Birch Run Stamping Weekend

Wheew! I'm home from my weekend of stamping (it wasn't a whole weekend just Friday through Saturday.) I had a great time and can't wait to share some projects with you! Let me start by telling you that this Splitcoaststampers event was held in Birch Run, Michigan and it was just a 25 min drive. Those are the kind of get aways that I like! Very little driving allowing for much more fun at the destination!

Friday night we were able to grab some seats and there was a little time to get to know the people around you and some free stamping time. But the bulk of the evening were the three challenges that three of the organizers prepared for us to work on. For this project we were provided with white as our card base, two images from the set called "Bitty Birthday", the patterned paper seen here (from the new mini catalog), and the ribbon seen here. We were required to use pieces of all the items provided to us but we could also add anything we wanted to. So I set out to make this birthday card using the cake from a hostess set called "Blooming With Happiness" from last year. I did some faux stitching on the patterned paper and used my Canvas background stamp with Soft Sky ink on the Soft Sky panels. I covered the white base with the Chocolate Chip card stock and colored the cake with aqua painters and re-inker. When the coloring was done I added some Stickles to the candle flames and flowers. Finally I added ribbon on the side of the matted image.

I was really proud of this card and was going to present it when I realized that none of the 30 other people who were working on theirs had used an image other than the ones provided! As I read the directions a bit closer I realized that we were required to use a portion of the images provided. I was devastated and had figured I had to rip off my cake and start over but then I got smart! On one of the images in this set has a gift bag on it and a little tag on the bag. To salvage my card I simply colored the tag and cut it out and carefully mounted it's tiny little self to the side of the cake dish! I ended up taking 3rd place with this card out of about 30 samples!

Even though I was totally stressed about my inability to follow directions, I really had fun making it!