Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge

5.10.2016

Challenge Guest Designer : Rubeena Naz

Hello, hello, hello! We're back today to share a fabulous post and gorgeous card by our guest designer, Rubeena Naz from A Rare Ruby. Ruby had always created such beautiful floral cards, and this one is no exception!! Check out the full details below!

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Good morning! I'm so excited to be a guest designer for Stamping Smiles Designs' Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge #9! A little background about me: I am in my early 30s and discovered papercrafting about two years ago. Professionally, I work as a social worker, but I spend a lot of my downtime creating cards. Some of my favorite techniques include heat embossing and watercoloring. I currently design for The Ton and Coffee Loving Cardmakers. You can find me at A Rare Ruby, where I share my work as well as organizations tips.

For Challenge #9, I knew instantly that I wanted to use flowers on my cards. I picked the first row down: Flowers, Birthday, and Masking Technique. My card features Altenew and Mama Elephant. I started with a watercolor card cut down to 4" x 5.5". Using masking tape, I stamped the rose from Penned Rose several times as well as some of the leaves in a black waterproof ink. I used my Mission Gold watercolors to color the images. On separate cardstock, I stamped 'hello' from Halftone Hello onto white cardstock and die-cut with the coordinating die. I die-cut the word several times from black cardstock and stacked them together for dimension.

I stamped 'happy birthday' from Mama Elephant's Monster Jam with VersaMark and heat set with white embossing powder. Finally, I arranged all the pieces together on my cardstock and added some clear sequins from The Ton.

I hope you enjoyed today's inspiration! Thanks so much for having me as a guest!

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So?? Isn't Ruby so talented? We love Ruby's beautifully colored roses along with the bright colors, and the added touch of the black stripe on the side. Such a lovely design! If you love creating floral cards, check out Ruby's blog because she has many floral cards along with cool techniques that I'm sure you'll love! :)

Thanks for stopping by! Have a lovely day, friends!

5.07.2016

Challenge #9 inspiration with Shannon

Hello friends!

Shannon here with you today to share some inspiration for the current challenge board.

For my card today I chose the third row down, being things that fly, white space and scene.

I kept my card fairly clean and simple, so there's not to much to say about it.

As much as I love shaker cards and layers, I just love clean and simple cards sometimes.

I used the Woodland Wonders stamp set from Avery Elle for all of the images on my card. I stamped on a white card base and colored in using Copic markers. That's about it!

Oh and I added some bakers twine on the top to give it a finishing look.

That's it for my card today!

I hope I inspired you and can't wait for you to play along with us!

Thanks so much for dropping by!!

5.06.2016

Champion Guest Designer : Michelle Chan

Hello and Happy Friday everyone! Hope everyone has fun plans this weekend. If crafting is part of your plan for the weekend, then you'll want to take this sweet inspiration from our 5th Champion Winner Michelle Chan. She created an adorable project inspired by our 9th Challenge.

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Hello, hello! Michelle from Craft Cradle here and a very big thank you to Ka and the wonderful team at Tic-Tac-Toe for sharing the stage with me today. As a child, I always had a liking for handicrafts, having made simple cards and felt plushies. It was only in July 2015 that cardmaking became a bigger part of my life as I discovered clear stamps, steel dies, inks and many other crafty toys. Of course, this would not have happened if it were not for my husband who gifted me a Sizzix Big Shot on my last birthday (yes, he is amazing but equally to be blamed). Today, I document my adventures in the magical crafting world over at my blog and more often on Instagram and Facebook.

While we are having a warmer-than-usual Autumn here in New Zealand, Spring is my favourite season, hands down. I have nothing close to a green thumb, but the softest spot for pretty flowers so naturally, I was drawn to the left-most column to create my Spring-inspired card: Flowers, Birthday and Masking Technique. Coincidentally, my only flower stamps were from Lovely Spring. Other stamps used include Better Together, Carnival Cupcakes and Happy Everything. The list of supplies used is available on my blog.

With the puppy plushie masked off, I stamped the little girl on a piece of white card stock. I then stamped a cupcake bottom above her head, and transformed it into a wicker basket with a few simple strokes of a black Artline pen. After stamping some flowers in Mustard Seed and Picked Raspberry distress inks and leaves in Evergreen Bough, I coloured with Copic markers and fussy-cut the image.

I blended in Evergreen Bough distress ink on a piece of white card stock and die-cut twice with the Cloud Border die from Landscape Trio. These were going to be shrubs to help ground the little girl. I also stamped and die-cut smaller flowers to dress up the shrubs. Then, using Antique Linen and Spun Sugar distress inks, I blended in a sunset sky to match the colours of the blooms.

To pull the entire look together, I die-cut a frame using the two largest dies from Die-namics Stitched Rectangle STAX and heat embossed the sentiments with silver embossing powder. Some drops of Glossy Accents were used on the flowers for a dewy look and added dimension.

I hope you like what I created for you and don’t forget to take part in the Challenge! All the best and see you!

Hugs,
Michelle

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Isn't her card just so sweet and adorable?! Whoever receives this card would be so lucky! Thanks Michelle for sharing your card with us and being our guest designer. It was an absolute pleasure to have you! Please swing by Michelle blog for even inspiration! Thanks everyone! Have a great weekend!

5.04.2016

Inspiration with Amina for Challenge 9

Hello Hello :-)

Hope all is going well at your end. I am back with my inspiration post for Tic Tac Toe challenge 9. Have you checked it out? SoooOOOoo much fun!! The tic tac grid for this challenge is

And for my project today I chose Birthday, Sponging and white space. Here it is

I used Mama Elephant Pandamonium Stamp set and coloured these cuties with copics. The background was made using MFT cover up die 'snowdrifts' and I sponged it with layers of distress inks 'broken china' and 'dusty concord'. The sentiment is also from Mama Elephant but a different stamp set called 'space bears'.

Hope you like my card... We would love to see your entries for challenge 9 and thanks for stopping by :-)
Love,
Amina

5.03.2016

Challenge Eight Winners

Hi everyone! It's that time to announce our winners! The entries for Challenge 8 was amazing! Each card is so unique and special in their own way. Since it's really hard for us to choose, we used Random.Org to determine our 8th Champion. So, without further ado, here's our winners!

Our winner and 8th Champion by random is...

Dianchik from Moments of Creativity

Congratulations! Your card is adorable! We love the fun design and how bright and happy the card is! Thanks so much for joining us for this challenge! Please email us at tictactoechallenge@gmail.com with the subject line Challenge 8 Winner. Please include your full name, address and your choice of stamp set above.

And here's a few of our favorites.