SUO Challenge #57, Elegant Autumn – Our Top 3!

11 / 12 / 1211 / 11 / 12

Autumn isn't just all about cute – and quite a few of you agreed with us and entered our Elegant Autumn Challenge! Such lovely projects, and I'm sure many of them are going to be cased before the season ends – and even beyond!

Thanks for all of your entries! And congratulations to our Top 3 for this challenge!

Melissa Davies. OK – our first of the Top 3 isn't in an Autumn Season right now. Melissa lives in Australia where Spring is the season of the moment, so her focus was on things getting ready to grow in her seed packet project. Every detail in Melissa's spring gardening-theme card is amazing. We loved the rock-n-rolled leaves, the Crystal Effects on the die-cut letters, the subtle script from French Foliage over the First Edition DSP, right down to the tiny pearls on the Adorning Accents scallops.

Vicki Burdick. Vicki's project is just simply gorgeous. Our favorites were the amazing punch art pumpkins and the lattice in the background.

Aimee Cretsinger. What fabulous leaves and we truly liked the way Aimee colored the Hodge Podge Hardware to match the other elements in the card.

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 – 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)