SUO Challenge #55 – Mmmm, Feel that Texture! And there’s blog candy involved!

10 / 2 / 1210 / 3 / 12

This month is a milestone for the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge Design Team as we are beginning our 3rd year of challenges!

Of course, we wouldn't be here without all of you who enter those challenges and provide a great opportunity for all of our readers to see lots of fun and fabulous samples of Stampin' Up! Only projects! So congratulations to all of you for keeping this challenge going!

To really show our appreciation, the design team is offering blog candy for each of our Top 3 entrants for this challenge! But first, you might want to know what the challenge is (if you haven't guessed it from the title of this post): it's to make a project that has texture to it. As you can see from our Design Team's samples, texture can take many forms. But the most frequent of those forms is texture that's created with Stampin' Up!'s Textured Impressions Embossing Folders! So an embossing folder of your choice is our blog candy this time around.

All you have to do is enter your project (card, scrap page, 3-D project) with some texture in it, and, in about 2 weeks, our Design Team will choose the Top 3 designs from all the entries. Once your project has been selected as a Top 3, I'll be in touch to find out which currently-available Stampin' Up! Embossing Folder you'd like. I'll order it for you and send it off to you as soon as I get it from Stampin' Up!

Now onto our Design Team's inspirations to get you started on our challenge!

Robin's Project

Jennifer's Project

Mary's Project

Cindy E's Project

Deb's Project

Connie's Project

Karen's Kreation

Heidi's Project

Pam's Project

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 1, 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 2, 2012 (3 am USA Eastern Time) –

October 13, 2012 (9 am USA Eastern Time)

SUO Challenge #54, For the Kids – Our Top 3!

10 / 2 / 12

If projects both from our Design Team as well as from our entrants this week are any indication, there are a lot of lucky children out there who are going to receive some really great paper-crafted projects! As always, we had a lot of fun chatting about all the projects, but, as always, we have managed to pick a Top 3 from a really wonderful group of projects!

So here are our Top 3 picks for Challenge #54! Click on a photograph to learn more about each project from the designer's blog.

Melissa Davies. We thought using the truck stamp as a dump truck and having the contents spill over to the base of the card was a fab idea! Of course, using the framelit for the shape of the card and the creative cutting of the "rocks" were equally creative. Sigh. Some of us have more of the creative genes that others!

Shana Gaff. Aren't these "happy colors" picked out by a child just the greatest?! And then the card itself with its creative design is such a fun idea!

Julie Cluff. This bag with the coordinating tag made us smile – and those yellow spider eyes are perfect! You definitely should check out Julie's video on how to make this whole project!

SUO Challenge #54 – For the Kids!

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While we hope you've enjoyed the last couple of challenges that focused on projects that definitely were NOT greeting cards, this week we can all go back to making greeting cards. OR you can continue with making something a bit more 3-dimensional! Whatever project you choose this week, we'd like it to be something fun "For the Kids"!

Our design team has a wide range of projects today to help you get some ideas for your own project – including some not cards! We welcome all kinds of projects – and we can hardly wait to see them!

Connie's Card

Mary's Card

Karen's Project

Heidi's Project

Robin's Card

Deb's Project

Pam's Project

Cindy Elam's Card

Cindy Coutts' 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 September 17, 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: September 18, 2012 (3 am USA Eastern Time) –

September 29, 2012 (9 am USA Eastern Time)

SUO Challenge 51, Love Those Designer Papers – Our Top 3!

8 / 20 / 128 / 20 / 12

There are certainly many of you who do, indeed, love your Stampin Up! Designer Series Papers! We were thrilled to see all the different papers and all the different ways that you used them as part of our Love Those Designer Papers! Challenge. I've already had to pull some out of my Designer Paper box to see if I can CASE some of your projects – what fun!

So thank you all for your fabulous entries, from which we have picked this challenge's Top 3! Just remember that you're all tops in our estimation – lots of oohs and aahs this time as there are every time we send out a challenge.

Now for our Designer Papers Top 3. Be sure to click on the pictures of their projects to go to their blogs to learn more about them!

Diane Vander Galien.

We had no idea that so many of our design team members just LOVE pinwheels! And what a fantastic job Diane did in showing off the Designer Series Papers with the pinwheels as well as with the pennants. She even made that delightful holder to complete this wonderful centerpiece! (Your SUO Challenges Coordinator did NOT miss the candy on the table! Definitely MY fave!)

Julie Cluff. How did she do that??? Well, Julie described in quite some detail how she made that gorgeous Peacock with all those layers! Just a WOW! And how stunning is the bird against that backdrop of the International Bazaar Designer Series Paper – great accent!

Melissa Davies. We all loved the soft colors and delicate elements in this card. All the details just perfectly accent the design of this simply beautiful card. Fabulous look!

Thanks to all of you for participating in the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge!