SUO Challenge #60 – A Season of Glitter!

12 / 11 / 1212 / 14 / 12

No matter what holiday or holidays you celebrate this time of the year, I'm sure that Glitter is a fun part of it! The good thing for us here at Stampin' Up! Only Challenges is that Stampin' Up! knows how important Glitter is to us papercrafters this time of the year. There is so much available for us to use to sparkle up our projects!

Your challenge for our last post before Christmas is to make a project that features Glitter as an important part of the design. You can see that most of us were focused on winter and the holidays – especially trees and snowflakes! But we did not all choose to make holiday cards, either! So feel free to let your imaginations go anywhere you wish – but make sure to add glitter!

The guidelines and link for this challenge are at the end of this post. We hope you'll get some fun inspiration from our Design Team's projects!

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 December 10, 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 #59, Know When to Fold ‘Em – Our Top 3!

12 / 11 / 12

We're a bit late in getting our Top 3 post out this time around – but here it is! We were all so impressed with all the different folds you entered in this challenge, and certainly pleased that some of you chose to use a Design Team tutorial! Imitation is definitely the sincerest form of flattery when it comes to paper crafting!

Again it was hard to pick our top three – we had to go through a couple of tie-breaking exercises! And so many of you received votes. We are certainly very fortunate in having each and every one of you enter our challenges!

Congratulations to our Folding Challenge Top 3!

De Williamson. What a beautifully creative "primitive" punch art picture, which is a great focal point for the easel card with a twist.

Donna Centamore. This is a gorgeous take on Karen Barber's M fold with the extra panel to make it stand up. We also loved the fussy cut of the Snow Festival Deer – and the sparkly antlers! What fun!

Diane Vander Galien. This is another beautiful take on a tutorial provided by one of our design team, Cindy Elam. And we were impressed with the envelope that Diane made for this lovely card!

SUO Challenge #59 – Know When to Fold ‘Em

11 / 27 / 1211 / 27 / 12

As much as I love making cards to send to friends and family, I love folding those cards in some other way that just in half. It's a really fun surprise to open an envelope and pull out an unexpected fold. Sometimes they're simple folds, and sometimes they're a bit more on the complicated side. But they're always fun!

No matter what kind of a fold you use for a card, the card can range from cute and fun to gorgeous and elegant, and everywhere in between – as you can see from the creations offered by our Design Team for this challenge.

Now we're ready to see what you like to do with your favorite folds! Whether they're popular or not-so-well-known, quick and easy or something that takes a bit of time and patience – we'd love to see them all! The link tool to showcase your creation is at the end of this post, along with a summary of the "rules" for Stampin' Up! Only Challenges.

Connie's Project

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 November 26, 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 #58, CAS Christmas Card – Our Top 3!

11 / 26 / 1211 / 26 / 12

From all the entries that we had this week, it looks like "Clean and Simple" – or CAS – is a well-liked way to make greeting cards! If you're reading this and didn't get a chance to look at all the entries, I'm sure if you did you'd find something absolutely wonderful on which to base one of your own projects. I know I did!

As always, we were able to designate three of the entries as our "Top 3." We had a 4-way tie for the 3rd spot this time (which we broke, of course), and more than half of your entries got at least one vote. So you certainly should know that we love your projects! We also had some new entrants, and we'd like to extend a special, "Welcome," to you all. Thanks for joining us!

And now for this challenge's Top 3. Click on the pictures to go to their blogs.

Jenn Picard. OK – the consensus of the team is that the little bird looking out at us along with Rudolph (love the red nose!) is just too cute. And the way the punched wreath coordinates with the prints on the Designer Paper makes it seem as if this set was made for it.

Vicki Burdick. We think the way Vicki used this stamp set is just darling, The cut out holly leaves are made especially cute with the pearls colored with a red marker. Love how she balanced the design with the alternating holly leaves, too.

Rosario Corral. The blue and white color combo in this card really make the whole design "pop." The Illuminate Glimmer on the texturized oval is a sparkling final touch..