The Card Concept #126 {Time To Celebrate}

Welcome back to The Card Concept! 

We hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas holiday and 
Happy New Year!! 

Before we show you our challenge photo, we would like to welcome another new designer to the team- LeAnne Pugliese!  

LeAnne is a fabulous designer and we are sure many of you have seen her beautiful artwork in our gallery as well as the other Design Teams that she has graced over the years!  We are so excited to have her on the team!

Hi stampers!  I am excited to be a part of this creative team!  I have always enjoyed crafts of almost any sort, but I truly love stamping cards and mailing them to friends and family!  I discovered Stampin' Up in 1999, joined as a demo in 2002 and have been using ink, paper and stamps ever since!  I live in southeastern PA, have a patient husband, a wonderful daughter and son-in-law and a granddaughter that I am "training" to love crafts as well.  I would say I have an eclectic style, although I do love vintage as well as clean and simple!

Now, on to our first challenge for 2020!  For those of you who are new to our challenge, every two weeks we will post our inspiration photo challenge and hope that you will join us by creating a card for our challenge gallery.  

Just a reminder, an inspiration photo is exactly that- a starting point for inspiration. Will it be the colors, the overall theme, the texture, the actual items and/or something else that will inspire your card?  

Choose a design style (or combine styles), create a card, and in your blog post, in addition to letting us know what inspired you from the photo, please let us know what style and/or styles you chose.  

At the end of the challenge, our Design Team will choose one Main Winner and at least three Honorable Mentions.  We will announce the winners here on our challenge blog, as well as our Facebook page and our new Pinterest board.  

Again, as we mentioned above, please feel free to use any of the styles we have defined or create your own with a combination of styles.  We want you to have fun with our inspiration!

You will notice that our designers will also be selecting a style (or combination of styles) and will explain how they were inspired by the challenge.  

So come and join us!  We'd love for you to try your hand at a brand new style of card making or feel free to work in your comfort zone.  It is totally up to you!

In case you missed the link above, the styles are explained HERE.

Now for the design team's inspiration: 

Esther Asbury

Esther's Inspiration: I was inspired by the gold, the pearls, 
and the color of the candlelight to create this 
"Classy & Elegant" floral card.

Tangii Crain

Tangii's Inspiration: I was inspired by the colors 
and the gold shimmer for my 
Clean and Layered/ Mixed Media card!

Julie Gearinger

Julie's Inspiration: I was inspired by all of the clocks, the black 
and gold as well as the pearls to create a Classy & Elegant/
Mixed Media easel card! 

Michele K. Henderson

Michele's Inspiration: I love the combination of the black, gold, 
and pearl, and used that combination in my
Classy & Elegant card to kick off 2020!

Nancy Penir

Nancy's Inspiration: All the gold elements, shiny bright 
inspired my Classy & Elegant card with some layering too!



LeAnne Pugliese

LeAnne's Inspiration: I was inspired by the beautiful gold 
elements in the photo, as well as the vanilla candles

 to create a Clean and Layered card.

Angel Rivera

Angel's Inspiration: I was inspired by all 
the glitter plus the clock to create 
my Clean & Simple style card!

Mackie Robertson

Mackie's Inspiration:  I was inspired by the gold, copper & silver 
colors plus the sense of celebration in the photo to create
 my Clean and Layered/ Classy & Elegant style card!

Marcie Sharp

Marcie's Inspiration: The inspiration photo calls to mind 
New Year's Eve which I love and find awesome- 
and so my Classy & Elegant card uses an 'awesome' 
sentiment and a dramatic colour scheme with sparkle!


Anita Trippi

Anita's Inspiration: The entire picture inspired me!
The clocks, the glitz, the pearls and even the silver 
noisemaker in the background for 
my Clean & Layered/Classy & Elegant card.

Betty Wright

Betty's Inspiration: I was inspired by the circle elements, the gold,
 the silver, and the layout of the table to create 
a Clean & Layered/Classy & Elegant card.

The Card Concept Rules:

1.  Use the challenge inspiration photo to create a card- no back linking.

2.  Use one of the challenge styles to create a card (or if you prefer, combine a few styles).

3.  Explain in a post which style or combination of styles you used and what inspired you from our photo.  

4.  Link your post using our linky (please link to the actual post on your blog and not just your blog) and please display our graphic (inspiration photo) in your blog post.  
5. We do not mind if you combine our challenge with others, but please do not combine ours with another inspiration challenge.   

6.  Please try to comment on the cards ahead of you and behind you in the linky.  Everyone loves comments!

The deadline to participate is 

Monday, January 20th at 12:00 pm EST.

Our Challenge Winner and the Honorable Mentions will be announced on Wednesday, January 22nd.

We look forward to seeing your artwork in our gallery! 

The Card Concept #HOL19 {Fav Card or Christmas Tree}- It's Not Too Late!

Happy New Year!!

