It's a Super Self Addressed Kit Challenge/Celebrating 15,000 Blog Candy Draw

It's been an exciting week, on the DCM - a New full time Design Team Member in the shape of the very talented Lynne, a new Guest Designer joining the team from today for the next few dares, and our very first sponsored challenge launched today -WOW!

The wonderful people at Self Addressed Kits have sponsored this week's Daring Cardmakers Challenge. They sent loads of stuff from their recent kits and Lythan kindly sorted and distributed it all to the Design Team members, so that everyone received a good selection of SA's fabby papers, cards and other kit bits.

OK, so some of us are already enthusiastic SA Kit subscribers, but those that haven't yet succombed to these great kits were thrilled to receive their packs and soon realised just why the rest of us love them so! Not only are the kits fantastic value, and filled with really interesting and fun bits but you can choose from 6x6, 8x8 or12x12 sized papers. The whole SA experience is just so friendly with Jenn at the helm, sending inspirational emails with loads of ideas for using the kits, and lots of extra special offers every now and then, there's also a fabby forum with so much info, on-line tutorials and loads of great advice and ideas on things to make - so if you haven't checked them out already, then please pop along and visit soon - you won't be disappointed!

So, we hummed and hahhed about how to make best used of the SA gear we were now maniacally stroking and eventually came up with the idea of using a template - we would use only SA Kit papers for our cards but a template would mean that those poor people ;-) not fortunate enough to have SA stuff at their disposal could still join in using their favourite papers to make their cards. Here is the template that Jane has designed - it's a really great sketch to work with and offers loads of potential so please do have a go. You can see all the cards we came up with on the DCM blog - we were SOOOOO inspired that several of us made at least 2 cards this week!
Here's my first one:

I used papers from the September '06 kit for this one. The raffia, scalloped chipboard square and little metal washer also came from SA kits , the eyelets and brads from my stash.
The monogram was made from faux chipboard
The sentiment panel is made by wrapping the dark red paisley paper round some thin card and adding some brads - it gave a bit of extra dimension to the card.
The text was cut from gold card using my Craft Robo
I went for a rather shabby, deistressed look around all the edges with really roughly added gold and copper Krylon ink.
It seemed to need a little extra something, so I made a little "photo" corner for the top right with another scrap of the lovely checked paper. I'm quite pleased with the result, it'll be for one of the BILs birthdays and even Hubby liked this one! I thought he'd just say "It's a bit poo brown, isn't it?"

card no 2
This one features the February '07 kit


I chose the burgundy aperture card and used 3 burgundy & lime papers, plus some of the lime bazzill card and a scrap of the blue ribbon all from the kit.
The monogram is faux chipboard, I inked a small daisy to get the right colour green and used a burgundy one from my stash. Some gold gel ink lines and some gold thread to complete the card for the template - but I didn't really like the thread so removed it afterwards!

Don't forget to check out the rest of the fantastic cards on the blog - They are all amazing and show the wonderful variety of papers and extras that SA Kits deliver each month.
Ooooh, my blog visitor count is reading 14,729, I wonder how long it will be till I hit the 15,000 mark? Today? Tomorrow, when will it be? I'll do a pick from all messages left on my blog the day it hits 15,000 and send a bit of blog candy out to the winner - how does that sound?