SUO Challenge #58 – A Clean and Simple Holiday Card

11 / 13 / 1211 / 13 / 12

There's only a month and a half left until Christmas and even less time left until Hanukkah! Do you have YOUR holiday cards done?

This is the time of the year when some of us are desperate for some great ideas for Clean and Simple – CAS – designs that we are able to complete quickly but still end up with a beautiful greeting card. Our design team members have come up with some fabulous CAS ideas, and I know that you can, too!

So that's all your challenge is this time – create and share with us a lovely holiday card that's clean and simple. Not too many embellishments, not too many layers, not too many steps. In fact, some of the most beautiful cards I've seen have had no layers, and lots of open space, drawing our attention to a small but elegant element on the card. I really can hardly wait to see all your ideas!

To get you started, I hope you'll enjoy our Design Team's Clean and Simple designs!

To participate in our challenge, make a card or other project 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 November 12, 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!

Challenge Dates: November 13, 2012 (3 am USA Eastern Time) –

November 24, 2012 (9 am USA Eastern Time)

SUO Challenge #57 – Elegant Autumn (or Spring if you’re down under!)

10 / 30 / 1210 / 29 / 12

Ah, here we are almost into the month of November the second full month of Autumn. The past few weeks, I'm sure we've all enjoyed all the fun projects that people have been sharing using some of the fun Halloween products that Stampin' Up! has created for those of us who love Stampin' Up! products – I know I have!

So now I'm ready for a little bit of elegance as we here in the United States start paying more attention to our Thanksgiving celebration. Of course, there are many, many ways to make a project elegant. Stamps, layouts, colors, embellishments – all can make a project elegant. I'm sure you'll agree that there's a nice variety of elegance provided as an inspiration by our Design Team. And I'm equally sure that there are many more ideas you have that can add some delight to our collection this week!

Your challenge is to make an elegant card, and give it an autumnal feel – or give it a spring time feel if you're in Australia or New Zealand! I'm sure there are some of us who would rather be looking forward to warmer weather already! As always, please make your projects with Stampin' Up! products only. We are really looking forward to see what you are going to use for this project!

Heidi's Card

Deb's Projecty

Robin's Card

Cindy Elam's Project

Mary's Card

Connie's Card

Jennifer's Project

Karen's Card

To participate in our challenge, make a card or other project 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 October 29, 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!

Challenge Dates: October 30, 2012 (3 am USA Eastern Time) –

November 10, 2012 (9 am USA Eastern Time)

SUO Challenge #56 – Stampin’ Up! Loves Animals!

10 / 16 / 1210 / 16 / 12

Have you noticed how many animals there are in the current collection of Stampin' Up! stamps? Oh, I'm sure you've seen all those various kinds of birds, a great collection of "bugs" such as butterflies and other such beasties, along with a smattering of sea creatures. But then add in all the mammals and you have a TON of animals in our current catalogs. It might be easier to count stamp sets WITHOUT animals! And I can't even imagine how many retired Stampin' Up! products there are with animals.

What we'd like you to do for this challenge is to use an animal in a Stampin' Up! Only creation and share it here with us at SUO Challenges! Of course you're not limited to stamps. There's Designer Series Papers with animals, and we love punch art and all other manner of creativity you can show us (origami anyone?). And you can even share your own personal pet-type animals as one of our Design Team Members has in her scrap page. But the projects do have to be Stampin' Up! Only.

I hope you'll enjoy the ideas that our Design Team has used to create their projects featuring animals. We're really looking forward to seeing YOUR ideas through the next two weeks!

Connie's Project

Karen's Project

Debs Project

Pam's Page

To participate in our challenge, make a card or other project 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 October 15, 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!

We have recently disqualified several entries and removed them from our blog because they have featured products from other companies. In all of the cases, there were Stampin' Up! products available that could have been used. So please do not submit any projects with non-Stampin' Up! products used.

We have also disqualified two entries because they were being advertised as part of an online class, and SUO Challenges is an advertising-free zone! We are trying to provide a fun place for people to come to find Stampin' Up! only projects, and hope you will help us in this effort.

Challenge Dates: October 16, 2012 (3 am USA Eastern Time) –

October 27, 2012 (9 am USA Eastern Time)

SUO Challenge #55, Feel That Texture – Our Top 3!

10 / 15 / 12

A special congratulations to our Top 3 for Challenge #55 in which we celebrated the beginning of our 3rd year as a Stampin' Up! Only challenge blog. What fun it's been these past two years, and we're really excited about the coming year with all the new products that Stampin' Up! will be offering – fab as always, we're sure!

Besides "just" being named our Top 3 for the week, each of these ladies gets to choose a Stampin' Up! Embossing Folder as blog candy to help us celebrate! If each of you would let me know which Embossing Folder you'd like, I'll place an order for it this week!

Offering Blog Candy was fun, and we may not wait for another whole year to do it! So keep in touch with us as the year goes on.

Shanna's Card Shana Gaff. The details in the leaves are spectacular, and we loved that Shana gave us some instructions on how to make our own! The button with the Baker's Twine and the layer with the embossed background add to the overall elegance in this stunning card.

Melissa's Card Melissa Davies. The colors and all of the details in this card are absolutely amazing! This is another elegant card with such a variety of textures that were perfect for this challenge!

Cat's Project Cat Spicer. The elegance in this card is the simplicity of the design, and the fun way in which Cat used texture to give us the feel of that sailboat on the waves. And what a fun idea to use the die she used for the waves – and the little detail of the sentiment on the bottom wave.

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