Happy Blogoversary to me, Blog Candy, AND an announcement!

Today marks the one year anniversary of this blog, so I'm offering a little blog candy to celebrate. Leave a comment on this post between now and Sunday at midnight EST and I will draw a winner at random Monday morning. The details of the blog candy are at the end of this post.

Today's card was made using a new stamp from Repeat Impressions. Wendy has come out with a new series of stamps called Quartets. These stamps offer a lot of versatility as they are 4"x4" square and divided into four equal sections. For this card, I chose to go with a semi-monochromatic color scheme and stamped the butterfly quartet using VersaColor Celadon ink, to match my background.

I stamped the quartet twice on Papertrey Ink Rustic White card stock, inked all the edges, cut out the upper left and lower right quadrants and popped them up on foam tape. For the butterfly in the upper left corner of the quartet, I went over the stamped image with a Copic Spica glitter pen to give it a little more definition and some shimmer. In the upper right quadrant, I cut out one of the butterflies from my second stamping, using a Martha Stewart butterfly punch, and adhered it with a glue strip just in the center of its body so I could pop up its wings. I added three clear rhinestones for the body.

The card base is a black textured card stock base, with a layer of Hambly patterned paper and a Hambly screen print on top. The ribbon is May Arts silk ribbon that I colored with a Copic marker. The butterfly charm is from Pixie Press and the flowers are from my stash.

For the inside of the card, I repeated the layers of patterned paper and screen print, and added another butterfly on top:

Hope you enjoy this quartet card and can imagine the possibilities it offers. To see samples of cards using some of the other quartet stamps that are available (there are 12 in all), please be sure to check out these cards made by my fellow Repeat Impressions design team members, Jenny Gropp and Sandy Hulsart.

AND, I have another big piece of news to share today - I have been asked to be a member of the Creative Belli Challenge Design Team. I'm very excited to participate in the bi-weekly challenges put on by the Creative Belli team, so please check back regularly to see what challenges are brewing!

OK, FINALLY, on to the blog candy.... Wendy at Repeat Impressions is graciously offering an unmounted sheet of quartet stamps for my blogoversary candy! That means you will win not one, not two, not three, but FOUR quartet stamps! A quartet of quartets!

Here are three different sheets you will be able to select from if you are the winner:

Plate 8500

Plate 8500b

Plate 8500c

To win the blog candy, leave a comment on THIS post before midnight (EST) on Sunday, June 28. I will select a winner at random and announce the winner on Monday morning, June 29.

SO sorry for the novel - thanks for hanging in there with me! Have a great day!

Home....

We spent this past weekend visiting my mom in Tampa. She's got a lemon tree in her yard and it was brimming with lemons, so we brought some home - you can't really tell from this picture, but they are HUGE. That bowl measures 9 inches across, to give you an idea.

One of them was the size of a grapefruit. And they are very mild - with a hint of orange, like a Meyer lemon. We used the large one last night to make one of our favorite dishes - Lemon Sage Chicken. It was great. The lemon produced a little over half a cup of juice.

She also has an avocado tree and let us have one of the avocados - it weighs over two pounds! I see guacamole in my near future!

After being gone a week for our dive trip and then a three day visit home to my mom's, it's nice to be back in my own home again. So, in keeping with the 'home' theme, I decided to post this card today! This is a card I made as part of a design team challenge from Repeat Impressions. The layer with the chair and the border is from a Hambly transparency. The patterned paper is from Prima Marketing's Tea and Silk paper collection.

The sentiment was stamped with Versamark ink and embossed with Powder Keg embossing powder. I cut the panel out with a Spellbinders Label Four die and doodled some faux stitching around the edge of it. I punched slots in either end and ran some wide silk ribbon through the slots and adhered the ends behind the mat layer. The teal card stock is from Prism Papers.

Not a lot to it, but I must say that although using this particular transparency was a bit of a challenge, I think it turned out OK. I like these colors together.
Hope you're having a great week! Thanks for stopping by.