HAPPY NEW YEAR

AS we enter a new year, its time to think back on last year and look ahead to the new year and to the memories we are going to make. Look ahead to what we want to accomplish. Will it be a year to make big changes, little changes or keep the status quo. Me, I need to lose some weight as well as make a few other healthy changes. I also want to get more scrapbook pages done than I did in 2014 and I want to make more cards. Which brings me to our challenge for January.

 Our awesome sponsor to start the year off right with us is:

SUNFLOWERFIELD DESIGNS 

 

Webstore - Sunflowerfield
Stamps - Sunflowerfield Designs Rubber Stamps and our Digi Stamps
Webstore blog - Sunflowerfield Designs Blog 

Group on facebook - Sunflowerfield Designs Facebook Group 

Facebook page -  Sunflowerfield on Facebook

OUR CHALLENGE:

ANYTHING GOES

Your project can be any crafty thing you make or alter. You can make a sweater, do a scrapbook page, alter a box, book, candle, etc. You can also make a card.

And remember ANYTHING GOES.  Now here are some wonderful ideas from our design team members.

LINDA W

The Little Thieves - Getting Ready for Easter

VRIGINIA M

Thankful by Sunflowerfield

  This is a swing card technique with paper piercing on the digital image in addition to watercolors on the pumpkin and apple leaves.  Two embossing folders were used on the card base.

PAT

Digital card using Thankful by Sunflowerfield

KATHY

Shaped card using Sunflowerfield Thankful

JOYCE

Sunflowerfield's Coffee and Cake

It is now your turn. By entering our challenge, you will be entered into our random drawing for four digis from Sunflowerfield Designs, but you must follow the guidelines which you will find in the sidebar to your right.

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Features Friday - a Blind Challenge

What's a blind challenge? When you are offered a list of items, and they represent colors, techniques and crafting supplies needed for a project, but you don't find out until everyone has signed up! Now that's what I call a real challenge!
Check out what projects the participants came up with:
Virginia played with buttons, alphas, a sentiment and the color pink to create this cute card:

She loved the challenge so much she made another project, this one for Halloween:

Sue is a scrapbooker, so she created a layout with

Thanks, ladies, for joining in the Blind Challenge for October, and inspiring everyone with your courage to tackle the unknown, and your creativity!

Features Friday "Finding Inspiration from Candy"

Friday is a good day to feature all the lovely crafts from Your Scrapbook Place Yahoo group. The first part of the month brought us a challenge inspired by CANDY. After all, Halloween is the number one top-selling candy holiday of the year, so why not?
Here are a few projects that Virginia came up with:

Mmm, chocolate. Nothing beats a good piece of chocolate to soothe the nerves and chase away the blues.

Here's my take on the candy challenge--a bag-topper using a Bugaboo digi image called Skelekins - Sitter and patterned paper:



And a new Halloween Mussie Tussie I made as a candy favor:

 

Features Friday - Show Me the Money

Another Friday post to inspire you to create, showing projects from our Yahoo group members at Your Scrapbook Place. If you are interested in joining this crafting, PIF'g, RAK'g, and challenges group, please see the sidebar or leave a request when you leave a little love.
Meanwhile, we have two members whose works are fiscally sound and monetarily creative.
First up we have Virginia, who has created a pocket card in which to slip a few notes for the birthday boy or girl.

Paula altered a photo frame and is popping a photo of her house into it. She called it her "Money Pit" frame. I can relate with her on that attitude-this week it's the water heater that needs replacing. We just got finished paying off the new fridge!

That's all for this week. Wherever you find inspiration, let your imagination take over and craft your hearts out!!

Technique Tuesday- Thin/Intricate Die-cutting Tips from Virginia

Have you found that after purchasing some of these thin, intricate, dies or thinlets dies that you were not happy with the way they cut? 

Above are some cutting dies that I purchased last week.  Pippi Butterfly and Tender Leaves are from Memory Box and Small Fremont Pine Outline is from Poppystamps, Inc.  These dies come in small envelopes for storage.  I like the Pine and the Butterfly the most as they cut out an intricate shape.  The Tender Leaves just embossed only.  These craft dies are 100% Steel.

