Up Up & Away Challenge WINNER

Hey Verve fans! It's Julee, popping in again to announce the winner of our Up, Up & Away Ready, SET, Stamp Challenge!  Thanks so much to everyone who played along!  I just loved seeing all your whimsical creations with Up, Up & Away - it's one of my all-time favorite sets I've designed and seeing y'all get it inky just made me smile.  Okay, enough chitchat.  On with the winner's announcement.

And the Verve-alicious winner is  ...

Vera who made this whimsical little clean & simple card.  I just love how she built on the design in the patterned paper, and the teeny little white mat around the perfectly cut out images gives such a professional look.   To finish it off, the Best of Luck sentiment from Great Expectations embossed in white balances the card out beautifully.

Congratulations Vera! Email me at contests@vervestamps.com to claim your $30 gift certificate.

Okay, that wraps it up for this challenge.  Stay tuned (either later today or tomorrow) for the announcement of the next Ready, SET, Stamp challenge!  I'm sure we just might find a STAR or two in our midst! (hint, hint)  ;-)

So Very Inspired...

Man, all these projects from my fantabulous team mates are a tough act to follow! Fortunately, I was greatly inspired by this fab color combo...that I would have never thought of on my own. I love to see where/how people get inspired. I am actually on the mailing list for several catalogs, just so that I can see colors, themes and potential layouts. It's amazing how a catalog bedroom can get you stampin'!

I created a couple cards to go with this combo...


Here's my Vervi-view...

1. When/how did you get hooked on stamping? Many moons ago, I was introduced to stamping. But, it wasn't until about 4 years ago that I got hooked. My neighbor's little boy came knocking on our door on Halloween. He was actually giving treats to the houses he went to...a stamped bag topper and bag of caramels. Let's just say that I got in touch with his mom real fast and my pocketbook has never been the same!

2. How often do you stamp? Just about everyday. There are days that I just need a break from the creative processes, usually those are Sundays when I get to hang out with the family.

3. Tell me about your funniest or most embarrassing stamping related injury. I have actually drawn blood more than once. I cut myself on my paper cutter from time to time, but that is not the worst of it! LOL! I dropped an acrylic block on my foot. The corner of the block hit smack down on the center of the top of my foot. I didn't think anything of it immediately, but then as I was working, I felt "something." That something was blood running down my foot!!

4. How long does it take you to create a project that you're happy with? Too long. I am so slow!

5. I am usually a little messy in my creating. Tell me about your creative space. Neat and organized until I get going. Until VERY recently, I could not go to bed with a messy desk. Someway, somehow, I have gotten over that. Maybe it's the fact that when I am done, I am done...and that is often in the a.m.

6. If you were stranded on a deserted island, which craft tool could you not live without? Why? Just one? Can't I have a bag of tools? Paper cutter, piercer, Cuttlebug and punches. I figure I could use these to build a boat and sail back to my stamps, ink and paper.

7. What is your biggest source of inspiration? EVERYTHING! Color, themes, a single sheet of DP. Of course having wonderful stamping friends, and stamps doesn't hurt either!

8. Who in the stamping world do you want to be when you grow up and why? I can't say that I idolize any one person in the world of stamping, although there are several that I dearly respect. When it comes to crafting overall, I would love to be a Martha...minus the "anklet" that she was sporting for a while. She has built an empire around just being Martha.

9. What is your favorite part of the creative process? When that "lightbulb" goes off. I love those "a-ha" moments!!!

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Ok, if you stuck with me through that, you deserve to know how to win $15 in Verve Bucks!! All you have to do is play in this Vervalicious challenge with us! Leave a comment with a link to your project on this post by 12:00 pm (noon) Eastern Time on June 21st, and you will be entered for a chance to win! Using Verve stamps is not a requirement, although it doubles your chance of winning. We will have two winners, one randomly drawn from a pool of all entries, the other will be selected as our favorite from all the projects using Verve stamps. Both winners will receive $15 in Verve Bucks. We will announce the winners later that day.

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Brand New Gallery and a Guest Designer

Happy Saturday, everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your day. The team at Verve Visual has been working like busy bees getting orders processed and making sure you have enough eye candy and inspiration for the new Father Figure and Great Expectations sets. The Design Team gallery is now open! You can check it out HERE.

We have also been privileged to have Amber Hight working with us for the April and May Releases. Her work is so clean and beautiful, and her attention to detail is impeccable! Here are her samples for Great Expectations:

I love how calming the colors and textures flow on this one. So beautiful!

And the bright colors and bling on the project below...who wouldn't love to receive this?

