Wow!  This day did not at all go as I had planned!  I woke up this morning, expecting that my 3 year old son would be going to pre-school for the day, and at 7:30 AM my plans were ruined.  His school called that the day had to be cancelled since the teacher had an emergency and they could not get a replacement!  Well my plans for a day working and filming and creating was gone in a space of 1 minute.  My day was instead spent trying to entertain my son and keep him out of trouble.  He himself was not happy about missing his school.  He loves to go, and being such an active child, needs the company and environment to burn off his excess energy.  It is now 10 pm and I finally have a silent house with no one calling out anymore.  Things have just been so crazy for both Andrea and I that we just have not had as much time to blog as we would like to, so we do apologize and hope you can be patient with us as we try to slog through our workload.

OK, so for today’s card, I wanted to try something different.  Every month I get the Paper Craft magazine, and I just love reading it and looking for ideas.  Well there is one designer in there who’s work I just love.  Her name is Betsy Veldman, and I always look forward to seeing her work.  She has such a beautiful Vintagy style that is just gorgeous!  Well I saw a card on page 53 of the March/April 2010 issue of the magazine that was created by Betsy Veldman.  I wanted to see if I could create the same sort of feel/card  using our Stampin’ Up! products.  The ledger paper I used actually came from an accounting ledger book which I purchased for 10 dollars from an office supply store.  I am not sure If I like how mine turned out, but here it is anyway.  I don’t have anything else that I am ready to show yet but figured I may as well show my iffy card for lack of anything better.  This thursday I have a puch project to share which I am just tickled pink with!  I will have the PDF for you tomorrow.

Hugs,

Well we are sorry for being Late with our drawing!  We actually thought that we had put the drawing on Monday not Friday, so there was definitely a bit of a mix-up!  We would like to thank everyone who entered their name for the draw, and of course offer our congratulations to our 5 lucky winners!  We wish that everyone could have won, but allas it is not to be.  In order to keep it random, we used the Random.Org generator to select our winners.  So without further ado, here they are!:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

42	80	114	43	166

Timestamp: 2010-03-08 19:16:11 UTC

Congratulations to our winners.  In order to collect your prize, please contact us at andrea@sunnystampin.com .  Remember to place in the subject line ‘ Fancy Flower March WPS Winner’.

Thanks so much and have a great day!

I just love this stamp set, and I don’t know why I did not get it sooner.  They are so whimsical and cute!  Well to match their cuteness, I had to get something that was a little on the cute side too.  The card itself is easy to make, but just a little time consuming with all the steps!  There is no video today since the most difficult thing here is cutting, and some how I did not think that you would be interested in watching a whole video on me cutting!  The other thing is that I am really strapped for time lately.  lot’s of upcoming projects as well as a move to plan for.  Our house is officially going on the market this week and I am attempting to Feng Shue (not sure how to spell that) my house.  Essentially I am trying to hide years of clutter!  Well I do hope you enjoy the card, and I look forward to sharing with your again

Download Handout Here

Hugs,

Did the title pique your interest?  It sure did mine when I received an email from the Splitcoastampers WICKED challenge coordinator asking me to host the March WICKED challenge. 

WICKED stands for Wonderfully Inspiring Challenges Keep Educating Demos!.  This is one of the many fabulous challenges found on the Stampin’ Up! demonstrator side of Splitcoaststampers. The purpose of the WICKED challenge is to help demonstrators grow their business and/or their creativity.

I came up with three challenges that I regularly use to develop my own creativity.  Here they are :

Challenge 1: Work with What you Have. Pick something from your stash that you bought because you “had to have it”, but haven’t used because you weren’t quite sure what to do with it. For me, it was the ribbon I used for my card. This was probably the project I struggled with the most out of all three. It took 2 days for me to finally come up with a project I liked using this ribbon. Download a pdf handout on how this card was made HERE.

Challenge #2: Try a new color combo. The idea here is to step outside of your comfort zone. The colors I chose are Old Olive, So Saffron and Dusty Durango. You can either use those, or reach for colors that you don’t normally use or you don’t normally combine.  You can download a pdf handout for this card HERE.

Challenge #3: Find a one page scrapbook layout or “sketch” in your favourite magazine and re-create it using all (or mostly all) Stampin’ Up! product. Then, if you want to challenge yourself further, turn it into a 2-page layout. There are so many wonderful scrapbooking products on the market. As a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator I think it’s important to show my customers that you can re-create a lot of the “popular looks” or “hot trends” using many of our Stampin’ Up! products. The second part of the challenge comes from the fact that as a scrapbooker I find that it’s often hard to find ideas for 2-page layouts. I’ve started turning to some of my favourite scrapbooking publications (Creating Keepsakes & Scrapbooks Etc.) and taking a one page sketch or layout and turning it into a 2 page layout. You can download a pdf handout of the scrap page HERE.

Now if you’re a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator you can join in on the challenge by clicking HERE.  Please note that you do have to be a member of the Stampin’ Up! Demo side of Splitcoaststampers.  If you’re not a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator I still encourage you to play along as this is a fantastic way of developing your own creativity.  All you have to do is create your project, post it to your blog or website or gallery and then leave me the link in the comments section of this post stating which of the challenges it pertains to.  Please note that your comment may not show up right away – the “anti-spam” software incorporated into this site hold all comments with links for moderation. That means that I may have to “accept” your comment before it shows up.

I hope you decide to play along. As a little encouragement, I am offering an incentive for participating.  I will randomly draw the names of two people who post links to their projects in the comments section of this post.  If your name is drawn then you’ll win a planner or stamp class by email of your choice (value: $22.95 – $24.95).

Since it’s always better to start sooner as opposed to later, your deadline for this challenge is Sunday night.  Winners will be announced next Monday.  Good Luck!