SUO Challenge #41 – Our Top 3!

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Oh, my! Another week where over half of the challenge entries received Top 3 votes from our Design Team! The change of seasons brings out the best in all of us, it seems! Thank you all for being so creative AND sharing your creations with us at the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge!

So, a drum roll, please, for those who received the most votes for this week's Top 3!

Tonya Denton. I think that one team member's response to this card says it all: "That lily rocks!" I'm sure that anyone that looks at this card will wonder why they can't sniff the scent of the Stargazer Lily, it's so realistic. What a beautiful job you did on this card, Tonya!

Paula Sievers. Last week's challenge was to "Think Spring (or Autumn)" because many of our readers and contributors are from the southern hemisphere. Paula is in Australia, and she created this lovely card to welcome Autumn. I particularly like how Paula made that lovely background with squares of Cajun Craze and More Mustard, and how well the colors in the "Lovely as a Tree" stamp make that central layer just pop off the background!

Patty Gorka. There are so many little details in this card that just make it a joy to look at! The rows of piercings, the way that the cherry blossoms are colored, the whole color combination – these all combine to make a very beautiful card!

Thank you ALL for being a part of the SUO Challenge!

SUO Challenge #41 – Think Spring (or Autumn?)

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For most of us, we are today finding ourselves welcoming the colorful blossoms of Spring. So what better challenge to offer than to create a card or other project celebrating the arrival of all the new life that Spring brings to the Northern Hemisphere! But what about our Aussie and Kiwi friends? For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere of our lovely planet, you are headed into the cooler – but no less colorful! – season of Autumn.

Whatever season you're welcoming in the latter half of March, we challenge you to create a card showing off the colors of the season!

As always, we welcome projects made with Stampin' Up! products only. All the fine print about that is in the not-too-fine print over to the left of this blog post. Also over on the left you'll find some other important limitations, too. We will accept for consideration for our Top 3 each time only projects that are posted to the Internet (blog, gallery, wherever) AFTER this challenge goes live on March 20th. I thank all of you for being just perfect about not using your linked blog post to sell your products such as tutorials and kits. This is all for fun to get ideas out there for all of our readers about how they can use their Stampin' Up! products, and we're glad that you are entering your projects in this spirit!

To get some ideas going, here are ideas from our Design Team – all of whom live in the Northern Hemisphere, so they're featuring the season of Spring!

Cindy Elam

Mary Brown

Heidi Baks

Jennifer Timko

SUO Challenge #40 – Our Top 3!

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Once again, over half of the entries in our challenge received Top 3 votes. Your ingenuity shown in all the fab entries for "It's Fun Being Green" just amazed us all. We are just so pleased to have such talented people entering our challenge and we look forward every time to seeing what you design for us!

But, as always, we like to single out three of the entries for recognition as one of our Top 3. It's so hard, because we'd like to make it a top 6 or 7 or 8…. But not. So here are our Top 3 for this challenge. You may click on any of the pictures to go to the artist's blog for more details about her project.

Paula Sievers. Everything on this card is just fabulous! The hills outlined with the edgelits, the little rosette in the lower left corner, the sun – and all the textured elements – really make it a very special card!

Karen Szczepkowski. This card really took the idea of making the green the focal point to heart (sorry, but one of the design team said it first, so I'm not to blame for the pun). And what a unique way to use the Sprinkled Expressions Sale-a-bration stamp. Just darling!

Patty Gorka. Again, the use of Edgelits for the hills in this card was definitely unique. And that butterfly just really shows off the design of the stamp from Mixed Bunch. Finishing the card off with the diagonal grid is a perfect complement to all the other texture in the card.

SUO Challenge #40 – It’s Fun Being Green!

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(PLEASE NOTE: We will only consider for our Top 3 those projects that have been posted to your blog or other online gallery AFTER the posting date of our challenge! Please see the highlighted text below.)

Welcome to the SUO Challenge Blog 40th challenge! Every time we hit a number with a zero at the end I feel that we should have a celebration. So why not celebrate with my favorite March color – Green! And it's not just that St. Patrick's Day is in March – you'll have guessed this by looking at some of the cards from our design team even if you didn't focus on that! It's also that, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere, we'll be celebrating the first day of spring on the 20th. And if the season of Spring doesn't bring images of green, I'm not sure what would!

Have you guessed that your challenge this week is to make a card with Green as the focal point? Yup! Green it is. Now we are not the first challenge group to have green as the focus of our challenge this month, but we ask that you enter into our challenge only cards that you've posted online AFTER you've read this announcement blog post.

Even if you've already made a few cards with green for this season, I'm sure that our Design Team entries this week will inspire you to make yet another and enter it in our challenge! I've enjoyed looking at every one of them, and I'm looking forward to seeing all your entries, too!