You can see more of Amber's work on her blog, The Stamping Scrapbooker, and you'll see more of her Verve creations in just a few weeks when our May sets are released.

Thanks so much for visiting us today. Have a fabulous weekend!

Great Expectations Sneak Preview and Chance To Win

Welcome to the sneak preview of one of the new stamp sets being released on Friday from Verve Visual, GREAT EXPECTATIONS. This set contains 13 sentiments that are perfect for encouraging someone to do their best or congratulating someone on a job well done. Today you will see samples from five of the Design Team members using the GREAT EXPECTATIONS set. Be sure to check back tomorrow when the rest of the crew shows off their incredible project with the other set that is being released.

From Carole Burrage:
Last week I saw Amy Rysavy's awesome Coaster Picture Frame tutorial, and a light bulb came on over my head: the "Superstar" sentiment from the new Great Expectations set would make a terrific frame around my own little Superstar, my son, Truman. A couple of lightweight coasters, a little designer paper, some sparkly stars and now I have a cute frame of Truman's latest Basketball photo. I'm going to whip up a couple of these for the Grandparents, too -- these will make great additions to upcoming Mother's & Father's Day presents!
From Laura Fredrickson:
Great Expectations has quickly become my favorite sentiment set. It just says "Congratulations" in so many expressive and fun ways. For this card I chose the sentiment, "Wishing you Success beyond your wildest expectations". What a wonderful wish for someone about to take the next step in living their dreams. For my card I wanted drama, so I chose black, and worked with Seeing Stars. I stamped a group of stars randomly in Versamark, then embossed in gold, then stamped another group and embossed in silver. The black is then layered on brushed gold and silver cardstock. Three gold embossed vellum stars frame the sentiment panel, which is adorned with silver star eyelets. The sentiment panel is popped up on dimensionals to really make it stand out.

From Laurie Schmidlin:

When I first saw Great Expectations, my mind started racing with ideas! Nobody does sentiments like Verve!! These sentiments really lend themselves to fun and unique projects! For this project, I chose the "Big Bucks, no whammies!" sentiment to create a money holder. I wanted my card to be gender neutral, so I chose this brightly colored polka dot paper (by S.E.I.) and pulled my colors (Black, Wild Wasabi, & Blue Bayou) from it. For accents, I cut out/embossed some circles using my circle Nestabilities and then added some stars from the Seeing Stars set.

For the inside, I stamped Happy Birthday from the Happy Thoughts set, added some more circles, a star, Black grosgrain ribbon (secured with two black eyelets), some piercings....& of course some money! :-)



From Jen del Muro:
When driving home from the grocery store the car in front of me had an Army bumper sticker. I've seen the same sticker 100 times, but for some reason it stuck with me this time. When I sat down in my studio I recalled the sticker and used it as my inspiration point to make a card that would be appropriate to send to someone in the Army, or any of the Armed Forces. I love that this set has a great variety of sentiments. I would consider this a more "serious" card, but as you can see from the other samples, there are some great light hearted sentiments as well.


From Susan Liles:
To Infinity and Beyond!!! If this sentiment doesn't get you thinking Buzz Lightyear and Woody from the movie, Toy Story, I don't know what will! At least that's what it did for me, but then again, I have little ones underfoot all the time and they love to watch that movie (over and over I might add!). It's actually one of my favorites, too! So I just HAD to make a card using that sentiment from the new Verve Visual set, Great Expectations, that carried along the theme of the show. Because I have no rocket ship stamps or anything "outer space", I had to come up with a paper-pieced rocket ship. Then I wanted a little window on it, and who better to fly the thing than this little cowboy that I stamped and colored with my Prisma Markers to look like Woody. I used my CM circle punches to create the open window and then put a transparency circle under it for the "glass". The flames were so fun to make! I used my Fancy Florals set also from Verve and just cut them (mostly in half) to make a "layered flame" that would surely rocket him to Infinity and Beyond! I decided I needed a few stars in the galaxy, so I pulled out my Verve Seeing Stars set and just added a couple and filled them in with Stardust Stickles, along with some of the flames and the tip of the rocket. The Spots and Dots Cuttlebug Folder made great "moon craters" as well, using the reverse side of the embossed blue piece. The ribbon was a fun finishing touch! Great Expectations---it's lightyears above the rest and can take you, too, To INFINITY and BEYOND!!



**Want to be the proud owner of this new set? All you need to do is leave a comment on this post by 10PM MT (midnight ET) on April 24. Then be sure to check back on April 25, when we’ll announce the lucky winner and reveal the new Verve sets!**