Where did Friday go?

I had big plans to get my Friday challenge up yesterday but somehow, the day totally got away from me! My good friend Katie showed up at my door in the morning to see a 'dumpster treasure' I had found and we ended up totally re arraning/decorating my living room! Then I HAD to take her to lunch to say thank you and by then, the kids were on their way home! Of course, Ben didn't want to ride the bus so I had to drive to the school and ended up talking to his (wonderful!) teacher for half an hour. I stopped by the store on the way home, helped Jared get ready for his camp out, moved my 'treasure' into the library and had a practice calendar class wtih Shari. Suddenly, it was 11 pm! I actually had a really great day. It is amazing to me how moving your stuff can change your life. I just needed that little push from Katie to get me to try something new. I can make cards and scrap pages all day but when it comes to decorating...I do my best work in front of DIY! I always think I need new stuff to make it look good but you know what? I didn't spend a dime yesterday! Well, except for lunch, but that doesn't count!

Anyway! Here are my Friday Challenges, finally! I decided to post two because I think I cheated on the first one. The challenge was to use the sympathy care on pg 44 as our inspiration. This is a pretty basic card. I made my first card 5-1/2 square using Purely Pomegranate as the base. I used a strip of patterned paper from the bali breeze collection. I mounted that on a strip of River rock and used those same colors to layer my focal point. I used the True Friend stamp set for the flowers. I inked up just the stem of the flower with the Artichoke marker and stamped that upside down to get a different angle. Then I washed my stamp real good and inked up the leaves. I turned my stamp the right way and stamped the leaves on the stem I had already stamped. I cleaned my stamp again really good and inked up the stem and just the right leave and stamped again. That is how I got my two flower stems going in opposite directions. I inked up the flower with the Pomegranate stamp pad and cut it out. I added some pink rhinestones to the centers and stuck them on with dimensionals. I used my sewing maching to do the stitching around the edges and....I was so impressed with myself when my start and end hole ended up exactly right! (sign of a good day!) I pulled the threads to the back and stuck them down with a piece of scotch tape to keep them from coming undone. Before I stuck the focal point down, I added a bit of pink tafetta around the front because....I just had to! In the example, the words were stamped below the focal point and I just couldn't fit mine there so I stamped them on the focal point. So...I think I cheated just a bit with this one. Because of that, or because nobody was calling for me at the moment, I decided to make another card using this challenge. I have to say that the thing about the challenge card that really appealed to me is the little tear in the bottom right corner. I think it is perfect and really goes with the 'sympathy' theme of the card. I wanted to use that same technique. I used a left over piece of river rock and made my card 4-1/2 square. The dotted strip across the middle is from the Dashing paper from the last SU catalog. I used my M3 to ink up the puff flower from the Heartfelt stamp set using Perfect Plum and Mellow Moss. I love using the markers with this set because the stamp is etched in such a way that it holds the ink really well. You can really load it up and get several images out of one inking. I stamped the puffs onto confetti cream paper and tore the edge with my 'finger scissors.' In order to get the little bit of plum to show I had to cut the straight edges of the torn off corner just a bit. I glued it all down to some plum paper and headed off to my sewing maching again. I added a bit of hodgepodge hardware and some white taffeta to the upper corner and then used dimensionals to put that onto a piece of barely banana. I made sure I placed this focal point high enough for my sentiment to fit along the bottom. I liked the look of this card but just had to go back and some dazzling diamonds. I am in a glitter mood!
I hope these inspire you. Pick out your own card to use an an inspiration and see what you can come up with! Be sure to check out the other members of our Blogger's challenge group on the left and see what they came up with.

Have a wonderful weekend!