The return of the stamp show and a winning card

It's been three years, but last weekend we finally had a stamp show back in Minnesota. Yay! It was small -- only seven vendors, I think -- but everyone had large booths and lots of product and samples to see. Honestly, the smaller size kept it from becoming too overwhelming -- and I still found plenty of stuff to buy! The crowd was smaller, too, which was nice for shoppers -- plenty of space to spread out, and you didn't feel like you had to fight your way through the booths. I just hope the vendors made enough that it was worthwhile for them so they'll come back next year. But the best part for me was that I won first place in one of the card contests!

I entered two cards for the card contest on Saturday, and the theme was "Squirrel Away." Of course, my first thought was to use squirrel stamps. I only have a couple stamp sets with squirrel images, but they're small images, and I wanted something larger. So I decided to switch course and, after a little brainstorming with a friend, I decided to go with the idea of saving, or squirreling away, little treasures. So here is my first card:

Sorry it's not a great shot; I got a late start on my cards, and I was rushing to create and mail them so they had enough time to arrive before the deadline. Consequently, I didn't have time to take better photos.

I used an old My Monthly Hero kit from Hero Arts, and it worked perfectly. I decided to go with a monotone color scheme to create a vintage feel -- and so I didn't have to color everything. I stamped the curio cabinet on Crumb Cake card stock using Early Espresso ink (both Stampin' Up! colors). Then I played around with where to stamp all the little images. I stamped "you are a" in one of the cubbies near the top and made sure to leave space for the die-cut sentiment just below.

I colored the shelves/dividers of the cabinet with a Crumb Cake marker and the little joints with a gold Sharpie to add a metallic element. The panel still seemed a bit plain, so I decided to mask off and ink blend inside each little cubby to add some dimension. (About halfway through the process, I questioned the wisdom of that decision. But I do think it adds a lot to the card.) I die-cut the word treasure from Crumb Cake and gold card stock, layered them together, and glued them to the card front below the stamped portion of the sentiment. To finish off the card, I added three gold sequins.

And this is the card that won first place! They always announce the card contest winners about half-way through the day. I wasn't able to go on Saturday when they announced the winners for this contest (there are separate categories for each day), so when we got to the show on Sunday, I made a beeline for the contest boards and found out that I had won!

I was a little nervous about entering this card because it doesn't have a squirrel on it. (I've even seen a couple comments on the stamp show's Facebook page asking how this card won since there's no squirrel.) So for my second card I decided to go a little "safer" and went with a squirrel collecting acorns.

I created a tree trunk on a Crumb Cake card base by embossing a piece of Early Espresso card stock with a woodgrain embossing folder and then punching three circle openings. I put a punch-art squirrel peeking out of the bottom hole and stamped a sentiment in the top hole. In the larger middle hole I created a shaker element with a few sequins and acorns. Some of the acorns were stamped, colored, and die cut, and some were punched out of copper card stock. I also added a few of the acorns to the front of the card, and for a little more color, I finished off with some leaves punched out of a couple different green card stocks.

 

 

My prize for winning was $100 to spend at the show. Yippee! Here is what I picked out from Rubbernecker Stamps. The little flowery cupcake stamp was a free gift. (And in case you're wondering, I already had the set of green ink cubes that goes with that pack of reinkers, so that's why I chose the orange ink cubes. There was a deal if you got six.:) ) I'm planning to use the stamp set for my July Christmas cards, so hopefully you'll get to see that one in action soon. 

I also bought plenty of other goodies, and I'm looking forward to playing with them. I'm going to try to focus on card-making this weekend because I need to replenish my stash!

 

 

 Thanks for stopping by!