{Caardvarks} 6 Shooter Challenge

Here's my {Caardvarks} Day 6 challenge card. We were to make a 6x6 inch card. WOW! Was it ever fun to have so much space on the front of the card to work with!

For some reason, I've not been doing much stamping on any of the cards I've made so far for the {Caardvarks} 10 Day 10K challenge. I can't decide if my "style" is changing or if I just don't have any stamps that are inspiring to me right now. I am in a holding pattern waiting for my new SU stamps to get here, so that might be it. I want NEW stamps, not OLD stamps! My order went in July 1st (!) and they still aren't here yet! According to my demo girlfriend Lue, I should get them tomorrow. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Does it always take this long to get your stamps after the new catalog comes out? Yikes. I hate waiting.

The paper on the front of today's card was totally my inspiration! It is from Scenic Route, one of my new favorite paper companies! Their paper is amazing; so bright, colorful and cheerful! Right up my alley, wouldn't you say? Since I had so much room to work with on this card, I got out some chipboard I won from Julee at Poetic Artistry a while back. Don't you love how glittery and sparkly they are? I first rubbed the "naked" chipboard letters in Certainly Celery ink to color them up a bit. I liked how that looked, but I still wanted "more"! So, I got out my handy dandy glue pen and covered each of the letters with glue and then dumped lots of very fine glitter over them!!! Beautious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let me tell you, these things sparrrrrrrrkkkkkkle! Bling!!!!!

Since I was working with so much COLOR, I wanted to bring some black into the equation to "ground" the card a bit. Black always looks FABULOUS with bright colors. I used some more Scenic Route paper, this time the black and white bird pattern, which is the reverse side of the popular "bird" print everyone's going ga-ga over lately (including me). I cut a strip of the black and then scalloped it. I laid that vertically down the left side of the card and then laid the chipboard letters across it and to the top and center of the card.

Next, I needed to bring some stamping into the picture, but how? I searched all my SU sets for something appropriate. No luck there. I lifted my aching butt out of my stampin' chair and went across the room to peruse my single stamps that are displayed on shelves on the wall. Ahhhhhh-HA! I spotted a relatively new sentiment stamp from Hero Arts that says "Be Silly and have FUN! Bingo! Perfecto!!! I stamped the sentiment in black to tie in with the black designer paper and then mounted it just below the chipboard letters at an angle. It needed a little punch, just the sentiment alone was a little boring, so I stamped the sentiment again on Rose Red cardstock and cut out just the word "FUN", and adhered that over the word "FUN" on the black and white sentiment. It's adhered with dimensional tape. The whole sentiment was matted with the black and white designer paper.

For fun, I cut out a bunch of flowers from the Scenic Route paper that was my inspiration. I outlined each of them with my Stardust Gel pen for more spaaaaarkkkkle. After all this was done, I thought it still needed a little more punching up to make it truly a "fun" card, so I found an exclamation point in my chipboard pack and thought that would be the perfect final touch for the card! I covered it with some Scenic Route paper (scraps), and then adhered it right at the end of the sentiment! Love it! Hope you do too!

Thanks for your kind words yesterday after I shared with you all the curveballs we've been thrown this summer. We'll get through it, eventually. I personally believe God uses these events to bring us back to Him. In many instances, they are our "wake-up" call and reminder that we cannot successfully do it alone. We might mistakenly think we can, but in the end, we cannot. I need to remind myself of this often. I do have an update on Muriel. It was discovered yesterday that she has a staphococcle (?) infection at the site of the surgical wound. She is in much pain. As of around dinner time last night she was awaiting the arrival of a hard hitting antibiotic (the strongest available) to get a start on fighting the infection. They do not know yet if the infection is contained in the wound, or if it has spread to the rest of the body. If that's the case, that is not good. Hopefully I will know more soon. I will keep you updated.

Hugs,
Amy