Just A Note

Hello and Happy Sunday afternoon,

It's an exciting day because today the Paper Players challenge starts back up for the new year with three fabulous new Guest Designers. I almost didn't get to participate in their first challenge because I was scheduled to leave early this morning for a work trip to New Jersey, where I'd be all week long. But the project has been delayed, so the New Jersey trip was cancelled and I get to spend my Sunday at home. I am flying out to another state for work this week, but I don't have to leave until tomorrow morning. More about that later.

My friend LeAnne is hosting this week with a super fun theme challenge. The layout for my card comes from the current Freshly Made Sketches. The super talented Linda Callahan is the sketch designer this week.

LeAnne's challenge is to use a recycled item on our cards. The "patterned paper" on my card is actually part of the front of a birthday card that I received last summer. I loved the water colored look and the coper accents and decided to save the card. I remembered that I had it stashed somewhere when I saw LeAnne's challenge this morning. (It took me a while to find it, LOL.) I trimmed it down and layered it onto a Marina Mist card base. Using Marina Mist for the two vertical strips in Linda's sketch, I dry embossed them with embossing folders from SU, cross stitches, and TE, burlap. The flower is stamped with Tim Holtz distress blue ink onto water color paper and watercolored with more Distress Inks and an Aqua Painter. After stamping the sentiment, it was punched out using the old SU Word Window punch. I fussy cut the flower and adhered it and the sentiment to the vertical element using an "ancient" SU gold rhinestone brad. I added a few more gold and green rhinestones around the card for embellishments.

Here is the inside:

Using more stamps from the W Plus 9 set I stamped them on a piece of SU Naturals card stock in SU Archival Black ink and water colored them with Distress Inks. I didn't add an inside greeting, leaving room for writing a short note.

So, I volunteered to help out another region this week, not realizing what I was getting myself into. I'm heading to Logan, UT which is north of Salt Lake City close to the Idaho border. When I spoke with the customer that I'll be work with, he says "I hope you like snow!" Apparently, they have a ton of it. He sent me an e mail on Friday reminding to bring warm clothes as it was -26 degrees. Now, living in San Diego, you can imagine that I don't have many cold weather clothes. I did do some shopping for my December Europe trip and didn't get to use them, but it appears now I will. I even went shopping yesterday to get some snow boots. My big concern is driving from SLC up to Logan, about a 1.5 hour drive. Monday is supposed to be the only non-snowing day of the week, so hopefully all will be good getting there. Getting back to the airport on Friday may be a different story. Certainly, it will be an adventure!

Have a great week all, and stay warm! Thanks for looking in,
Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Doodle Buds set by W Plus 9
Paper: SU Marina Mist and Naturals card stock, SU water color paper and recycled birthday card for patterned paper
Ink: SU Archival black ink, Tim Holtz Distress inks
Other: SU and TE embossing folders, SU gold rhinestone brad, SU Word Window punch, Aqua Painter, the Big Shot, TE gold and green rhinestones