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!

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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 53, Boxes and Bags – Our Top 3!

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Thanks to everyone who participated in our Boxes and Bags challenge. What wonderful projects, and a great post to review whenever we are in need of ideas for boxes and bags. Every one of these projects is worth a CASE!

But, as always, we have picked a Top 3 to highlight. Clicking on any of the photos will take you to the designer's blog post for more information about each of the projects. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Christie Miche. To quote one of the design team members, "This is just so darned cute!" Christie also shares a linkl to the video for making the origami bootie. We are just so impressed with the use of the Stampin' Up! paper and ribbon for this perfect baby gift!

Diane Vander Galien. We couldn't decide which part of this very stylish project we liked most. The ribbon is just perfect, the window in the box is so much fun, and the tag with the framelit background is such an elegant finish!

Melissa Davies. We especially liked the way that Melissa put the Wisteria Wonder and Marina Mist colors together so that they looked like they were made for one another. All the perfect little details bring these two colors together beautifully. I think my personal favorite detail is the little Marina Mist bird!