Chase Away The Blues!

Happy day everybody!!! It's nearly Easter, yay! We get a few days off soon, but more importantly there will be chocolate involved!!  Now that's my kind of weekend!!

Today it's Play Date Cafe Challenge day! This is the inspirational picture from Sarah, one of the Senior Designers on the team...The colours this week are pale blue, royal blue and cream.

I thought I would find this challenge a bit tricky because most of the cardstock that I use is white.  I started scribbling down a few ideas when I first saw the pic but that all changed when I bought my nice new shiny Martha Stewart punch :o)  I am in lurve!   As soon as I punched one strip out in card I totally changed my mind about what I was going to do and I had the card pretty much put together in about 10 minutes!!  Quite a rarity for me I can tell you!  The little punched butterflies were punched from another MS punch that I will show you later.  I know, I was naughty but it was calling for me to buy it ;o)

We have a fab guest designer over at the PDCC this week..  Arielle Gordon .. She is a past PDCC winner.  Pop over there and see her work, and of course the rest of the design team below;

Julie Ranae (Senior DT)

Mona Pendleton (Senior DT)

Sarah Anderson (Senior DT)

Lisa Somerville

Savannah O'Gwynn

Stephanie Kraft

Suzanne Czosek

Their designs are great, all so different but all fab!   I'm the host of the challenge this week so you get to learn a little bit about me too, scary!

Here are the card details

1. Scribble out loads of sketches and then throw them away when you buy yourself something nice and new that inspires you more!
2. Cut a piece of pale blue card, emboss and attach to the card base
3. Cut and punch two border strips using the hole punch, layer one over the top of the other
4. Stamp the sentiment before sticking to the blue card base
5. Add a royal blue strip to separate the embossed section from the scalloped border
6. Die cut the flowers, for the cream flower cut from the outer petals into the centre to give added dimension, finish the centre of the flowers with a brad and attach using pop dots
7. Punch some blue and cream butterflies and adhere to the embossed section
8. Pat yourself on the back for making a card in about 10 minutes..amazing!

Dies: Sizzix 'Flower Layers #5',' Flower, Daisies', Cuttlebug 'Floral Fantasy' embossing folder
Stamps: Penny Black
Paper: Bazzill cardstock in blues and cream
Inks: Nick Bantock 'Lamp Black' ink
Accessories:  Basic Grey pad (possibly from Euphoria?), MS 'Double Loop Around the Page' punch, MS Pop-Up Butterflies border punch

I called this title 'Chase away the Blues' because our weather is rubbish again here.  It's been raining on and off all day and it's really quite cold again.  The weekend's not looking that great either.   Everyone seems so fed up with it, it makes them grumpy!  So we thought we would liven things up at our house today.  I had been reading recently that there is a laughing group that literally spend a few minutes laughing to relieve stress.  They start off laughing in a false way, and then it becomes so catching that everyone starts laughing.  We decided to give it a go over breakfast this morning.  It's hilarious!  It doesn't matter how much you try not to find it funny, you simply can't help yourself, and before you know it everyone's giggling their head off!!  Go on, give it a go... you know you want to!!

Anyway, enough of me waffling on.  Go and join in on the fun with the Play Date Cafe Challenge this week, I'd love to see your ideas.  The challenge isn't just limited to cards either, we've had all sorts of art too.

Have fun!!