasions Mini Catalog." Some of you, of course, aren't in the North American Mini Catalog zone, so you featured stamps from other catalogs, which is just fine. We're nothing if not flexible here at Stampin' Up! Only (except we're not flexible when it comes to our "Stampin' Up! ONLY rule; we tend to dig our heels in on that!)

As always, so many great projects and so many of you received mention as we determined our Top 3 this week. So on to our congratulations for projects well done to::

Diane Vander Galien. Oh, my! How soft are those watercolored colors, and how beautifully layered is the card!! This is such an elegant card, and shows off so many wonderful techniques and products that it's hard to focus on any one as the "star" of the card. If nothing else, all the texture just made us say, "Wow, what a pretty card!"

Trish Giesbrecht. This card has so many elements that are just perfectly placed on it! The embossing with the Labels Framelits is a perfect frame for those two little flowers. Again, a very soft and pretty card!

Susan Rowe. This is not just a card – it's a whole suite of projects that makes a perfect gift package! Susan's in Australia, so is using the delicious Spice Cake paper to which we up north said, "Goodbye" back in January. So nice to see it again in such a fab project!

If you'd like to see more about any of these three projects, just click on the picture!