Hostage Freed!

I had 2 cards to show you yesterday, but the camera was being held hostage by the Chevy Silverado's center console and couldn't be liberated until this morning! Thankfully it is fully charged, so without further ado, here are the cards you've been waiting patiently for.

This first one is a CASE of Jessie, the Featured Stamper of the week over at SCS. Here's her gallery. This is the card I chose to emulate. It's actually one she made for a Dare to Get Dirty challenge using a layout by Jenn Balcer! See--what comes around goes around in this beautiful community of stampers, so don't be afraid to Copy And Share Everything someone else has done! Just try to give credit where credit is due.

I used the new InColor Pink Pirouette as my base, paired with Chocolate Chip. This combination was one that, when it first became popular years ago, I just didn't understand. It has grown on me so much that I like it now, but initially I was not convinced! The branch is from Eastern Blooms, and I inked it entirely in PP, then used a blender pen to REMOVE the PP from the branches and inked them with my CC SU! Stampin' Write marker. I tried twice to get it just perfect, but I still managed to get a little on a few of the blooms. Oh well...I'm not going to make myself crazy over it.

The scallop edge punch helped create the detail at the bottom of the PP layer, and I used my 1/8" hole in my Cropadile to make the holes. I wanted SU!'s 5/8" wide CC grosgrain for the ribbon, but don't have enough for all the SAS gals coming on Saturday, so had to go with plan B.

This second card was inspired by one of the samples I saw in the new catalog! That book is CHOCK FULL of great color combinations and layouts to give anyone needing inspiration fuel! I tweaked the combo a little and went with Barely Banana as the base instead of Very Vanilla. The other colors are Certainly Celery, Bashful Blue, and Not Quite Navy. The layout is one I saw somewhere, either on a blog or on SCS. To paraphrase the late sports broadcaster Jim MacKay, I span the WWW to bring you a constant variety of stamping! (The Olympics just aren't quite the same without him...)

The squares are 1 3/4" and stamped in the aforementioned colors with the large hibiscus (?) bloom from Eastern Blooms. The tailored white bow made with SU!'s 1/4" grosgrain is another technique I'll be teaching the SAS gals this weekend, and it makes quite a nice statement on this card. Here's a little hint: it's all held together with glue dots!

The bottom of this card is very naked. It's waiting for a new sentiment stamp set that is arriving tomorrow. We have a saying in my immediate family about someone who is waiting impatiently when we're late. We say, "So and So's probably 'standing on her left ear.'" Don't ask me what it means, but it makes sense to us! Well, that's how I feel about my order from SU! It can't arrive fast enough, and I can't make the 2 final cards for Saturday's event until it does.

So if you see me achieve the aforementioned feat, would someone call Bob Costas at NBC Sports? Perhaps it could be an exhibition Olympic event in 2012!