SUO Challenge 35, Feeling a Bit Punchy?

12 / 27 / 1112 / 26 / 11

Can you believe that the holidays are almost over? Those of you who celebrate Christmas are probably feeling the "punchiest" right now as the big weekend is over and all that's left is the cleaning up. You're allowed to feel punchy!

Today at SUO Challenges, though, "punchy" refers to all those wonderful punches that Stampin' Up! has had for us over the years. Most of the time in my crafting, punched features are just background or accents for the main motif of the project. But many of Stampin' Up!'s punches are good enough to be the main feature in their own right. So your challenge this week is to create a card, scrap page or 3-D project where the punch is the star of the show! As you can see from our Design Team projects, punch art is a great way to show off those punches – but it's not the only way! I'm sure that you have some great ideas to share with us, and we can hardly wait to see them!

And in case you missed our post from yesterday, please welcome Cindy Coutts back as a member of our Design Team!

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.

As a bonus, Pam would also like to share a card she made using punches from My Digital Studio by Stampin' Up!

Robin Messenheimer

SUO Challenge 34 – Our Top 3!

12 / 26 / 1112 / 26 / 11

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 Design Team – An Exciting Announcement

12 / 26 / 1112 / 26 / 11

As many of you know, the SUO Challenge Blog was founded over a year ago by Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, Cindy Coutts. She pulled together a fun Design Team and it's been going strong ever since. Earlier this year, though, Cindy felt that she had to devote more of her time to her other exciting personal and professional endeavors, and turned the SUO Challenge Blog over to the Design Team. Shortly after that, the team asked me to be the Design Team Coordinator, and I've been having a blast doing that ever since!

Recently, though, Cindy has decided to return to her Stampin' Up! roots and is once more a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. Not only that, she has accepted our invitation to rejoin us as a member of the SUO Challenge Blog Design Team! We here at SUOC are so excited to have her back, with her great talent and all of her wonderful ideas. She's jumping right in, too, and will have a sample on the new challenge tomorrow.

I hope you will all join with me in welcoming Cindy back! It's great to have her here with us again!

SUO Challenge 34, Merry and Happy and Everything Joyous!

12 / 13 / 1112 / 13 / 11

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.