Quick and easy!

Wow -- this was a busy evening. This Saturday I'll be participating at a Shoebox swap organized by Sarah Moore (Staramaze) on Splitcoast. A shoebox swap is an event where a bunch of stampers get together, each having designed a card and prepared materials necessary to make that card plus a sample card and directions. Each stamper then sets up a station for their card and then everyone goes from station to station making all the different car designs. This particular swap will be made up of 2 groups of 40 stampers, with additional cards designed by "Star Stampers" -- uber talented stampers including a current and former member of the Splitcoast design team -- the Dirty Dozen! It'll be a super fun Saturday -- 6 hours of non-stop stamping -- and I'm really looking forward to it. But before i can enjoy the day, I have to design and prepare materials for 40 cards, plus assemble an additional 8 cards -- 6 for the Star stampers, 1 to donate to Ronald McDonald fund, and 1 sample for other stampers to follow. So that's what I was doing tonight.

I know this isn't the case for everyone, but I always agonize over designs for shoebox swap cards. I wanted the card to be impressive, but I also know we will only have about 10 minutes to stamp each card, so it couldn't be too difficult. Plus, with this swap there is the additional restriction that there is no embossing or glitter allowed. Since I like using those techniques for an easy WOW, not being able to use them feels really restrictive.

After all this talk, I'm sure you;d like to see the final design and I would love to show it to you, but on the off chance that one of the swappers will visit this blog before Saturday i will not, because I don't want to ruin the surprise. I will, however, post it on Saturday, so you will be able to see the fruits of my labor. I really kind of like the way it turned out. It's far more simple than most of my cards, but it should be quick and easy to assemble.

Speaking of cute and easy, I knew I had to show you something new tonight so I stamped anther card just for my blog readers. This particular layout and color combination was suggested in the April section of the Stampin' Up! demo planner. That's the cool thing about being a demo -- Stampin' Up! really supports us with all sorts of resources, including providing different layout and color combinations for the different months in the demo planner.

For this card I used Mellow Moss, Perfect Plum and Pale Plum card stock, perfect plum and mellow moss classic inks, perfect plum craft ink, eggplant grosgrain, handheld rectangle punch, a mixture of very vanilla and iridescent ice embossing powders and dimensionals. I also use bitty backgrounds, Sketch it and In Full Bloom stamp sets. On the mellow moss piece, I first stamped the larger dots in mellow moss ink, but the background still looked too plain, so i added the smaller splatters with mellow moss ink. I think it gives the card just the right amount of depth. The flower is embossed with a touch of iridescent ice powder added in to make it sparkle.

If you liked this card, let me know in a comment below, and don't forget to guess which two sets I selected as part of my free $39.95 in SU merchandise that I won on Monday for your chance to win 6 assorted inspiration sheets. Good luck!