Cards for May challenges

The cards below were made for stamptv.com challenges. Some were a real challenge since it made me do cards I've not been comfortable with before such as the Chabby Chic one below.

The challenges work as follows: One of the design team will come up with either a layout, color, theme etc challenge and we're then invited to play along! At the end of the challenge week (Mon-Mon or Fri-Fri) a winner is chosen at random. It's great fun and so inspiration to see what the other ladies (and men!) come up with! I know I've advanced a lot because of them.

Original Chabby Chic challenge: http://stamptv.ning.com/forum/topics/mix-it-up-monday-shabby-chic



The card below I made for a friend of my Mom's. It doubled as a challenge entry on "Focus on Flowers": http://stamptv.ning.com/forum/topics/mix-it-up-monday-focus-on

This card was made for a Black and White challenge as part of their May stamp release challenge. I used one of GinaK's techniques on the background by coloring an embossing folder using an inkpad before embossing white paper with it. Came out awesome.

Link for technique:http://stamptv.ning.com/video/inking-a-cuttlebug-folder-1
Link for challenge: http://stamptv.ning.com/forum/topics/gkd-may-release-challenge-2

 Here's another entry for the Black and White challenge. I've seen little bit of paper piercing done on cards but when I googled it, I saw that some people do the most intricate designs! I found this website (that's actually for embroidery templates) but works great for paper piercing too.

This 'about' page tells you a little about how to do it: http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=ab-scrapbooking&tid=57666
And here's the link within this page: http://s143.photobucket.com/albums/r125/madjara/embroidery-ornare

Here's my card with a close-up below:

 This card was a CAS (Clean-and-Simple) challenge where you had to use only one stamp, one sentiment and one type of embellishment (which could be repeated but only one type, e.g. ribbon OR pearls OR buttons etc). I'm more comfortable in general with CAS :D
The challenge (a May release challenge): http://stamptv.ning.com/forum/topics/gkd-may-release-challenge-1

Here's a Masculine birthday card challenge (for any age). I made one for our friends Lianne and Byron's baby boy who (God willing) will be born TODAY (1 June)!
The challenge: http://stamptv.ning.com/forum/topics/free-for-all-friday-challenge-1