CDS Weekend Color Challenge Feature

Good morning! It is a very snowy one, here in Maryland...and in March! That is not a common thing in March here on the Chesapeake Bay. But, the Lord surprised us with a Nor'easter yesterday, moving up the Eastern Coast and they typically, bring us our largest snowfalls. I think that we have about 3 inches so far, but others on the Maryland ocean coast, are expected to have up to 10 inches. Bless their hearts!

Last week was a very busy week for Clear Dollar Stamps, with their release of 14 new stamp sets! If you missed all the sneak peeks from the Design Team, you can see all of the stamps on the Clear Dollar Stamps website -- just click on their logo to the right on my sidebar. And enjoy all that eye candy!

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of hostessing the CDS Weekend Color Challenge over on Paper Craft Planet, and had a blast! The colors that I chose for the challenge were: Summer Sun, Real Red, Black with White, as an optional neutral. Well, some were a little stretched with this color challenge ; ) ... and some weren't...but all had fun! I decided, that today, I'm going to feature 2 cards from our Weekend Color Challenge. One card to be featured will be from our CDS Design Team and one card from all the participants in the challenge.

First, I want to show Laura's card for the Weekend Color Challenge. I chose Laura's card for several reasons -- I love the cheerful happy flavor of her card, and I am so longing for Spring and Summer! LOL Laura, used the CDS Stamp Set, "Too Fruity" for her card submission and did a beautiful job background stamping, alternating the cute strawberries with the whimsical ants. I love that she stamped the sentiment on the background stamped white panel, too. Factor all that in with the yellow and white polka dotted dp, the black and white gingham dp and red card base, along with her cute embellishments and you've got a winner! Thanks Laura for participating in the CDSWCC8!

We had 5 of our CDS Team Designers join in on the challenge, and I so enjoyed their company this weekend. Thanks to Gloria, Katie, Laurie, Monique and Shawne for playing along. Let me tell you...that when you've got to choose one card from the design team submissions, it is next to impossible! But, I've chosen Monique's card for the fact that she took some unusual colors and incorporated them into a Sympathy Card. Now how creative is that? Monique used a newly released stamp set called "April Flower of the Month, and did a wonderful job using Summer Sun, Real Red and Black and came up with a beautiful floral card. I love so many things about her card: the black card base with subtle hints of red and yellow, the designer script background on white behind the vase of flowers, the black vase of beautifully colored flowers and the subtle yellow bow ribbon. But my favorite part of Monique's card is how she cut out the flowers, and note that she didn't cut them closely to the flowers, and popped them up overtop the designer script background. I just think that that is a neat effect, and you can see another of Monique's cards on her blog here, done the same way but with the "Charlie Daisy" set, that was just released, as well.

As I said, the fun part of hostessing the CDS Weekend Color Challenge is visiting, chatting and viewing all the beautiful artwork...the difficult part is choosing who to feature on my blog. I must say that I loved each and every card submitted for the challenge and I appreciate the time that everyone took to participate.

Next week, my Design teammate, Shawne Arnold will be hostessing the Weekend Color Challenge, and we hope to see you back there, then.

Thanks, everyone!