CUSTOM CARD FOR GLENNA

I have been working on this card for the last few days, I wanted to share it with you. Glenna asked me to make this for her friends husband because she wanted to let him know how much she appreciated everything he did for her friends 40th Birthday. She found a similar card in my shop, and started thinking like I do when I get a great idea for a card. So we truly did design this card together, and it was a lot of fun. I had a chance to get to know Glenna and she is a very sweet and creative person. She has to be if she went to all this trouble for her friend. The inside of the card represents the back of an envelope. How many of you remember when you put the return address on the back of the card? We decided to use a little creative license, to be able to show the lining of the envelope. I made the envelope into a gusseted pocket, where I placed 20 special notes, all trimmed in gold ink. I typed out all the special things he did to make her Birthday special. I was touched by the sweetness and care not only of this husband to his wife, but also the sweetness of Glenna, making sure this did not go unnoticed. Each note tells a little story about all the very sweet things this man did for his wife's Birthday. Glenna hopes this will be a special memento for her friend and her husband.
I would have to say this is the best part of my Etsy shop, I get to know the people I am designing something for, and I get to share a small part of their celebrations. I am always touched by their kindness to each other and to me. In the process, I get to become a part of their history. Thank you Glenna for sharing this with me. Thanks for looking ~Diane

WINNER OF THE WHEN CREATIVITY KNOCKS GREAT CRAFTERS TOOL HUNT!

Drum roll please!!!!!!!! The Winners are Spellbinders Impressabilities ....... AND ME!!!!
How awesome is this!!!! I am so excited, I just received this lovely e mail - I will let Ana tell you, I am almost too excited to speak or write!

Congratulations! You are the lucky winner of ALL THE TOOLS in the first When Creativity Knocks Great Crafter’s Tool Hunt! The manufacturers are sending the tools to us and as soon as we have them all, we’ll package them up and ship them off to you so you can start creating with them! Thank you for taking part in the tool hunt and casting your vote. We hope you saw some great new tools you’ll be excited to try. We also hope you have explored our website and will continue to be a part of our forum, view our episodes, etc. The episode library is full of inspiration, and we have product reviews and more in our forum.

Whoo Hooo! Thank you, Thank you! And Thank you! I am so excited!! I am doing the happy dance right here, right now! Those are some awesome tools, and now they are mine! I can't wait to get them and start using them!!! Yippee! Hooray! Whoo Hooo! and many Thanks again! I can't wait to share the news with all my crafting friends!!! Thank you for all the great tutorials explaining how to use each and every item. I love your web site with all the great episodes, and the library is wonderful to go back to and explore! You will see me as a regular in your forum too. And thanks for all the inspiration too! I can't wait!

This is the Awesome Great Crafters Tool Hunt manufacturers line up!

Spellbinders - Impressabillities is the winning Cool Tool!
This was my vote, and they won too, see what they had to say!

Impressabilities Rules! We Won! If I can quote Stacey Caron, “Yeahhhhh!!!!! Yippee!!!!! Yahoo!!!!!!” We owe our faithful readers a huge thank you for supporting us and for loving our Impressabilities templates! Don’t forget to check in over at When Creativity Knocks, a lucky entrant will win a prize package of one of all the nominated tools featured in the contest! That's me! Spellbinders wins a full-length episode featuring the Spellbinders Impressabilities and will be featured on the When Creativity Knocks website as the When Creativity Knocks Best Tool and receive a trophy! We’ll let you know when that episode is ready to view, and show off our trophy too! So thank you again, from the bottom of our hearts! We really appreciate your support!

We are memory Keepers
Tattered Angels
McGill
Imaginisce

Glue Arts
Easy Arranger
Completely Stencible -
Bazill - Squeezer...

I cant wait to get them and try them all out!! I will give you an update when they come, and show you all the cool tools, and what they do!
Thank you Ana Araujo , When Creativity Knocks Executive Producer/Designer
and all of the Awesome Great Crafters Tool Hunt manufacturers
for making this generous prize possible! ~Diane

STEPPING OUTSIDE MY COMFORT ZONE

I entered this card in 2 challenges Theres Magic In The Air and Digital TuesdayChallenge.

The only way to grow is to learn new things. And with the internet and all of your wonderful blogs there is no shortage of things to learn! I know it's hard to sometimes step outside of our comfort zone, but we have to if we want to keep our designs fresh. I have been doing a lot of that lately. So this week I am really taking a leap! I am going to actually "enter" a challenge, first time, don't laugh. I've done contests, but never challenges. I have to say I admire all of you who do this on a daily basis. I visit your blogs and see that you make such beautiful cards and sometimes enter them into 3, 4, or 5 challenges!
Now if that's not scary enough, I am also going to do my very first digital image! Actually it's not that scary, thanks to Nina at There's Magic in the Air. She is offering some free digital images, but she has also offered a wonderful tutorial "What is a digital image and how do I use it". Thank you Nina, I've read tutorials on other sites and just reading them left me feeling confused and believing I needed some fancy programs to print one. She explains it so clearly you just have to try it!
This challenge on her beautiful Deco Flower image calls for you to heat or dry emboss something on the card along with her free image. This is a 5 x 7 card, I used my Spellbinders Labels 8 Nestabilities, to cut and dry emboss. I colored the flower with Marvy Embossing markers, and used Stampin Up Glassy glaze embossing powder. Since I took Nina's suggestion to make a few images on the same page, I cut part of the flower out after I heat embossed it, and laid it over the original image. I also heat embossed the flower on the original image, on the opposite petals, so the colors look shaded but they aren't. I used the new Souffle 3D opaque ink for the leaves, along with a green marker. The beads were stitched together but I had to cut them up and place them on the stem 1 by 1. I added the ribbon and hid the rough ends by making slits and tucking it to the inside of the card. Thank you Nina for offering the instructions and the free image, I don't think I would have tried this if I had to buy one, but now that I see how easy it is, I will probably buy some in the future. One thing I did discover, is that I need some better coloring tools! Well, thanks for looking. ~Diane

I love this little Sizzlet Chloe.
I used my Cuttlebug Swiss dots folder along with my labels 8 from Spellbinders.