Card of the Week.com | Cards, Scrapbooking, and Papercrafts

Sweet n' Sassy Stamps Challenge

I couldn't be more excited to bring you this challenge -- it's a sketch challenge, sponsored by Sweet n' Sassy Stamps. To play along, create a card using this sketch:

To play, upload your card to the Paper Craft Planet photo gallery, and use the tag "SNSS1" -- all caps, please. (Here is a tutorial on adding pictures to the gallery, if you need it.) Sweet n' Sassy Stamps has generously offered a chance to win this adorable stamp for one of our lucky challenge players.

Here is my card:

 

The Supernovas and I all used the new digital stamps for our cards. I picked Noses 4 Sale. Isn't this little guy so cute?!  He's printed on Neehah paper from the Paper Temptress, and then colored with Copics. I added some Ivory Flower Soft for the snow.  The patterned papers are all from the Cosmo Cricket Jolly by Golly collection.  Here's a close up of the little guy:

If you've ever had a chance to play with digital stamps, they are really a lot of fun.  I print directly on cardstock and then spray with a matte sealer to make sure that my Copics don't run the printer ink.  If you wanted to resize your image, you could do that right in your image editing program.  Wouldn't this guy be adorable on a children's t-shirt?

Check out what the other Super Novas came up with:

Adela Rossol

Lynn Mercurio

Kim Burmeister

Wendy Price

Lori Tecler

Sankari Wegman

Challenge ends on 11/12/09

My Readers ROCK

I wanted to thank everyone for the supportive emails and comments that I've received!  You guys are the BEST!  Seriously.  You've successfully made me cry and pray and reflect on how truly blessed I am.   I feel really blessed to be part of this community.

Just to show you that I did actually take the time off and join my family, below are some pictures from our action packed (but mostly rainy) weekend:

If you're interested in collages like this, check out www.BigHugeLabs.com. They do this for FREE with your Flickr uploads. I love it because Flickr also works with Paper Craft Planet, so I can upload things once and then blog it, load to the PCP gallery or email it to friends and family. Got to love technology!!!

Just a reminder that the Best of the Blogosphere lists have been moved to permanent tabs at the top of my blog.  I'm working on a great little tool to go with them, but I'm waiting on Typepad customer support to follow up with me before it will be ready for an unveiling.  Stay tuned!

Big Time Changes

For the sake of my children, I'm no longer doing the Best of the Blogosphere posts.  They pointed out to me that they were still pumpkin-less and costume-less a mere two days before Halloween, and I knew I had gone too far.  We were at Target and they had a Santa Claus with a sign that said, "55 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes until Christmas!".  I cried.

I simply can't read 749 blogs every day.  I can't.  I did try.  You won't find the Shout Out list delivered to your mail box.  Crafting 101 won't be there on Tuesday.  I'm taking back my sanity and my time.  I hope you will understand.

On the bright side, I accidentally redesigned my site.  I meant to change some things, and got stuck on others and then before I knew it, I had changed it all.  I put all that gorgeous content that you've come to love on permanent pages on the top of my site.  Now, whenever you want, you can search through Christmas ideas, Scrapbook inspiration, Copic Marker techniques, and more.  The Shout Out list is there too, and it will be changing every day as I feed my blog habit without a posting deadline.  

I will still be posting personal projects (it's why I started the blog), and I will still keep the lists up in my spare time (because I love it, not because I have to).

I hope you understand. 

Coming soon

Well, there WAS going to be the regular COTW post today, but instead, I came home to a flooded house!  I've been busy mopping, steaming, sucking, etc.  Tomorrow, the post should be ready to go, along with a new design for the site that should take me more "out of the picture".

Thanks for your patience!

Crafting 101, Tutorial Tuesday: October 28, 2009

Onto Crafting 101 -- where the best artists in the Blogosphere share with you the basics of rubber stamping, paper crafting and scrapbooking. We'll even teach you how to use that Photoshop program you have sitting under your desk right now!  All this for the bargain price of FREE! Read on...

Best of the Blogosphere Crafting lists. Remember these lovely little boxes don't show up in Google Reader, so if you can't see them, click on over to my site and they will magically appear. (When you see the boxes, there is a small "read more" in the bottom, right hand corner... click it and you can see the list with pictures as a web page!)

All the Best Tutorials:

How To Videos:

Tips You Shouldn't Miss:

Templates To Help You Make Stuff:

Photoshop Tips and Tricks:

Everything you ever wanted to know about Copic Markers:

Please remember that my site is powered by YOU. Please comment here if you'd like me to read your blog or if you have seen some amazing blog art that I'm missing! Thanks!

Scrappy Sunday and Scrapbook Saturday -- October 18 - 25, 2009

Hey everyone. I told Jen that I would do my best to post this week's Scrappy Sunday Challenge, while she's out of town. If this gets posted I'll be amazed as I haven't a clue what I'm doing, especially late in night Saturday. :) No worries, all will be back to normal next week & Jen will be back administering this.

