Center Stage Spotlight Designer Team Challenge Blog Hop

Welcome to our first Center Stage Spotlight Design Team Blog Hop!

Jessica Fick, the Design Team Coordinator for GinaK Designs has issued a challenge to all of the past and present team CSS team members to make a Christmas card with one of these sketches.  Some designers may post cards using each design:




We know you're going to LOVE what everyone has designed for us tonight! 

Tonight I have created two cards, one from each of the sketches. 

The GKD stamps I used for this first card are from the StampTV Kit "Holiday Cheer" and "Holiday Greetings"  I decided to make my first card using layers of gold and white.  The background was embossed with the Cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder.  The band across the middle was embossed with the Dotted Swiss folder.    Nestabilities were used for the circles and ovals.   This beautiful  tree and greeting are gold embossed using the super fine gold embossing powder from GKD.  This is by far my favorite embossing powder.  The middle band has three rows of gold cording.  The snowflakes were punched, pressed against  a VersaMark pad, then also gold embossed and attached with dimensionals.

For the second sketch challenge I used two GKD stamp sets:  "Hip to Be Square" and "A Very Merry Christmas". 

The background has white embossed snowflakes using a snowflake from "A Very Merry Christmas".  To create the snowman, I stamped the head, face and hat from "Hip to Be Square".  I wanted to build a body making each layer a different size so I used Nestabilities to cut out all three circles.  Before removing the bottom two, I used a marker to trace around the inside edge of the Nestie so it would look like I had stamped all three circles.  The buttons are also from this set.  The hat was cut out and a small piece of ribbon from GKD was cut for the band.  The holly is from "A Very Merry Christmas".  Small red rhinestones were added for the berries.   A piece of GKD ribbon was added for the scarf.  I folded a  small piece of ribbon in half and tied a knot leaving the ends long.  Did you notice I frayed the ends to look like fringe on the scarf?  I used glue dots to attach it.   Don't you think it looks like a real scarf!

The background circles were cut with Nestabilities. The top piece was embossed using the Cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder.  A paper piercer was used to punch holes in the bottom scallops. The band was created by matting red and black CS.  The snowflake border was created using a MS border punch and a piece of GKD ribbon is across the center of the band.   Polar White Flower Soft was added to the bottom of the snowman and  black rhinestones added in the corners to complete the card.

Would you like a chance to win a GKD stamp set? NinaB is going to pick a random commentator from one of the blog posts tonight but she won't tell us from which blog.  Be sure to leave comments on all the blogs for a chance to win a "Hip To Be Square" stamp set.

Now here are the links for everyone else participating in this blog hop:

First here are the links for GinaK's Current CSS Team Members:

Deb Felts
Diana S. Queen
Karen Knegten
Melissa Cash
Sharri Seffens
Sue VanDeVusse

and the links for all of the past CSS Design Team members participating:

Brenda Turner,
Carla Suto,
Carolina Buchting,
Charlene Merrick,
Dawn Lusk,
DeeMarie Kelemen,
Geri Utterback ,
Giovanna Smith,
Janice Melton,
JenMarie Taylor,
Jennie Harper,
Joy Hadden,
Kay Simmons,
Linda Payne,
Lori McAree,
Melisa Waldorf,
Pam Imholz,
Selma Stevenson,
Shannon Bracken,
Shelly Wilson,
Sue Walsh,
Tina Gilliland

Some of GinaK's Senior Design Team Members and Illustrators wanted to get in on the fun tonight too:

Asela Hopkins
Carolyn King
Cindy Lawrence
Gina K
Jessica Fick
Lee Murphy
Lynn Mercurio
Nina Brackett
Melanie Muenchinger

along with Nina Brackett's Guest Designer: Lisa Hjulberg

Don't forget to leave a comment for a chance to win "Hip To Be Square" stamp set to be given away by Nina Brackett.

All of these gorgeous cards from the entire team will be added to the StampTV gallery throughout the next few days with the tag cssjf1 (which stands for center stage spotlight jessica fick 1)

These sketches are also our sketch challenge for this week, so be sure to check out all the information in the discussion in our Challenge group over on StampTV Thursday morning. We'd love to see your cards with the sketch too!