Back to the program already in progress . . . .

lol!! This is such a true statement. Life doesn't stop and wait for you to adjust to everything that is thrown at you. I wasn't able to pre-order anything from the Spring Mini last month but was able to put in a HUGE order from it this morning, almost everything from the catalog - lol!! I am going to be mounting stamp sets for the next month!! I remembered that I do have the Polka Dots & Paisley set so I used that and the Color Combination Challenge and the Sketch Challenge from SCS to stamp a couple of cards. This is the second card that I came up with and it is my favorite of the two. The colors are Cool Caribbean, Certainly Celery and Elegant Eggplant (looks like black) and I stamped the base card with Paisley background in Cool Caribbean. You can't see it well in the scan and in real life it is very subtle. I wanted to add ribbon somewhere on one of the cards but I couldn't decide where so I just left it off. This is the first card and I wasn't sure about it. I also used the Monday's challenge (Try a New Technique) which was "Blurred Vision". I used markers to color the flower image and after I stamped it I used my aquapainter to pull the different colors out to almost frame the image. I really like how it worked. When I first saw this set, other than the giant Paisley image, I wasn't really liking it but now that I've finally inked it up - I guess it can stay. I had a Stamping Club Class this past Saturday and needed to come up with a couple of cards using a SAB set. This one is very simple. The girls in my club range from first time stampers to seasoned pro's so I'm always challenged to come up with cards that they all like. They said this was the favorite of the day because of the simplicity of it. I really like how the basic black cardstock make the image pop off the card. The other colors are More Mustard and Old Olive. The base is stamped with the Linen background stamp in More Mustard and then I used the swirly image from Delight in Life to frame the main image. This was inspired by Kim MacNutt. Hers was one of the first website that I found when I started stamping and her creativity and style has influenced my own stamping so much. I've been seeing so many cards with the giant scalloped punch and I love the way it looks but I try to only buy Stampin' Up products that I can demo so I created the Tempting Turquoise layer using the slit punch and the coluzzle. By sheer dumb luck I cut it out the exact right size so the scallops spaced out perfectly. Woo Hoo!!! Got to love when that happens. Now, back to stamping!!