Time for a new Friday Five!

Wow - you all really knocked that sketch out of the park! It was a hard decision but we finally narrowed down our favorites to five - be sure to click on the photo to see the whole project from these talented gals:

Such lovely work! Congratulations ladies - I will email you the badge information (if you haven't won before) and you are all in the running for a Guest DT spot to be announced soon for May!

Don't forget - there is still time to enter this week's challenge. The deadline is Sunday night at 10 pm EST. You might just be in our next Friday Five!

Heart 2 Heart #4 Challenge

Welcome to another week of Heart 2 Heart Challenges! Hopefully you all saw the post below about our mini challenge at Facebook and Paper Craft Planet. If not, be sure to take a look!

Before getting to our challenge, I want to thank Diane Cook again for being this week's prize sponsor. We entered everyone into the number-chooser at Random.org and our winner is Tammy.  Tammy, please email me at mbryt1@bex.net so I can get your mailing information for Diane. Congratulations!!

This week, we are focusing on ribbon (my favorite embellishment!) The challenge is to add at least 2 different ribbons on your artwork. Here are the DT's gorgeous samples:

Tracey

Jayma

Angela

Katy

Helen

Carol

Mary

To find out more about these cards, click the creator's name to go to their blog.

Ready to join us this week? Dig out your ribbon and play along! Then come back here and link us to the specific page that you have your artwork posted on. If you don't have a blog, you can always use the gallery at Splitcoaststampers or create a Photobucket account (must be public so we can view it). And please link direct to where your artwork is - not your blog as a whole.

** Also, please do not load your artwork into a slideshow - it's too hard for us to look it over well when choosing our top five as it keeps changing slides. Thank you! **

When you're ready, link up below. Have fun getting friendly with your ribbon stash! There's no prize up for grabs this week but you might just be chosen for our Friday Five! We'll be back this Friday with the newest Friday Five list from the sketch challenge - see you then!

Fab Friday Five!

Maybe we should rename it the Fabulous Friday Five cause let me just say, there were so many fab-u-lous entries! But we studied them all and came up with our top five. Here's a peek - to see the entire piece of artwork, click the photo to go to the creator's blog.

Congratulations ladies!

I will email you all the information for the Friday Five badge for your blog. And you're all in the running to be chosen Guest DT for next month!

Thanks again to everyone who played along - we have loved looking through all your fabulous artwork! And don't forget, there is still time to play along with this week's challenge -the deadline is Sunday night at 10 pm EST!

See you Monday with another new challenge!

There's a new challenge posted!

There is now a challenge posted at our Facebook group and our Paper Craft Planet group. If you are not a member of these groups, now's the time to join! That's the challenge - it we get 300 members of our facebook group by May 5th and 50 members of our group at PCP by May 15th, one lucky member of each group will win a prize package from H2H! So check it out - head to our groups and join today!

Let's get sketchy!

It's time for a new challenge and we've got a sketch to share this week. Remember that a sketch is just a jumping off point - feel free to interpret it any way you see fit as long as we can recognize that you used the sketch for the basis of your project.

Also, a quick reminder to all - Close To My Heart products must be used in our challenges. It does not have to be 100% CTMH, but the majority must be. Thank you.

Now, before we get to this week's challenge and the DT eye candy, let me welcome Diane Cook as our prize sponsor this week! Diane will be awarding the following prize to one randomly selected player from this week's challenge:

Please stop by and visit Diane and leave her a little lovin' for being our sponsor this week! Her blog is at Our Scrapping Life. Thanks Diane!

Ok, now onto the reason you're here! Our challenge for the week is based on the following sketch:

And here are the Design Team's fabulous creations:

Katy

Angela

Tracey

Mary

Jayma

Helen

Carol

I know! Aren't they all sooo pretty? But we know you can create something just as awesome and we want to see! So follow along with our sketch, then post your finished artwork on your blog, or in another public gallery and then come back and leave us a link so we can visit you and see your interpretation. the deadline to enter is Sunday night at 10:00 pm EST. You might win the prize package from Diane or even be in our weekly Friday Five!

Be sure to spread the word about our challenge blog to everyone who loves CTMH! The more, the merrier! And watch for a Facebook and Paper Craft Planet announcement and prize opportunity later this week. We have a group at both places and we would love to have you join us - and post your artwork there too! Let's share the CTMH love!

Have fun creating!

Our 1st Friday Five!

I am so excited to announce our first Friday Five! The Design Team looked through everyone's entries and chose their favorites based on creativity, execution, following the challenge and so on and let me just say - it was a hard decision to make!! So many awesome entries! Thanks again to all who played along - you made our 1st week a HUGE success!
These five "winners" will all receive a Friday Five badge to display on their blog and are now eligible to be chosen for a Guest DT spot at the end of the month. So without further delay, here are our picks for this week. To see the entire project, (and you WANT to see these entire projects!) click the photo and head to the crafty lady's blog - and while you're there, leave them some love and congratulations!

Congratulations ladies!

I will be in touch later today with the badge information for you.

**EDIT- Belinda, can you email me please? I can't find your email address to send you the badge info. Thank you!

Have fun playing along with this week's challenge and you, too, might be in the next Friday Five!

Time for a new challenge!

WOW! I am blown away with the number of players we had for last week's challenge. Thank you to everyone who joined in the fun! Before we get to the new challenge, I have a prize winner to announce from last week:

According to Random.org, our winner of the prize package from Juli Clark is number 61: Joanne Gilch! Congratulations Joanne! Drop me an email at mbryt1@bex.net and I will get your information to Juli so she can send out your package of goodies!

