SUOC #67 – Spring is in the Air!

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I know that it snowed this weekend where a lot of you live. But Spring is still in the air somewhere out there! And look at the places where the snow has thinned out a bit and you'll see the beginnings of lots of Spring Flowers peeking through! My favorite part of Spring is when the birds start singing up a storm looking for mates and letting us all know that they are building their nests for all those little nestlings that will be filling the air with their begging chirps. Yes, even where I live in Hawaii, the birds are letting us know that winter is over – beginning much too early in the morning for my taste! Oh, and of course Spring is that time when a person's fancy turns to love! I'm not limiting that to the young or the men.

For our last challenge, there were lots of projects that featured Spring as we were getting ready to celebrate our Spring holidays. But Spring has just started and there are so many ways to celebrate it with our Stampin' Up! Only products! We hope you will pull out your Spring stamps, papers, and embellishments and get started right away to make some fun project for this week's challenge! The "rules," as always, are at the end of this post, as is the link tool to use to share our project with us (and multiple projects are always welcome).

To get you started, here are some fun samples from our design team!

To participate in our challenge, make a card or other paper-crafted 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.

PLEASE remember this: We're looking for projects posted to the internet after March 25, 2013. This is a NEW challenge!

And, of course, your projects should be 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 or in any other project included in your blog post 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: March 26, 2013 (3 am USA Eastern Time) –

April 6, 2013 (6 am USA Eastern Time)

SUOC #66, Our Spring Holiday Top 3!

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Our last Stampin' Up! Only Challenge was to make a project about Easter, Passover, or whatever holiday you celebrate as Spring begins. And what a diverse group of entries we received covering these celebrations! Thank you all so much for contributing some fab ideas for this week's holidays!

As always, no matter how many wonderful projects we receive, we choose our Top 3 and I hope you like them as well as we did. For those of you who are awarded our "Top 3" designation, don't forget that you are welcome to use our html "Top 3" code that you can find in the middle part of our left column!

Karren Johnson. We loved the layout of this card, including the way that Karren "popped" the balloon from the circle on the right. The colors are beautifully balanced, too, as well as the design of the card with those lovely colored flowers in the lower left.

Amanda Frankel. What a beautifully creative display of punch art in this unique design. This is a wonfderful use of Stampin' Up! products!

Deena Boos Deena's card is just what those of us who continue to get snow want our spring to look like! The flowers are so realistic, and this makes a beautiful Easter card!

SUO Challenge #66 – Easter Parade – and More!

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So very many of us have already started to make our Spring greeting cards, not just for Easter but also for other celebrations such as the Spring Equinox and the Festival of Passover. There are so many stamps and embellishments that we can use for all of these kinds of cards that Stampin' Up! provides for us that it's definitely a fun time of the year for us to show off our creativity.

Your challenge over the next two weeks is to show YOUR creativity for your favorite seasonal celebration. Most of our design team members are showing off Stampin' Up!'s Easter Stamps. But you are definitely NOT limited to Easter and we are really looking forward to lots of different ideas from all of you!

As always, the rules for the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge blog are at the end of this blog post. Be sure to let us know if you have any questions. For now, we hope you'll enjoy getting some inspiration from our Design Team!

PLEASE remember this: We're looking for cards posted to the internet after March 11, 2013. This is a NEW challenge!

Challenge Dates: March 12, 2013 (3 am USA Eastern Time) –

March 23, 2013 (9 am USA Eastern Time)

SUO Challenge #65 – Going Green!

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It's hard to believe that, before the end of this week, March will be here! And once March is here – at least in the northern hemisphere – we are going to be beginning to be seeing lots of green! Already I have seen photos of crocuses with their green leaves peeking through some snow.

And of course there are those of us who have fun with St. Patrick's Day Green! I remember going to school on St. Patrick's Day and making sure that I had at least something green or else it was open season on pinching! This month St. Patty's Day is a Sunday and I'll be sure to have my favorite green sweater no matter where I head that day!

But whether you celebrate the green of spring or the green of a bit of the Irish, or just one or more of the fun greens that are in the Stampin' Up! collection, I hope you'll join in our Going Green Challenge.

Our Design Team has a fun variety of Green to help you with some inspiration –
and we're looking forward to your challenge entries. All the rules are at the end of this post.