This week's sketch might require a bit of rough draft so you can get the journaling around the outside of the page. I think it looks cool ever since I saw Ali Edwards do it on her layouts & if you can do it in your own handwriting, how lovely & personal. Digi scrappers & traditional scrappers, hopefully you'll have some fun with this. I did forget to sketch in embellishments, with all the pics on the page ... um sorry :) I'm sure you'll all be able to find somewhere to put them in (for me I just did it around the photos themselves).

The sketch is in 12"x12" square format, but you can switch it up to fit your scrapbook (flip or rotate the sketch, and move things around a bit, but try to stay true to the basic outline of the sketch. Have Fun!!) I've always scrapbooked in 8.5x11", but the basic square template is there. Anyhow, I hope some of you will have the chance to play along.

We'd love to see some of you family & friends uploaded & tagged sb102509 so we can put them in the album . For a free psd template for you digi scrappers, check out the link on Tethered2Home

Join the Scrappy Sunday Challenge Group Check out our gallery for this week!Check out our gallery for this week!

The Best of the Blogosphere Scrapbooking lists. Remember these lovely little boxes don't show up in Google Reader, so if you can't see them, click on over to my site and they will magically appear. (When you see the boxes, there is a small "read more" in the bottom, right hand corner... click it and you can see the list with pictures as a web page!)

Thumbs Up!

Scrapbooking Inspiration

Scrapbooking Mini-Books

Hybrid (or "Fusion") Scrapbooking Ideas:

Fun with Photoshop:

Please remember that my site is powered by YOU. Please comment here if you'd like me to read your blog or if you have seen some amazing blog art that I'm missing! Thanks!

Card of the Week & Best of the Blogosophere: October 16 - 23, 2009

Hey, I had a member ask me to narrow down the Shout Out list because it had gotten so long that she was having trouble seeing all the entries in a reasonable amount of time.  I would love to do that, but I can't pick -- it's like having a favorite child.  Instead, I'm working on redoing the blog.  Hopefully soon, I'll have tabs on the site that let you look at the list whenever you're in need of a little extra inspiration.  You'll also have the ability to search the blogs that I read for quick lists of whatever category you want.  Stay tuned :)

Thank you too, for all the wonderful birthday wishes.  I had a wonderful day and was truly humbled by all the love.  You guys are awesome. 

Best of the Blogosphere lists. Remember these lovely little boxes don't show up in Google Reader, so if you can't see them, click on over to my site and they will magically appear. (When you see the boxes, there is a small "read more" in the bottom, right hand corner... click it and you can see the list with pictures as a web page!)

The Shout Out List (my favorite CARDS OF THE WEEK): The cards and projects that earned some extra love and attention this week. The best of the best. You people ROCK MY WORLD :D

Halloween:

Fall::

Thanksgiving:: Christmas::

Snow:
Teacher:

Card Sets:

Wedding:

Invitations:

Friendship:

Wrap it Up:

Favors (Party favors...):

Thank You:

Birthday:

Gift Ideas:

Baby:

Boxes:

The Best of the Blogosphere: In my travels through Blogland, I discover a lot of projects, cards, scrapbook pages, tips, templates and tutorials that are all worth sharing. I want my friends to see the things out there that are special, inspirational, worth some extra notice. This list is everything I think is worth sharing... better read it... you could be on the list!

Please remember that my site is powered by YOU. Please comment here if you'd like me to read your blog or if you have seen some amazing blog art that I'm missing! Thanks!

Back to Basics, Lesson Eight: Shape Shifting

Hey everyone! Welcome to Lesson Eight of our Back to Basics series! This week we're learning the shape shifting technique. We have another great video to share from Fran, featuring the Jumbo Snowman from Stampendous. If you remember back to Lesson Three, this adorable bag was made using the Jumbo Snowman and the shape shifting technique.

This week, I thought I'd make some fall images to share. I used the Stretchy Spooks set.

For this first card, I used the pumpkin image. I stamped it and then masked it so that I could stretch it and stamp it again in the background.

For this next project, I used Adela's 3d challenge Cookie Box template to make this adorable vellum box! I stretched the Stretchy Spooks ghost so that he formed the sides of the box! Here's a close up of the tag:

Here, I added a LED tea light to the box! Look how he glows!

We'll be having a challenge each week to go along with each lesson. To play along, make a card, scrapbook page or 3D item using the simple stamping technique featured this week. Our featured techniques this week all featured the shape shifting technique. Tag your photo b2b8 (all lowercase) so that we can pull your project into our gallery. (If you're new to Paper Craft Planet, here is an excellent tutorial on adding photos to the gallery!) Next Wednesday, we'll pick one lucky, random, winner from our challenge players for the generous prize pictured at the end of the lesson!


This class was brought to you by Stampendous! Click on this banner to purchase any of the supplies featured in this lesson:



Jump on over to our Stampendous group and take Lesson Eight from our Back to Basics class.

Happy Stamping!

Susanna

Crafting 101, Tutorial Tuesday: October 20, 2009

Hey everyone!  I got this great tip from Chris and I thought I would share:

Susanna, I read your posts using Google Reader in Mozilla Firefox and running a Greasemonkey script that lets me view the message, it's images AND make comments too. Greasemonkey link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748 Preview script link: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/12352 ~chris

If you follow Chris' instructions, you should be able to see the list boxes right in your reader :)  I LOVE tips!

