SUO Challenge #49 – A Special Thank You!

7 / 10 / 127 / 10 / 12

My favorite type of greeting card to make is a "Thank You" card. There are always people to thank for something, whether it be a little random act of kindness, a gift for a special occasion, or a very special treat. And it's so easy to pull out some paper, ink and embellishments and whip up a quick note card!

Sometimes, though, a kindness seems to call for just a bit more time and effort on my "Thank You," whether it be a card or a gift. And I want this to be a Special Thank You! We in the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge crew are pretty sure that this happens to you, too. So this week we challenge you create that Special Thank You card or gift and share it with all of us and our blog readers.

A big benefit of your participating in this challenge? The next time YOU need a Special Thank You, it will be there ready for you to use!

As always, you'll have 12 days for our challenge and, as always, please be sure that your projects are Stampin' Up! Only! When you've finished with your project, just click on the link tool at the end of the post and follow the instructions! And now here are our Design Team Member Special Thank You projects!

Michelle's Card

Deb's Card

Karen's Card

Heidi's Card

Mary's Card

Robin's Card

Jennifer's Card

Pam'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 July 9, 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 #48 – Our Top 3!

7 / 9 / 12

Oh, my, you all seem to love our Stampin' Up! Birds! From chicks to chickadees and robins to roosters, you used at least 15 different Stampin' Up! Bird stamps and even a few punches! What fun it was for us at the SUO Challenges Design Team to review all of them. And, as always, it was a challenge for us to come up with a Top 3!

But we did manage to select three of the entries for our ""For the Birds" challenge as our favorites, though we really did love them all!

Diane Vander Galien. This is a perfect stamp for the spotlighting technique! And the card itself is beautiful overall, especially with the way that Diane used the Delicate Designs Embossing Folder and the Large Scallop Edgelit on the mat as well as on the stamped/embossed layer!

Vicki Parson. What an elegant card, with all those perfectly coordinated neutral colors! The understated tone and simplicity of this card is accented beautifully with that carefully designed bow.

Crystal Langton. What a gorgeous vintage-style cover for this journal! The collage is just done perfectly. I, for one, find something new and different in this project every time I look at it!

SUO Challenge #48 – For the Birds!

6 / 26 / 126 / 26 / 12

With a quick pass through my 2012-2013 Stampin' Up! Catalog, I found 45 stamp sets that had at least one bird in them! That's over 20% of the stamps that Stampin' Up! has in its current catalog! (Disclaimer! I did this on my own with no one checking. But even if I missed one or two stamps – or counted one or two more than I should have! – it's still pretty close to that 20% number.) And those don't even count the Punch and the Sizzix Die that feature birds!

So, with birds being such a big element in so many Stampin' Up! products, we decided that it would be fun to challenge you to make a Stampin' Up! Only project featuring a Stampin' Up! bird! I'm so excited to see which birds you all choose for this week's challenge. Already our Design Team (all of whom work independently of each other) has shown some favorites with two birds stamps being featured in two different cards. We're having a bit of a chuckle over that. What are your favorites? We hope you'll make a card or other project with them and post them here for our challenge!

As always, you'll have 12 days for our challenge and, as always, please be sure that your projects are Stampin' Up! Only! When you've finished with your project, just click on the link tool at the end of the post and follow the instructions! And now here are our Design Team Member projects that are For the Birds:

Cindy Coutts (Cindy also has a video about these cards here!)

Pam Staples

Karen Barber

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 June 25, 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 #47 – Our Top 3!

6 / 25 / 12

Fun and frilly was definitely the name of the game with all of the fab projects that our entrants showed off for our Fancy Frills challenge! I read the word, "CASE," on several of our SUO Challenge Design Team voting ballots this weekend, and I've got my eye on a couple of your projects for that, too!

So, with a fancy drum roll, we are pleased to announce our Top 3 for SUO Challenge #47:

Melissa Davies. This Black and White design shows off Melissa's frills beautifully! And can't you just imagine the whole project in another single color of your own choosing? This is such a classically elegant card, with so many perfect little details – especially the new Doily Sizzlit with the black behind it showing off the details of the die.

Vicki Burdick. There are so many lovely details on this card, also! It was hard for our team to pick out any one feature – the way all the details go together in the card's layout just made us smile! If we had to pick a favorite detail, it's the way that the flowers are colored.

Diane Vander Galien. Oh so feminine! The muted colors and embossing would have been gorgeous all by themselves; but adding the ruched seam binding ribbon over the Edgelits border, and then the pleated paper underneath just sent this card over the top!