Sunday Morning Challenge

I'm cheating! Normally I post the challenge first, and then make a card, but since tomorrow is Father's Day and I may not have time to stamp a card, this time around I did things backwards. I first stamped my card and then wrote up the challenge to match the card. Sorry! But at least this way you'll get to see a sample right away!

The challenge is a little different as well, in that you will have a wide variety of sets to choose from. Your cards should be stamped with any 1 of the Stampin' Up! sets slated for retirement at the end of the month. Given the lengthy retirement list, I would think everyone will have a stamp set they can use for this challenge. The trick is, you may not use any other stamp set, so no other backgrounds or sentiments allowed. Some sets, like the Love Ya Bunches set I used in my sample, make this a little easier because they include sentiments. But then again a card doesn't always need to have a sentiment. Sometimes we should let the beauty of the image speaks for itself.

The layout for this week's challenge is fairly basic and the colors - Rose red, So Saffron, Almost Amethyst and Certainly Celery - are taken directly from the Palette O'Prints - last month's Stampin' Up! designer paper sampler. You may use the designer papers if you have them, but the colors are lovely enough to use together even without any designer paper. You may add up to 2 neutral colors to the mix and you do not have to use all 4 of the challenge colors if you don't want to, but you should use at least 3.

This is my card. It was inspired by a lovely RAK I received from my friend Jen (I will show you that and other RAKs I received recently in an upcoming post). In trying to decide which stamp set to use I remembered telling you that I loved all of my stamp sets and realized that this was a lie. I do have a couple of stamp sets I don't love, and this is one of them. Why don't I love this set? Simply because I haven't had a chance to use it much since I bought it in December. I'm sorry to say it has been kind of neglected, and now it's retiring! How sad! So as soon as I realized this I knew I had to use it for this card!

And here it is. Once again very simple (I'm on such a simple card kick lately!). I stamped the image and sentiment in basic black ink and I colored in the images using my ink pads and a blender pen. I used strips of the prints designer paper in different colors but the same pattern to add a little interest to the card. Nice and quick -- nothing to it.

So there you go. When you finish your cards include a link in the comments to this post or e-mail the photo of your card to me at stampwithdiane@comcast.net and I will upload it here. Happy stamping and Happy Father's Day!