To my surprise, I was selected!! (Here is the announcement post.)

Their challenges are the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month. I start in March

Thanks again to Steph and the other team members!

I created this card for both the Waltzing Mouse sketch challenge (wmsc82) and the Clean & Simple challenge at SCS (cas155).

I admit, I had a hard time with this particular inspiration picture. In the end, I went with the colors and my own memory (we had wonderful willow trees near my childhood home which I loved to hide under).

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I created this card for the For Your Information challenge (fyi23).

Even though the picture is full of modern lines, that isn’t what drew my attention. What I first noticed about the inspiration photo was the tiles along the outside wall of the building – and the colors: white & blue. Those two things together made me think of wedgewood.

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I created this card for the For Your Inspiration challenge (fyi22).

My stamping time has really taken a hit since we adopted a new puppy last month. But I’ve had an idea in my head for this challenge ever since it was posted. I finally made myself stamp last night. I could have created a few different cards I was so inspired by the image, but I settled on this one because the colors and bridge in the IP is what caught my eye first.

I love this set by Waltzing Mouse and this was just too good an opportunity not to use it! I did have a couple false starts with it, but I am happy with the final product.

I also feel good because that green velvet ribbon is from my HUGE stash of ribbon. Sometimes it is nice to be able to find exactly what you need!

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I created this card for the Waltzing Mouse sketch challenge (wmsc80).

I took a little liberty and imagined each stripe in the sketch as its own color – instead of two alternating colors. I also dropped the sentiment panel down because that just felt right. To steal words from Amber, it felt too predictable otherwise.

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Day 5 was about techniques. I took the spotlight technique and simplified it. I stamped the map on both green and blue paper then used a circle punch to punch out my spotlights in a grid pattern.

I left off the “base” image as an attempt to simplify the technique and card. I felt there were enough glimpses of the map to know what it is (even though some of them are not the right angle – I did *try* to punch in a grid, lol).

Since I used a map image, I’m also entering this in the Moxie Fab challenge, Map to Your Heart.

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Day 7 is all about plain white cards. I actually love doing plain white cards.

For this card, I also took inspiration from the CASE Study blog challenge (#73). This month’s muse there is Jen Rzasa.

I liked how she had different colors of the same pattern and the banner sentiment with rhinestones and the little loop of ribbon.

I haven’t figured out how to cut my dies apart, so instead of creating negative punches, I just die cut the pattern paper and popped-it on the card.

I felt the background needed something. Then I remembered how Gayatri recently created her own impression plate. So I gave that a try for myself. I die cut a bunch of clouds from thin cardboard and adhered them to another cardboard. I’m quite happy having this impression plate now!

Oh, and the final card size is actually 4 x 5 1/2 (I needed to leave room in the envelope for the loop of ribbon).

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I struggled with what I would do. But it finally came to me last night!

I paper pieced (just out of cardstock) the pears from Peace & Plenty. Then I stamped the pear bodies with the smallest Gingham image.

For the sentiment, I used a font and printed it on my computer.

Since the theme is “sweet” I wanted to keep my colors light and sweet – so I had to work in some pink. I found some old StampinUp paper that worked nicely.

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Day 4 of class was to take a stamp and use it in different ways. I chose to use the large floral spray in the Elements of Style set by StampinUp.

My first card uses the spray as a background. I stamped it in very light ink a couple times on the card base.

To do the sentiment, I stamped the frame in a dark brown (to help pull the focus) and colored it with Copics. I’m a cutter – of stamps The sentiment was trimmed so I could stamp the words separately.

I really like how this one turned out.

For the second card, I wanted to use the spray as the focal image. Of course, I didn’t have a lot of time to color the whole thing, and Day 5′s lesson was in my head – so I chose to do a technique: Spotlighting.

This time I stamped the spray in dark brown (since it should be the focus).

I embossed the background – not sure if that lessens the CASness, but I like the feel it adds.

I also chose to keep the same colors for all the cards.

I really wasn’t sure what I would do for the last card. I knew I wanted to do something unexpected with it. After looking over the lesson again, I liked how Kristina & Julie used their image within other images. That made me remember this totally awesome card by Dawn O. So I cased it.

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I created this card for the Clean & Simple challenge at SCS (cas152) – a supply challenge: die cuts.

After perusing my index of dies I settled on the spinner from the MFT – and the stamp set had a perfect sentiment too!

I will say I had a dickens of a time getting the spinner to work. I wanted the spinner behind the heart, but that was NOT working, so I went with the simple assembly – but at least it works!

Thanks for stopping by!