Two more challenges...

So I haven't done any challenges for Friday, but here are two from Thursday. Friday was spent travelling to IKEA, which is about a 2 hour drive south to Milton Keynes...essentially a northwestern suburb of London. It was an exhausting trip, and when I got home I had a splitting headache. After a nap to try and rid myself of the headache, a few of my neighbors decided to have a Smores party, so we were out toasting marshmallows and generally being disruptive. We then got paranoid and thought there were people breaking in to an abandoned house across from our community...so four of us (one who is almost 9 months pregnant) decide to go investigate, complete with fake "weapons" (a toy light saber and a toy gun...hey, you never know when you may find the need to do battle!!). Seriously: I don't know what we were thinking. And, we were making such a damn racket that there is NO WAY people didn't hear us coming. We were getting giddy, doing "Charlie's Angels" poses, acting like it was "Mission Impossible"...we're just a bunch of freaks. Too much sugar on a Friday night (did I mention there were smores...and also rice krispie treats? Yep, we're all married adults here!!). So all of that is why it's now going on 1AM and I'm still wide awake and lookin' for trouble. Tomorrow night we're all going on base to see "Hairspray", so that should be a unique experience. :-)

Okay, back to my original post. My ADD rears its ugly head as I got completely off track!

One challenge was to do a card with only clear stamps. I submitted the card a few posts below that was for Julee's sketch challenge on her blog, but it didn't use only clear stamps, so I decided to try again. I wanted to play around with a few of my PaperTrey sets that I really don't get a chance to work with, so I pulled out 4 sets (yes, 4!!): Faux Ribbon, Borders & Corners Circles, Borders & Corners Squares, and Green Thumb. I remember seeing a card that Taylor made as one of her design team submissions for the Faux Ribbon set where she essentially made a ribbonesque feature with strips going down the card, so that's what I started with. It's not exactly how I thought it would turn out..but it's cute.

Stampin' Supplies:

Stamps (all PaperTrey): Faux Ribbon, Borders & Corners Circles, Borders & Corners Squares, Green Thumb

Paper: PaperTrey Stamper's Select White, SU's Elegant Eggplant and Rose Red

Ink (All Stampin' Up): Elegant Eggplant, Rose Red, So Saffron, Brocade Blue, Night of Navy

Accessories: Ribbon (no clue who this belongs to...maybe Crate Paper??), Mega punch and Giga scalloped punch by Marvy, lots and lots of acrylic blocks :-)

The next challenge was a sketch challenge, which I love doing. Sometimes I need a sketch to help me think outside the box. I was really feeling like a nice girly card with tons of pink. :-) It also gave me the opportunity to use some of my new Prima Sprites...as well as a TON of retired stuff.

Okay, let's list the retired stuff used on this card:

The stamp set is Edgy Eloquence, which I believe was in last year's summer mini. I am still holding out hope it'll be in the Spring/Summer catalog, as I love this set and would enjoy demoing it again. There is a lot of retired paper and ink, including Cool Caribbean as the base paper, and the ink for the sentiment. I inked the stamp up with Cool Caribbean, then wiped off the two words that I wanted to accent, then colored them in again with a Regal Rose marker. Just a few puffs of hot air and it was moistened and ready for stampin'. The background striped paper is from the Loves Me designer paper in the Winter Mini, and the pink polka-dotted paper is actually the back of the striped paper. The other piece of pink paper with the bigger dots is from the Petals and Paisley paper, which was in the Spring mini and I believe it did make it into the current SU catalog. And of course, my current staple of all cards, the May Arts dotted organdy ribbon.

Stampin' Supplies:

Stamps: Edgy Eloquence

Paper: Cool Caribbean (retired), Loves Me DS (retired), Petals & Paisleys (current??), PaperTrey Stamper's Select White cardstock

Ink: Cool Caribbean (retired), Regal Rose

Accessories: Ribbon, pink brads (not SU, probably Making Memories...but who knows? I just grabbed 'em!), Ticket Corner Punch, Corner Rounder (not the current SU one..they retired last year's one and came out with a new one that's just a tad different, apparently)