My very first blog post!

Welcome to my blog! I am so excited to finally post something here. I wanted to start this blog to keep in closer contact with you all. I am hoping that when Stampin' Up! adds specials mid-month, I can post them here so you don't have to wait until the next newsletter to know about them. But I also wanted to start a blog for 2 other reasons as well. First is so that I can share projects with you that you might want to try. Second is so that I can try to become a little more creative on my own. As you all know, most of the cards we do in classes are copied ideas from the SplitcoastStampers gallery. I am trying to challenge myself to step out and be more creative on my own. Not an easy feat for me! So, this will definitely be a learning curve on my part. Please be patient with me! But hopefully I will get better at this and will have more and more to share with you as time goes on.

So, for now I am going to try and do some of the challenges found on SplitcoastStampers website and a few other places. I encourage you all to try them as well. They do several challenges each week, but for now I am going to focus on the sketches and maybe the color challenges at the same time. I will post the sketches I am trying to copy here so you can give it a try as well. I would love to see what you come up with!

Now, for my first post, I am trying to do the SC177 sketch challenge, which can be found here. I have posted the sketch below. I also am using a color challenge, CC168, which can be found here - the colors are Very Vanilla, Sage Shadow, and Chocolate Chip. For those who are interested, the new color challenges come out on Tuesdays and the new sketch challenges come out on Wednesdays. I probably will just do my own random thing, but I will always post a sketch for you to copy.

One last thing - I obviously have a learning curve with posting in this blog too - I wanted the sketch to be on top and my card below, but it didn't work out that way today. I will have to read a little more on this. Oh, and all the supplies will be Stampin' Up! unless I tell you otherwise (I may throw in some other stamps from time to time just for fun)!

For my card, I used Chocolate Chip card stock as my card base and layered it with Sage Shadow card stock. I stamped the bird from the Always stamp set onto Very Vanilla card stock with Chocolate Chip ink and colored him in with markers. I layered this onto Sage Shadow and then Chocolate Chip card stock and then added gold brads. This was layered over the base with some Afternoon Tea Designer Series Paper (found in the Occasions Mini catalog) and some wide grosgrain Chocolate Chip ribbon. Then I stamped the Thank You sentiment from the All Holidays collection with Chocolate Chip ink. As you can see, I turned the sketch on its side because it worked better with my bird this way. I hope you like it!!!

Recipe:
Stamps ~ Always, All Holidays
Ink ~ Chocolate Chip, various markers
Paper ~ Sage Shadow, Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, Afternoon Tea DP
Accessories ~ Gold brads, Wide GG ribbon