Swaps are coming along

Well, the card swaps I am hostessing at SCS are coming along. The birthday card front swap mentioned below is due by Feb 29, so it doesn't seem to have as many participants. I guess maybe I made it too soon. I am also hostessing a Pimped ATC swap, and a Hanna swap, which are due April 18th and March 28th respectively. I realized that I haven't posted a challenge yet this month, so . . . I challenge you to join us for some fun swapping of cards and there will be prizes given away for the top 3 submissions. These are judged by me, family and friends. Your odds are pretty good if you have the time to send your submissions by Feb 29th for the b-day card front swap. If that is too soon, the other swaps are still open for quite a while. Check them out, if you would like.










Here are some of the cards for the birthday card front swap so far. The first one I called priceless birthday is by Sarah Wade (known on SCS as MrsE) and was created for the feminine/ladies' group.

These three were created by me for the ladies' group, guy's group and the children's group. I used a mixture of different stamp companies from Sugar Nellies to Stampin Up (SU) to The Angel Company (TAC). I have to admit, I enjoyed every one of them.

The sugar nellie was colored with prismacolors, gamsoled and then after layering a bit of different colors, some doodling, some primas (which I haven't used in a while), Stickles and 2 different ribbon to finish it off. I just had to get a few embellishments on there. *wink*


The guy card didn't have as much going on, so I opted for more layers and sponging of color to keep this interesting. The Riveting sentiment was a much needed addition to unbalance it out a bit to get away from a totally central focus.

The little boy card was fun in the different shades of green I also used textured card stock for depth, ink distressing or sponging, and my favorite technique of coloring with prismacolors and gamsoling them. I thought the strips of ribbon separated the images nicely too.