Challenge Me Monday #68 Let's Go Camping!

Good morning Friends,

First of all I would like to say thank you to everyone who commented recently about my situation with my dogs and piggy.  I really appreciate all the heartfelt advice and compassion.  Reading those comments from you all means more than you could know.  It's wonderful to be able to put something out there and receive something back, proving that you are not the only one on this earth going through this sort of thing on your own.  I was especially touched by stories of personal experience.  So again, thank you!

On to today's post... It's another wonderful Challenge Me Monday over at FCCB!  Be sure to stop in and see all the awesome creations by the guest designer and DT.  Also, if you would like to, please join in on the challenge for a chance to win a great prize!  The theme this week is Let's Go Camping.  Make a project with an outdoor scene or theme and be sure to use at least one Cricut cut because it is after all a Cricut challenge blog. ;)  Thanks!

For my project, I just created a simple, but cute birthday card.  I had the perfect sentiment from Jillian Vance so I decided to work around that.  For the rest of the deets, scroll down past the pics.

 Front of Card

 Inside of Card

 Closeup of Sentiment

For this card I just went with the standard A2 (I believe?) size by cutting a piece of yellow cardstock from my stash in half and folding it using my bone folder.  The background paper is from my stash as well, and I thought it would be so cute to use flowers with the skunk image!  Love the way it turned out!  I cut the edges with some Fiskars zig-zag scissors and then inked the edges of the floral paper and the sentiment piece with some Colorbox ink.  

On the outside, I used the image of the skunk from the Cricut cartridge - Campin' Critters.  I'm really loving that cartridge!  It's got some of the cutest animals on there.  I used several layers of cardstock from my stash, some pop dots, and a brown and black Zig Pen to add a little detail here and there.

The sentiment comes from the Celebrate Men stamp set from A Jillian Vance Design.  I adore these stamp sets!  If you haven't been over there to check them out yet, please do so, as I am a lucky design team member there as well!

Hope you all enjoyed my card and this one is for sale!  If anyone has any interest in purchasing this card or any of my other creations please contact me!

Hope you all have a great week and thanks to all my new followers for joining and thanks to ALL of my followers for checking in with me today. :0)

XO ~ Amy Jo

Greetings from Colorado Card - Challenge Post for RRR

FOR FCCB'S CHALLENGE ME MONDAY POST, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN

Hello Lovelies,

First off I wanted to thank you all for the wonderful comments and support I have been receiving from you all lately.  I read each and every comment and if I don't get back to you right away, please forgive me as I literally receive around 800 emails a day.  Some days I don't get on the Internet, if I'm not feeling well from my Fibro, so that really puts me behind in my correspondence.  I will work through the comments and emails as I can and try to get back to each and every one of you and check out your blogs too!  I do a little bit each day that I feel well.  It means so much to me to hear from you all.  Just brightens my day so thank you again! :0)

For today, in addition to my FCCB post, I have a card that I created for a card swap and decided to enter it in a few challenges. I really wanted to use my new Campin' Critters cartridge and the theme of this card was perfect for that.  I found the perfect image to represent Colorado and am very happy with the way it turned out.  At least on the outside, I'm not thrilled at all with the inside.  I stamped some images and the little square edges appeared slightly so I tried to cover them with chalk, but that just made it a muddy little mess.  There was nothing I could really do about it at that point though because the card was already finished! :(  I hope it's still ok and I hope my friend who receives it can overlook that and still enjoy the card.  Does anyone have any tips on how to handle that situation?  Meaning, when you stamp an image and you get ink on the edge of the rubber and it imprints on your card?  I never know what to do when that happens and I don't know if there's a trick to avoid that.  I'd love to hear your thoughts.  Also, does anyone know a good trick to cover up marker if your marker bleeds a little outside the line?  That's another one I struggle with.  I'm sure I can't be the only one who has these problems, right? ;)

On to the card du jour...

Front of card with jute twine

Top of card - closeup

Bottom of card - closeup

Inside of card - stamped

Side view of card with jute

Side view to show dimension - tons of popped dots were used on almost every layer!



This card is a 5x7" and I decided to round the corners to soften it a bit.  I used some fun colors on this one.  The background is a bright (almost fluorescent) green and on top of that I used this great striped pattern paper with chrome (mirror-like) silver stripes.  I was thinking of using the Imagine for the mountain scene, but I really wanted to separate all the layers so I could pop dot them (used different thicknesses) and make them three-dimensional like it would be in real life if you were looking at the mountains from a distance. There are four layers of color for the mountains... white cardstock for the snow caps, light purple cardstock for the mountains, periwinkle blue for the river, and the trees and greenery are actually a slightly printed patterned paper.  I pop dotted most of the layers. Next, I had to outline the trees with Stickles to show where the trees ended and the grass began because I didn't feel like cutting another layer for the trees.  I just kind of winged it and drew where I thought they should end.  I used Glossy Accents on the river/lake to add some depth and I like the effect it gives without totally filling it in.  At the top of the mountains, I added a cool chipboard Colorbok piece that I thought looked like a sunburst.  I also added a piece of ribbon that I got from the dollar section at Target, I think, to kind of break the scene apart from the greeting   Below that is the stamped sentiment from part of a Stampin Up stamp (it said Season's Greetings so I masked the top part)and a cute chipboard accent from Colorbok.  I then added three fabric colored brads because the gal who gets this card loves brads (or so I've heard ;)).  Then I added some stamped images to the inside of the card, a strip of the same paper I used on the front, outlined with a brown Zig, finished my greeting and inked all the edges and added a few wraps of jute to the fold.  That's it for this one.  Adhesives used were my ATG gun, Zig 2 Way Glue Pen, Red Tape, and some pop dots.  Hope you all enjoy!

If anyone wants details of brands, please let me know and I'll do my best to get them posted.  I just wanted to speed up this post a bit.

XO ~ Amy Jo

Challenges Entered:

Really Reasonable Ribbon (RRR) - Anything Goes #24