Onto Crafting 101 -- where the best artists in the Blogosphere share with you the basics of rubber stamping, paper crafting and scrapbooking. We'll even teach you how to use that Photoshop program you have sitting under your desk right now!  All this for the bargain price of FREE! Read on...

Best of the Blogosphere Crafting lists. Remember these lovely little boxes don't show up in Google Reader, so if you can't see them, click on over to my site and they will magically appear. (When you see the boxes, there is a small "read more" in the bottom, right hand corner... click it and you can see the list with pictures as a web page!)

All the Best Tutorials:

How To Videos:

Tips You Shouldn't Miss:

Templates To Help You Make Stuff:

Photoshop Tips and Tricks:

Everything you ever wanted to know about Copic Markers:

Please remember that my site is powered by YOU. Please comment here if you'd like me to read your blog or if you have seen some amazing blog art that I'm missing! Thanks!

Happy Birthday!

i{heart}papers is owned by my good friend, Kate.  i{love}kate :D She's a dear friend. This week is i{heart}papers one year birthday! You can help them celebrate all week long -- and if you come back later this evening, I'll have my card done for this party! Here's the scoop I pulled off of Kate's blog -

Welcome to the first of this week’s i {heart} papers Birthday Bash (IHPBB) challenges! We’re looking forward to seeing all of your creations, and we’re very happy to have you celebrating with us!

Here are the hosts for each day. Be sure to check their blogs on their scheduled day to find out that day’s challenge. You can also check the main IHP Birthday Bash page at the store. It will be updated daily.

The hosts for the week are:

TODAY Day 1 (10/19): Kate (owner), Sarah Anderson, and Dee Jackson
Day 2 (10/20): Deb/Latisha Yoast
Day 3 (10/21): Gretchen/Lesa Smaligo and Lynn/Asela Hopkins
Day 4 (10/22): Cathleen/Kerri Michaud and Carolyn/Maria Fiscella
Day 5 (10/23): Megan/Chris Veneruso and Kendra/Debbie Fisher
Day 6 (10/24): Tracy/Heidi Van Laar and Amber/Kerry Davis
Day 7 (10/25): Sunday, day of rest (finish up your challenges!)
Day 8 (10/26): PARTY! GRAND PRIZE (winners are announced)

What’s the first thing you do when you’re planning a Birthday Bash? Before you can choose invitations, decorations, etc., you must decide upon a color scheme, so our first IHPBB challenge has to do with color.

Our challenge for you today is to make a card (scrapbook page, 3-D item, etc.) using the colors of our IHP logo: celery, light blue, rose and black (colors in any brand). Remember, everything this week has to do with birthday celebrations...so be sure your creation is birthday related!

Here is my card. It is a 4-1/4” square card and I used Nesties Labels One to make the white and the four “squares.” I cut out the little party hats from Make A Wish and popped them up. I stamped the greeting from Chelsea Sentiments in Palette Noir and then make little sparkly dots with my Baby Blue Stickles. That’s it! Clean and simple! Do you like it? Do you want to play along?? I sure hope you do!

Before you begin, PLEASE take a few minutes to review the challenge guidelines! You’ll want to follow these rules to maximize your points and qualify for the opportunity to WIN the prize for today’s challenge and the Grand Prize, all announced on the last day of our festivities!

To qualify for the prize of the day, all you have to do is upload your challenge card/project to Splitcoast Stampers (SCS) and/or Paper Craft Planet (PCP) with the appropriate tag so we can find it. Today’s challenge tag is IHPBB1. The daily challenge winners will be randomly selected at the end of the week.

Today's prize package includes:

1 yard of 1-1/2" Silk Celery, atyou Spica Glitter pens in black, pink and baby blue, 1 yard of ¼” Glimmer Ribbon Black and a 12x12 Urban Prairie Collection pack!

To qualify for the Grand Prize of being IHP Guest Designer for the month of November, here’s how it will work: Every challenge card/project you enter will earn you points (see below), and one with the most accumulated for the week the Grand Prize winner. So the more challenges you enter, more points you earn — and the better your chances of winning the Grand Prize (and the bigger the value of your Guest Designer box will be)!

You will have until October 25^th to post your work, and you can enter as many challenges as you like, but you CANNOT combine challenges in one project. All winners, including the Grand Prize winner, will be announced at the Birthday Bash on October 26^th.

Birthday Bash Points

For each project:

• 5 points for each challenge card/project you make, upload and tag to SCS
• 5 points for each challenge card/project you make, upload and tag to PCP
• 2 points for uploading to your blog and linking at least one IHP item used to the IHP website

One time points:

• 2 points for signing up to receive our newsletter*
• 2 points for joining our PCP group*
• 2 points for becoming our fan on Facebook*
• 10 points if you participate in all 6 IHP Birthday Bash challenges

*When you sign up, or if you are already signed up, a comment on the IHP blog Birthday Bash week so your points can be credited.

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!