Friday Review & DD challenge

TGIF!  :0)

Today I have 2 cards to share with you….well, 3 actually.  But I wish I didn’t have to share the 3rd one.  LOL.  I’ll explain why.  

This first card was made for the March SCS DD/DD Alumni challenge.  (Below I also have a card for the ATS Review Preview Friday, so keep reading!). 

There was some discussion among the DD about how much our stamping has improved over the years (and some laughter at our early attempts) so I went back to my first page of uploads at Splitcoast and found this card from 2004:  

 eeeek!  I can’t believe I dug this one up and shared it.  Isn’t it awful?  I don’t know what I was thinking with that homemade wire flower.  LOL.  And those colors!  And no designer papers?  Are you kidding me?  I can’t believe we lived without ’em!  Jeepers, that was a horrible scan too, wasn’t it?

So after we had a few laughs at our “early” cards, Holly decided to issue us this challenge:

This month we are going to do a Featured Stamper challenge. Who is the featured stamper? Well, YOU are!

This month, you are going to choose the oldest card in your gallery (or at least one on your very first page of uploads)… and you are going to CASE it!    … just like the regular featured stamper challenge, you are going to change at least three things on your card (i.e. different colors, different stamps, different embellishments), but we want to be able to see the subtle changes.

Challenge Focus: A CASE of one of your oldest cards.

Required Element: Change at least three things on your card (subtle).

Restricted Element: None!

OK, first off, I obviously changed the colors, as I was NOT about to use the same ones.  And I changed the stamp set because I don’t have a clue where to start looking for that one and…well…I am just having so much fun with the mushrooms this month!  ;0)  I also changed my embellishment to a cute mushroom charm from Michael’s since I seriously failed “wire flower making 101” the first time around!  Ha!

The mat under the main image was punched with a cute border punch which is so popular these days….I can’t remember the last time I tore my cardstock!  Oh…yes, I did once last month but before that??  can’t remember!  Isn’t it funny how styles change? 

I don’t recall ever playing along with the featured stamper challenges, so I hope I did this right.  *crossing fingers*  So how about *you*?  Are you ready to dig through your old cards and change them up a bit?  It sure was a fun challenge….thanks, Holly!

You can check out all the other DD “re-creations” here.

stamps- Mushroom Friends by Cookie Crumbs; paper- Pink Pirouette, Chocolate Chip, Basic Grey Eva; ink- Memento Black; accessories- mushroom charm, Copic markers, Dotted Wave and 1 3/8″ square punches by EK Success, ribbon. 

Now…my second card today is for the ATS Review Preview Friday.  This week we are reviewing Christine’s 2 new sets and I chose Spring Things! to work with.  This set is so cute!

I have been “into” purple lately but I have a hard time finding nice purple papers to use.  (know of any?)  So I pulled out some scraps of old favorites for this project.  I also got to use one of my new EK Success edge punches…Parisian.  It was punched along both sides of the black cardstock strip and I really like the results of it. 

The girl and duck (isn’t he the cutest?) were masked before stamping the puddle.  Then the girl’s hat, dress, boots and umbrella were all paper pieced with the same papers used for layers.  I lightly added a few outlines and shadows to the paper pieces with a light gray Copic marker.  Very subtle.  Then I colored a few places with a purple marker and added some white gel pen highlights. 

Check out the other samples the DT created on the ATS blog. 

stamps- Spring Things! by C.C. Designs; paper- Banana, White, Black, Making Memories purple speckle, Paper Pizazz plaid; ink- Memento Black; accessories- Copic markers, Labels 1 Nestabilities, EK Success Parisian punch, Martha Stewart Frond punch, Primas, Stickles.

Sorry for the long post!  I hope you have a fun weekend with nice, warm weather!