A huge thank you again to our fabulous first sponsor Juli! You can always visit Juli by finding her link on our Sponsors page. Thanks again!

Ok so now we're onto our next challenge!

This is a 1/2/3 challenge. Here are the requirements:

*Use 1 stamped image (not 1 set, but 1 image)
*Use 2 different patterned papers
*Use 3 embellishments - these can be 3 of the same thing or 3 different things

The DT has some awesome projects to share with you but, alas, I didn't make the requirements as clear as I should have so you may see a few variances. Yes, even I used 2 stamps, instead of one....ah well. I know you will all do a fantastic job with this challenge!! Here is what the DT whipped up:

Carol

Jayma

Mary

Angela

Tracey

Helen

Katy

Oh what talented gals! So are you up to the challenge? We can't wait to see what you create. No sponsor this week but you might just make our Friday Five so come join in the fun and play along! Create your 1/2/3 project and upload to your blog or other public gallery and then come back here and direct link to your project. And be sure to spread the word about our blog to other CTMH fans - the more, the merrier!

Oh and be sure to come back this Friday for our 1st Friday Five - I can tell you, it's going to be a tough choice!! Have a great time creating!

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has played along with this week's challenge - we are thrilled with the response and hope to continue to grow our number of players every week! Be sure to spread the word to your friends, customers, fellow consultants - anyone who will listen to you! There are a lot of CTMH fans out there - we'd love to have them join us!

You still have a few days to play along with this week's challenge. The deadline to enter is Sunday night at 10:00 pm EST. Our first Friday Five will then be chosen from all participants and announced here next Friday.

And a new challenge will be posted on Monday morning so be sure to come back and play along again then!

Heart 2 Heart Challenge #1 - Color Challenge

We are kicking off our challenges with a color challenge and wait until you see all of the awesome samples the DT came up with!

Before I get to the challenge though, I want to thank Juli Clark for being this week's awesome sponsor! Juli will be awarding one player the following prize package:

What a great package of goodies! Be sure to stop by and leave Juli some love and check out her artwork - she's playing along with this week's challenge too! You can visit her blog at The Stamp Teacher. Thank you Juli!


Here are the colors we are working with this week:

If you don't have these exact colors, that's ok - use something close! Here is the artwork created by the DT - prepare to be impressed!

Carol

Helen

Tracey

Mary

                                                                           
Katy

Angela

Jayma

See what I mean? Awesomeness!! Be sure to visit each member's blog to find out more about their specific project.

We hope you want to play along!! Work with our colors of the week and create an awesome project. The complete guidelines can be seen over in the sidebar. Remember this is a Close To My Heart based challenge blog so your project should include a majority of CTMH products. Upload your project to your blog or another online gallery and then come back here and leave a link to your project in Mister Linky below. The deadline to enter is Sunday at 10 pm EST. The Design Team will be looking through all of the entries and will be choosing our very first Friday Five - it could be you! Juli's prize package will also go to one lucky player so there's a lot of great reasons to play along!!

Thanks for joining us and have fun!

It's almost time!

Our 1st challenge is just a couple of days away and I wanted to let everyone know what you can possibly "win" by playing along with our challenges.

Every week, the Design Team and I will be looking through all of the entries and will be choosing the top five  based on creativity, execution and following the challenge guidelines. This will be called our Friday Five. We will announce the top five on the Friday of the week after the challenge has ended so we have plenty of time to look through all of the artwork entered. Everyone in the Friday Five will receive a badge to post on their blog so you can brag about your spot in the top five. It will be important to enter the link to your entry directly to the post itself, not a general link to your blog as a whole. If you don't know how to do that, leave us a comment and we can explain it further.

Then at the end of each month, we will go through all of the Friday Five winners and choose one of them to be our Guest Design Team member who will have the opportunity to join us for 2 challenges during the following month! How fun will that be to let everyone know that you got a spot on a DT just for playing along with a few challenges?!

In addition to the Friday Five and the Guest DT spot, we will have sponsors occasionally who will be offering CTMH prizes. So there is a lot of reasons to favorite place our blog and come back to play week after week. I can't wait to get started and kick off our 1st challenge but until then, I hope you all have a wonderful Easter and we will see you 1st thing on Monday morning!

So one more intro - ok?

I guess I should introduce myself - just in case anyone doesn't know me.

I'm Mary, "founder" of this challenge blog. I am married almost 30 years to my high school sweetheart, have 2 wonderful children - a daughter who is a special ed. administrator and is married to a nurse and who is expecting a child in Oct (Yeah!!) and a son who is 21, a college student and is physically disabled - and have an adorable fuzzy child - our 3 1/2 year old yellow lab.

I have always enjoyed a variety of crafts but fell in love with scrapbooking and stamping about 13 years ago, when my daughter was in high school and working at Michael's. I joined Close To My Heart in 2000 and will celebrate 10 years in August. I also work part-time in the office of a real estate company, and work as an assistant to my sister who is a Tastefully Simple consultant.

Add to that my work with CTMH Virtual Convention the past 5 years and my current work with a variety of Design Teams and I stay pretty busy! In my free time, I blog a lot, enjoy going to the movies and out to dinner, and love Grey's Anatomy, The Bachelor(ette) and Dancing with the Stars. And American Idol. And Chuck. And Celebrity Apprentice. Yes, I like TV.

I am excited to be bringing this challenge blog to you and I am thrilled with our 1st Design Team crew - they are going to be just awesome!

To visit my blog, pop on over to http://mbryt1.blogspot.com/ or my daily ramblings blog: http://ridiculouslab.blogspot.com/ I love visitors and comments!

That wraps up the team but there's more to come before our 1st challenge on Monday so stay tuned!