Hey Sweetie

Happy Saturday! Before I get to today's card, I want to thank everyone who has been praying for the Schmidlins. Here's the SCS thread again if you want to keep up with the updates. On a lighter note, thanks also to those who left 40th birthday wishes on my friend Marcy's blog. She DID see them and says thanks!

Okay, so today's card ... it's my sample for both Jen's Sketch for You To Try and the Saturday challenge over at Our Creative Corner.

Head over to i{heart}2stamp to see this week's sketch, Jen's sample, and guest designer Becca Feeken's sample. For even more inspiration, visit Amy, Carole, Shannan, and Susan.

The challenge this week at Our Creative Corner is an inspiration challenge based on this completely delicious looking photo from the Martha Stewart website:



Be sure to visit Our Creative Corner to see what the rest of the OCC designers put together. While you're there, you can give a super warm welcome to our special guest this week, Taylor VanBruggen. So glad you could join us, Taylor!!

As usual for me, I went with a fairly literal interpretation of the inspiration piece, pulling in the colors, the cupcake theme, and the red and white polka dots. Most everything is pretty straightforward, but I'll point out a few details. The pink frosting on the cupcakes is coated with Crytal Effects and the red cherries are dotted with Christmas Red Stickles. The gorgeous ribbon is from May Arts. Instead of knotting it or tying it into a bow, I just wrapped it around so that the ends overlapped slightly, then cinched it in the middle with some silver cord. The tag, cut with Stampin' Up's word window punch, hangs from the cord by a jump ring.

To stay true to the sketch, I had to get a little creative with the Cuttlebug and piercing. Let me show you what I mean. Here's the sketch:



I tried a bunch of different things for that top band, but they all overpowered this light and delicate image. So instead of adding a band, I dry embossed the Celery background, leaving about an inch unembossed (is that even a word?). I used a Scor-Pal to create a line at each edge of the dry embossing, then scored two additional lines in the center. I then accented with some paper piercing.

Back to the challenges for a minute ... you are warmly invited to participate in either or both. The SCS keywords are SFYTT for Jen's Sketch For You To Try and OCCC for Our Creative Corner. If you've never played before, just jump right in. You'll be addicted soon enough!

Hope you have a fantastic weekend!



Stamps: What's Up Cupcake (My Favorite Things)
Paper: Basic Black, Certainly Celery, Real Red (SU!); Papertrey White
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Accessories: Christmas Red Stickles, Crystal Effects, Certainly Celery Marker, paper piercer, dimensionals, May Arts ribbon, silver cord, word window punch, Martha Stewart border punch, D'Vine Swirls Cuttlebug folder, Scor-Pal, jump ring