First out of the gate

And the two stampers who were first out of the gate for this week's challenge are . . . drum roll please . . . Rita and Teresa. Yay!

Rita did an amazing job on her card for several reasons. First, She used a really neat technique on the brilliant blue strip. I don't remember what this technique is called, but I can tell you I've seen directions and it involves the use of the hobby blade to make precise cuts, which means that you probably will never see me doing it. I love to cut with the paper snips and I can do OK with the hobby blade in a straight line, but there's no way I would try to use it to cut curves. S that's pretty impressive right there. And then Rita manage to pull off a recent limited supplies splitcoast challenge too, and I don't even know if she did it deliberately. Not so long ago there was a limited supplies challenge which required stampers to use shades of red white and blue to make a patriotic card without using traditional patriotic images. The challenge was so hard I'm not even sure if anyone did it (there was an easier alternate which most stampers gravitated to). But Rita's card definitely fits the bill. It's the perfect patriotic card and no stars or stripes in sight. Awesome! Please check out Rita's card and tell her how impressed you are with her talents: http://ritasstampart.blogspot.com/2007/06/sunday-challenge-and-link-to-check-out.html

The second stamper is Teresa and she even went beyond the call and created two cards! WOW! Teresa used designer paper on both of her cards for the strips. The first card uses a piece of patterned paper from the friends and flowers hostess simply scrappin kit and a piece of the saffron prints paper. I love how Teresa colored in each word on the sentiment in a different color. Very Cool! On her second card Teresa used scraps of the spring showers paper. On this card I love how the shape of the vintage brads mirrors the argyle pattern in the larger strip. Very, very cool! You can check out both of Teresa's cards here: http://mylifesart.blogspot.com/2007/06/almost-there.html Don't forget to leave her a not to tell her you love the cards!