Time for Another CenterStage Spotlight Challenge Blog Hop

Wow! Where has November gone?! I can't believe our last CenterStage Spotlight Challenge Hop was on November 4 and that was the last time I posted here! Thanksgiving is over?! Really? How can that be! Even worse -- Christmas is less than a month away and I'm totally unprepared. It has been such a busy month and I've had very little time to do anything for the holidays. I'm hoping to have a bit more time in the coming weeks to do some 'creative' things. If I don't, people may be getting New Year's cards from me instead of Christmas cards!

Here is one Christmas card I can add to my stack. I made this for tonight's challenge blog hop. It was fun to stamp and color on patterned paper, although I have to admit I didn't end up doing a lot of coloring! LOL! Take a look at the card both inside and out. All card info is below. Be sure to hop along and see all the gorgeous things the past and present Spotlight team members have made and are sharing tonight.


This is the outside of the card, which was difficult to photograph because the ornament is covered with Crystal Lacquer. I stamped the ornament onto the candy cane striped paper and then stamped the sentiment in the middle. I colored the lines with a red copic and covered them with red crystal lacquer. I sprinkled glitter onto the wet lacquer and then used clear lacquer on the rest of the ornament. Since the dp wasn't very heavy, I got some wrinkling from the lacquer. If I were going to make this again I'd adhere the dp to some heavier stock before cutting it out and putting the lacquer on it. I taped the silver cord to the back of the ornament and then popped it up on pop dots. Note the ivory frame here and the green striped frame on the inside of the card. These are the left over pieces from cutting out the Top Note die on the Big Shot. I went to a holiday card making event and we made some cards that used the center piece but I decided to keep the frames just in case I could make use of them and I did! I like it when I can "recycle" pieces like that!

Here is the inside of the card. The ornaments are blinged up with Spica red, green, clear, and silver pens. I never embellish the insides of may cards so this was quite a challenge for me!

Card Recipe:

Card base: SU Riding Hood Red
DP: All from SU
Large ornament and Merry and Bright sentiment: Holiday Hospitality from Gina K. Designs
Happy Holidays sentiment: Holiday Cheer Stamp TV Kit - Holiday Greetings set
Small ornaments on inside: Vintage Borders set from Gina K Designs
Embellishments: Silver Cord from Gina K Designs; brads from Basic Grey Wassail; ribbon from SU

It's time for another CenterStage Spotlight Challenge Blog hop!

Hostess: Jessica Fick {Design Team Coordinator} Theme: Stamp and color the image on Patterned Paper { any occasion card acceptable, it doesn't have to be Christmas themed} { image may be cut out and layered, but must be stamped and colored on patterned paper} Requirement: any GinaK Designs stamp set & Glitter Bonus Challenge: decorate the inside of your card to coordinate

Participating Designer's links:

Brenda Turner Carla Suto, Carolina Buchting,

Cheri Weston Deb Felts Geri Utterback , Giovana Smith, Gina Krupsky Janice Melton, JenMarie Taylor, Jennie Harper, Joy Hadden, Karen Knegten Kay Simmons, Linda Payne, Lori McAree, Melisa Waldorf, Melissa Cash, Melissa Shultz, Nina Brackett, Pam Imholz, Peggy Wainman, Selma Stevenson, Shannon Bracken, Sharri Seffens

Sue Morris Sue VanDeVusse Sue Walsh, Tina Gilliland

Center Stage Spotlight Design Team Past and Present Blog Hop

Welcome to our first Center Stage Spotlight Design Team Blog Hop!

Jessica Fick, the Design Team Coordinator for GinaK Designs has issued a challenge to all of the past and present team CSS team members to make a Christmas card with one of these sketches:

I'm so excited to be able to participate in this hop tonight as a past design team member! I chose to make a card that follows the more "embellished" sketch. Here it is:

I used Pure Luxury Rocket Red as my card base and Pure Luxury Ivory as the next layer. I embossed the ivory layer with the Cuttlebug Snowflakes folder and then randomly colored some of the snowflakes with a Stardust Pure Glitter pen. I used Tim Holtz's Distress Ink in Antique Linen around the edges of the snowflake layer as well as around the edges of the focal images circle. I used a strip of the Rocket Red with a piece of music paper from the Cosmo Cricket Jolly by Golly paper pack layered on top of it under the focal image. The scalloped circle is Pure Luxury All Spruced Up and the plain circle is Pure Luxury Ivory again.

I stamped the house image, which is from the Gina K Designs set, Let It Snow, with Memento Tuxedo Black and colored it with Copics. I sponged the sky with Memento London Fog and Paris Dusk. I added some falling snow to the sky with a white gel pen. The snow on the ground, rooftops and trees was created with crystal snow glitter by Stampendous. The oval was punched out using a Stampin' Up punch, was edged with Vivid Dye Ink Brick and "peace" from Let It Snow was stamped with the Vivid Brick ink also. The two buttons are from the Gina K. Holiday button assortment collection.

This was a really fun sketch to play with and I can't wait to try a couple of other variations with it. Now hop along and see what other Design Team members have created for tonight's hop! You're going to LOVE what everyone has designed!

First, here are the links for GinaK's Current CSS Team Members:

Deb Felts
Diana S. Queen
Karen Knegten
Melissa Cash
Sharri Seffens
Sue VanDeVusse

and the links for all of the past CSS Design Team members participating:

Brenda Turner,
Carla Suto,
Carolina Buchting,
Charlene Merrick,
Dawn Lusk,
DeeMarie Kelemen,
Geri Utterback ,
Giovanna Smith,
Janice Melton,
JenMarie Taylor,
Jennie Harper,
Joy Hadden,
Kay Simmons,
Linda Payne,
Lori McAree,
Melisa Waldorf,
Pam Imholz,
Selma Stevenson,
Shannon Bracken,
Shelly Wilson,
Sue Walsh,
Tina Gilliland

Some of GinaK's Senior Design Team Members and Illustrators wanted to get in on the fun tonight too:

Asela Hopkins
Carolyn King
Cindy Lawrence
Jessica Fick
Lee Murphy
Lynn Mercurio
Nina Brackett
Melanie Muenchinger

along with Nina Brackett's Guest Designer: Lisa Hjulberg

Last but not least, don't forget to visit Gina over at http://blog.ginakdesigns.com/

All of these gorgeous cards from the entire team will be added to the StampTV gallery throughout the next few days with the tag cssjf1 (which stands for center stage spotlight jessica fick 1)

These sketches are also our sketch challenge for this week, so be sure to check out all the information in the discussion in our Challenge group over on StampTV Thursday morning. We'd love to see your cards with the sketch too!

It Has Been a While . . .

It has been a few weeks since I last posted here. I haven't been making cards during that time for several reasons. I have been extremely busy at my job, working on a large proposal that was finally submitted TODAY! Yahoo! I'm so glad that is out the door! Now just keep your fingers crossed that we hear something positive about getting the grant! It will mean four years of jobs, work, and money for the company at which I work so we are very much hoping we will get it.

On top of the proposal work, I have been spending a lot of time running back and forth from where I live to my parents' home, which is two and a half hours away. My almost 82 year old father had three bypasses done on his heart last week so he and my mother have needed a lot of extra help.

So, I have had very little time to spend with my stamps recently. It makes me an unhappy camper when I don't have time to play in my stamping room so I was very excited to get back to it last night. I can't share yet what I made -- it is for a special blog hop that will be happening tomorrow night! Stay tuned and stop back to join in on the hop!

Thanks for stopping by! See you back here tomorrow! :)