I missed Chupa‘s day in the spotlight when she was chosen as SCS’s Featured Stamper on Christmas Day, so I’m playing catch-up. The gorgeous For You card I found in her gallery features the out-of-the-box technique (which I am still struggling with, but practice should make perfect someday).

I found a similar floral image in Gina K.’s Friends Are Forever stamp set, but colored my flowers yellow to match the designer paper I used. Since I turned my version into a 5-1/4″ square card, the layout was changed up a bit as well. Although I was very close to pulling out the sewing machine for this card, I ended up just piercing the paper along the edges. Maybe next time…

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My contribution to this month’s WMS Friends Blog Waltz (with a birthday party theme) is this elegant, yet very simple birthday card I made for my dear mother-in-law. She loves butterflies, so I chose this pretty background paper from the Ambrosia collection by BasicGrey.

I embossed the Vintage Circles, Small image with black powder and added the sentiment, embossed with vanilla powder, from the Bountiful Baskets Additions set. The circle fit perfectly inside the Spellbinders die-cut, which I embellished with tiny self-adhesive pearls and adhered to the card with dimensionals.

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I can never have enough birthday cards in my stash, so that’s what I made with Viva la Verve sketch #4. I grabbed my Cappella paper pad and found two patterns to use for the background. The Classy Label was also cut out of the patterned paper.

I dry-embossed the pink paper before attaching it to the Always Artichoke lacey square die-cut. The ribbon treatment was created with the use of my favorite strong adhesive: Scor-Tape.

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I wanted to make an elegant birthday card for my aunt who is turning 75 next week. BasicGrey’s Cappella papers were just what I needed!

I used one more layout from this month’s Viva la Verve sketch challenges and embellished the card with self-adhesive half pearls and delicate cream ribbon.

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I’ve been working on transforming half of our basement into a stamping room this weekend, and this is the first card I made at my new desk (no more stamping in the kitchen for me!). Trying to finish all four Viva la Verve sketch challenges by Thursday, I started with sketch #2 today. I pulled out some of my old Stampin’ Up! patterned papers and used a couple of new Verve Stamps dies to frame my sentiment.

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Looking through Featured Stamper whoistracy‘s gallery this morning, I saw a lot of faux quilting on Tracy’s cards. I especially liked the look of her Sleigh Ride Petal Press Sneak Peek #1 card. My version doesn’t have a colored image; instead I added a butterfly die-cut and replaced the pearls in the upper left corner with a single rhinestone brad through the pink, dry-embossed butterfly.

The sentiment was stamped with Concord Crush ink on Very Vanilla card stock and I cut around it with paper snips. After gluing the squares to the 5″ x 5″ card (and trimming off the excess paper) I pierced along all sides and connected each dot with a white gel pen.

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For today’s shoebox swap at Fort Meade I decided to make a card using the Silhouette tutorial in the December 2010 edition of the Technique Junkie Newsletter. I figured coloring the flowers with a black marker would speed things up so that the Baltimore Ravens fans in our midst could leave the swap in time for the playoff game kickoff!

I’ve always thought silhouettes and oval panels go together very well, so I stamped the image on an oval die-cut of patterned paper and matted with a black scalloped oval. The Friends Are Forever set contains several sentiments that all fit inside the large oval SU! punch, so my fellow stampers could pick a different one if they wanted to.

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Another rainy day in Maryland today! I thought this sentiment from the Blue Skies set was very appropriate considering the weather we’ve been having:

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

If you’re thinking I must have used another sketch from Verve’s Release Week challenges for this card, you are correct.

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Hope you had a nice Labor Day weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

I was inspired by the AVS2010A Verve Release sketch challenge and used paper, ink, and ribbon in my new favorite SU! In Color: Concord Crush.

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