Gallery Idol & an Editor

Hi friends.  Welp, on Friday, I got to sit down with Susan Opel, one of the editors of Paper Crafts magazine.  What a special treat that was.  She is just as fun and personable in person as she is in the virtual world.  We chatted for a good long time (as my kids sat idly by harassing me if it was time to go yet and I begged them for just 20 more min.).  We talked about her family a bit, about how she landed the best job on Earth, and of course, about card making!  We also discovered that we both have great taste in clothing as she almost wore the same shirt (except hers is purple) from NY & Co.!  Wouldn't that have been fun if she did.  I tried to convince her to drive back and put it on and then come back for a picture, but she didn't go for it. :)  Here we are together:

We met up in Ft. Wayne - as soon as I found out she would be in IN, I told her I would totally drive to meet her wherever she was.  So, I piled the kids into the van and drove up there and we met up at a really neat Italian place called Biaggi's.  Later on, when I was driving home, I realized that I was so busy chatting that they got my order totally wrong.  Oh well.  I wasn't there for the food.  This first picture is one that my son snapped of us.

This picture is the one that Susan snapped - I think she has a little practice at these types of shots and she always looks good in all of her photos!  So, in honor of her Paper Crafts goodness, I thought it would be fun to share the entries I have posted so far over at The Paper Crafts Gallery Idol challenge.  The theme for the first round is "Congrats" cards.

This card uses just about all of the sentiments I own that have anything to do with congrats.  I lined them up in the shape of an arrow, then hand drew a line around the outside.  I then colored in a few of the letters and around the stars.  The "you" is some stickers from Cosmo Cricket.

The idea for this card came when I saw that awesome thermometer DP.  I thought it would be fun to play on the "fire" aspect.  I hand-cut the flames and printed out the sentiment at the bottom.  I actually used a bit of the packaging that the stickers came in for the lined paper at the bottom.

This card idea came from Pinterest (big shock, I know).  I have seen the letters lined up this way many times, but never in different fonts.  So, I scavenged my stickers to get several different styles (the little bunny is a rub-on).  The really big letters were actually gold to start with - I rubbed them with versamark ink and embossed them in black to change the color - a great way to change up your chipboard stickers.

I have a few others up my sleeve, but am waiting to post them until the last minute so that nobody steals my ideas. :)  Thanks for stopping by today and taking a peek.  Hope you enjoyed.  Now I'm off to become a blonde, more on that later.....