Just a reminder that you still have plenty of time left to play along 
with us for #HOL19 {Fav Card and/or Christmas Tree} Challenge!!! 

We would love to have you join us!!

You have until Monday, January 6th at noon (EST) to 

link up your card!  Click HERE to join us!

The Card Concept #HOL19 {Fav Card or Christmas Tree}

Welcome to The Card Concept! 

Before we show you our challenge photo, we would like to say farewell to our Design Team Member, Susan Powell- this is her final challenge with us.

Susan has been on the team for three years and we will miss her so!!  She will be continuing to create her gorgeous cards, so we hope you will stop by her blog to check out her artwork!

We will be welcoming another new team member in 2020, so stay tuned!!

This challenge will be our final one for 2019 and will be open until
 January 6th at noon EST.

Instead of an inspiration photo, we would like for you to share your favorite card that you created this past year, and/or your Christmas tree.  

Now for the design team's favorite card and/or Christmas tree: 

Esther Asbury

Esther's Inspiration: My favorite card for the year is this
 "Clean and Layered" sunset scene I created as a
 guest designer for Sweet n Sassy Stamps.

Tangii Crain

Tangii's Inspiration: I love so many things about this card!  
It's one of my all time fave color combo's (pink & green), 
I LOVE the foiling and while it's not a "coffee",
 it's tea and that's pretty close!

Julie Gearinger

Julie's Inspiration:  I chose this Mixed Media card since it was fun 
to pull out one of my fav retired SU! sets, French Foliage and 
used a few techniques that I have not done in a while.  
Also, I love the colors of autumn and this was my 
second card for our #123 challenge (using the leftover
 panel from my DT card). 

Michele K. Henderson

Michele's Inspiration: I chose this card because I just 
received this brand new Tiny Box Add On die set and
 had to create a big bold Clean and Graphic card 
that featured all three of my kitties!


Nancy Penir

Nancy's Inspiration: Sharing my 9' Christmas tree with all 
of you (one of 4 trees in my house!) Want to see more?
Come visit my blog for a Christmas Home tour!

Susan Powell

Susan's Inspiration: This is my last challenge as I am stepping 
down from the team but wanted to say 'For The Record' that 
I have had a blast designing for The Card Concept for the last 3 years. 
Thank you for having me. You may see me in the gallery 
from time to time. 

Angel Rivera

Angel's Inspiration:  I am sharing our Christmas tree with

 our sweet pup, Russeaux helping me decorate :-)

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Mackie Robertson

Mackie's Inspiration: My favorite Christmas card this year
 are the ones I created using this beautiful dove stamp!

Marcie Sharp

Marcie's Inspiration: My favorite card this year is actually 
one that I made very recently for the Christmas holidays. 
This Classy and Elegant card has lots of sparkle and 
shine and incorporates alcohol inks- my favorite medium! 


Anita Trippi

Anita's Inspiration: My favorite card for the year is a Clean and Layered 
card I created for the Color Throwdown Challenge (#570) using 
Turquoise, Grey and Orange (red). 

Betty Wright

Betty's Inspiration: My favorite card was done for one of the 
30 Day Coloring Challenges.  I used Copic Markers for 
this Classy and Elegant card.  I also love the pop of
 pink with the teal colored leaves against a dark gray background. 

The deadline to participate with our special holiday challenge is Monday, January 6th at 12:00 pm EST.

Since this challenge is just for fun, we will not be choosing a winner at the end of the challenge.  We hope that you will join us and our Design Team members will be taking a break for the holidays.  We will try to visit your blogs and leave comments, but if we are not able to do so, please know that we are thrilled to have you play along with us.  

We will resume with our photo inspiration challenge on Wednesday, January 8th.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Winners #125 {Home for the Holidays}

Happy Wednesday!  Julie, here with the winner and honorable mentions for our #125 {Home for the Holidays} challenge!  

Thank you so much for playing along with us- we had another fabulous gallery with so many gorgeous entries!! 

Our Design Team had such a difficult time narrowing it down to only four winners, but here they are starting with our main challenge winner...

Jan R

     And our Honorable Mentions ...

...Listed in order that they appeared in the gallery...


Wanda Cullen

Claire A

Kim S

Congratulations to all of the our winners!!

Please be sure to click on the winner's names to visit their blogs to see how they created their cards and, if you have time, leave them some "love" :-) 

Just a reminder, this year we will be highlighting our winners and honorable mentions on our Facebook page as well as on our Pinterest board.  

Thanks again to all who played along with us! 

We hope you will join us in our final challenge for 
2019- to be posted in one hour!

The Card Concept #125 {Home for the Holidays}- There's Still Time!

Just a reminder that you still have plenty of time left to play along 
with us for #125 {Home for the Holidays} Challenge!!! 

We would love to have you join us with your card design
 for our gallery!!

You have until Monday, December 16th at noon (EDT) to 

link up your card!  Click HERE to join us!