More is More

It’s time for another Dirty Challenge with my fellow Dirty Girls past and present.  We had so much fun with our Elzybells challenge last month (details here if you missed it) that we decided to do it again!  🙂

This time the challenge is as follows:

Focus: Penguins

Required: Something icy

Restricted: No blue…none!

Ideally I would have stamped my card way ahead of time, but…you guessed it…I sat down at 8:00pm last night to come up with something.  Fortunately I had PLENTY of penguins to choose from since penguins are one of my favorite stamp images to collect.  Also fortunately I have no problem leaving blue out of a card….I’m just not a blue person.  So here ya go…

The color combo came from two different inspirations.  First I had considered making more tags to go with the Celebration wrapping paper…Real Red, Olive, and oh-no Bashful Blue.  Then I thought about making a card to match my adorable penguin flannel pj bottoms…Real Red, Pixie Pink, So Saffron.  That’s how I ended up with this combo of Real Red, Old Olive, Pixie Pink and So Saffron.

The four penguins are actually on one long stamp by Darcie’s.  I used to love to go to their booth at Carson Rubber Stamp Convention.  I stamped the image on shimmer white cardstock with Black Craft ink and heat embossed with Iridescent Ice embossing powder (my first icy element for the challenge).  Then I colored the images with a combination of Copic markers (I just got my first TWO Copic markers *grin*) and SU markers with an aquapainter before cutting them out and layering them onto Pixie and Olive squares.

 The snowflakes are an irridescent trim from Fabric Barn (my second icy element).  I adhered them across the bottom of the card, plus cut some apart to layer over the circle punches along the side.  Each one has an Adorn It droplet in the center.  The one in the center of the penguins is popped up on a pop up glue dot and has a green rhinestone in the center.

I can’t wait to see what everyone came up.  The girls will be uploading to the SCS gallery using keyword DCP1207 as well as to their blogs throughout the day today.  Be sure to check them all out here.

Good news!  My boxes of pre-ordered Stampin’ Up! Spring/Summer Collection 2008 catalogs arrived!  I’ve e-mailed my customers who pre-ordered and have a couple more available if you’re in the area and don’t have a Demo to get them from.  I can’t wait to be able to pour over it in more detail and chat with friends about it.  My very first favorite set is the Lovely Letters monogram alpha set on page 158.  I have been wishing for this exact set for about 3 years now.  I just purchased the Paper Trey Ink set…which I do really like, but it is much smaller AND as I mentioned before I do NOT like the “J” in that set.  Hallelujah – I DO like the “J” in Lovely Letters!  There are lots of new sets I like, but it will probably be after Christmas before I can get my catty spiral bound and have time to put post-its on every page of wishes!

Today is all about making gifts and I’ll be sure to tell you about those later.  *wink* Thanks for stopping by!