Die-cutting is all in the way you make your sandwich of cardboard, cardstock, etc. over your top cutting plate and how many times you run them thru your machine.  It is also about trial and error, too.  Here are a few helpful hints:

You will need a pick to remove all the cut out pieces. 
You may need to tape your die in place before cutting as they tend to slip & slide, then you get an Oops.   
You may need to add more layers of thickness. I used 3 pieces of medium weight cardboard and an extra layer of paper.  It depends on the machine you use and the thickness of the cardstock.  If you still need an extra layer (not more cardboard), take a piece of paper and fold it in half and add that to your sandwich.  I had to run these dies at least 3 times thru my Big Shots.  Once you get the sandwich layer that works for you, be sure and save it to use again.
Here's a card I created with my dies:

Intricate die-cutting is not impossible-it just takes extra care. Don't get discouraged--try, try again. They do work!!
Good luck and happy crafting from Virginia!!

 

  

 

Christmas in July Challenge

Welcome to Your Scrapbook Place Challenge blog, where we are starting a new challenge today. Get ready because it's Christmas in July! Get out your reds and greens and candy canes and jingle bells. Set your iPod to your Christmas playlist and let's get crafty! Cards, layouts, altered art, canvas, decor--the sky's the limit, peeps!!
This two-week-long challenge is sponsored by Decosse's Dynamite Doodles:

My name is Lisa...whether drawing, painting, cross-stitching, card making, or doing nail art, I've been 'creating' since I was knee high to a grasshopper. At the end of 2011, I really started getting interested in the world of card making and nail art. I knew that there were already a lot of creative card makers, digi stamp designers, and nail artists out there and I continue to learn a lot from them, but I needed a place to showcase my work so I could enter some challenges and as a result, created this blog in October of 2012. I live in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. I am happily married to my college sweetheart and we have been married for 24 years. We were never blessed with children so our 'babies' have always been cats. Currently, we have one female tabby named Marigold.

 

Lisa has generously donated the following prizes to up to FOUR lucky people:

• One random participant will receive the full mini kit.
• One random person who leaves a comment will receive both paper sets (patterned and textured).
• One random follower of the blog who leaves a comment will receive the word art set.
• One random player who uses the following FREEBIE digital paper (Click here for the link) from Decosse's Dynamite Doodles will receive three embellishment sets (frames, ribbons/lace, brads)

Challenge Rules:
You are welcome to combine your entry with other challenges.

New projects/cards only - no back linking. Limit three submissions per person.

Please link your project post to the challenge blog, not your entire blog link. If your project is not linked, it will not be counted in the random drawing

Please include a link back to this blog in your entry post. If it is not linked back, it will not be counted in the drawing. 

Let's take a look at some inspiration from the Design Team. First up is Kathy Barley. She made a digital scrapbook layout with digital papers, sentiment and brads from our sponsor.

Next up is Virginia Montagna, whose card features digital papers, frame, brads and ribbon.

Linda Weber also made a card using DECK THE HALLS and HOLLY BERRIES digital papers as well as a digital sentiment. The image is from Squigglefly's Inger Harding.

My card was shown at the beginning of the post. I used Candy Canes digital paper and a digital sentiment to make it. Here it is again:

Don't forget to follow the challenge rules in order to be eligible for the great prizes Lisa has offered! Link up your creation below.

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Midway Point in the Anything Goes Challenge

The weather is finally warming up, and so is our Anything Goes Challenge! Just six more days before we pick a winner, so pull out those stamps, photos, paints and crochet hooks and link your project up HERE for your chance to win a set of Fiskars Embossing plates and the Fiskars embossing tool. Here to inspire the home stretch is a project from Virginia, who shows us what a crafter can do with a few well-placed cuts.

Here's an explosion box from Karissa in elegant black and white:

And just so there's no doubt about the ANYTHING GOES challenge, here are a few "other" crafting projects, like an altered key:

a water color page from my art journal:

and finally a scrapbooking layout page:

So where are your projects? Please share with us!!