SUO Challenge #45 – 3-Dimensional Flowers

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Everywhere I look these days, I see flowers everywhere – even on cards and other papercrafting projects! So, with many of us in the middle of prime late Spring flower season out in the garden, we decided that those of us at our computers should have some lovely flowers to view while we're surfing the net. So this week's challenge is to create a card or other project with 3-Dimensional Flowers on it. It can be anything from flowers popped up from a card's surface with some Stampin' Dimensionals, to fabric and ribbon flowers, to intricately folded paper flowers – and everything in between!!

Here are the projects offered by our SUO Challenge Design Team, a bouquet with flowers picked from the products in their Stampin' Up! stashes. While we may not be able to sniff these lovely flowers, I'm sure we can imagine how some of them might tickle our noses' fancy if we found them out in a garden.

Mary's Card

Heidi's Card

Jennifer's Card

Deb's Card

Karen's Card

Cindy Elam's Card

Cindy Coutts' CArd

Michelle's Card

Pam's Card

To participate in our challenge, make a card and post a photo of it to your blog or a gallery on the internet. Then come back here and use our link tool at the bottom of this post to share the photo with us! We're looking for cards posted to the internet after May 14, 2012, and (of course!) made with Stampin' Up! products only. The products may be those that are in current catalogs, or they may be retired products. But (as our blog title says) SUO – Stampin' Up! Only! This means that Products from other papercrafting, rubber stamp, die-making or other companies may not be included in your project if Stampin' Up! sells a like product. For example, Stampin' Up! does not sell sewing thread. So use of sewing thread from another company is just fine. Stampin' Up! does sell the Sizzix Big Shot, so use of die-cuts, texture plates or other such products from another company is not fine. If you have a question, please send an e-mail to our Coordinator, Robin Messenheimer, and she'll be glad to answer it!

SUO Challenge #44 – May is For Mothers!

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One of the most popular times of the year for making those special handmade greeting cards and gifts is the two weeks leading up to Mother's Day! So here we are right in the thick of Mother's Day preparation with a challenge that will be sure to gather interest around our Stampin' Up! world.

Even for those of us who do not have a mother with whom to celebrate the day, or who are not ourselves a mother, there is usually someone special who is a special mother in our lives. I have three special young women in my life who are mothers to my grandchildren, and they give me good reason to celebrate Mother's Day each and every year. It is for them that I make my special Mother's Day cards and gifts. I hope you will join me and the rest of the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge Design team in making and displaying projects that you make to celebrate Mother's Day 2012! Just add your project using the Link tool at the end of today's post!

Robin's Project

Jennifer's Card

Heidi Baks (There's a seed packet in this card!)

To participate in our challenge, make a card and post a photo of it to your blog or a gallery on the internet, and come back here and use our link tool at the bottom of this post to share the photo with us! We're looking for cards posted to the internet after April 30, 2012, and (of course!) made with Stampin' Up! products only. The products may be those that are in current catalogs, or they may be retired products. But (as our blog title says) SUO – Stampin' Up! Only! This means that Products from other papercrafting, rubber stamp, or other crafting companies may not be included in your project if Stampin' Up! sells a like product. For example, Stampin' Up! does not sell sewing thread. So use of sewing thread from another company is just fine. Stampin' Up! does not sell picture frames, so use of picture frames from another company is fine. If you have a question, please send an e-mail to our Coordinator, Robin Messenheimer, and she'll be glad to answer it!

As with the last challenge, the time for this challenge is going to be one day shorter than usual to accommodate some scheduling conflicts. We'll also be a bit late in announcing the Top 3 for this challenge – but it will only be a day or two later than usual.

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!

A Special Invitation for Stampin’ Up! Only Challenge #46!

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Sometimes when you're involved in something that's as much fun and as much of a success as the SUO Challenge Blog, you get into what might seem to be a bit of a rut. Post a challenge – get beautiful entries – oooh and aaah over the entries – select a top 3 – start all over again! Actually, not a bad routine at all!

But we've decided to break out of our routine a bit and invite some of you to be Guest Designers for a Special Edition of SUO Challenges! Those whom we're inviting are those of you who have been frequent contributors to our challenge over the last six months. We've decided that "frequent" means those of you who have contributed at least six projects to our challenge since November 2011. So we are very happy to invite the following contributors to be a Guest Designer for our May 29th Challenge.

Diane Hilborn
Julie Fields (Julz)
Kris Lynch
Bonnie Klass
Denise Pustelniak
Vannessa (Saffire's Stamping)
Jenny Greefhorst
Paula Sievers
Lisa Martz

I would like each of you to contact me by e-mail, and I will tell you the theme for the challenge and let you know about our deadline and other administrative details. If you choose not to participate, that's just fine – we want everyone to have fun with this challenge blog, so there are no requirements of you other than that projects be, of course, Stampin' Up! Only!

And if your name is not on this list and you'd like it to be, don't worry! We are going to do this regularly going forward, and the next time will not require an almost two-year wait!