Curtain Call with SPARKS: Back to School

It's time for another challenge at Curtain Call!!  Since it is September, this challenge just has to focus on school!

I have loved reading blogs and Facebook the last few weeks.  There are first day of school pictures and so many people are saying they are sad that their children are back in school.  Personally I dropped mine and ran!!!  But I still want to make sure that they know I am thinking of them during the day so I like to have a stash of "great job" cards ready to go.

All of these fun images come from the Paper Smooches set Smarty Pants!!  I think I used most everything in it except for the cute little professor and Christina, also on the design team, used him on her card here.


I hope you all pull out your "school supplies" and create some back to school/way to go/thank you teacher type cards for our Back to School challenge!!  And be sure to head over to  Curtain Call and check out all of the design team inspiration.  There is a prize up for grabs from The Alley Way Stamps for The Lead of our Back to School challenge!

I love my diagonal layout but I definitely didn't come up with it on my own.  I was inspired by the angled look of the frames on the photo challenge at Paper Smooches SPARKS.

Also linking up to Simon Says Stamp Anything Goes.

• Stamps: Paper Smooches Smarty Pants
• Paper: Stampin' Up Real Red, Crushed Curry, Papertrey Ink Winter Wisteria, Hawaiian Shores
• Ink: Versamark
• Accessories: White embossing powder, button from A Flair for Buttons

Paper Smooches Designer Drafts: God Will Guide You

When I saw this week's sketch at Paper Smooches - I immediately envisioned a small sailboat on a big sea.  My idea was that we are so small, but God is so big and will always be our guide!

I started out with "mistier" colors, but they were getting lost in all of the white space.  So I checked current challenges and liked the red, blue and kraft at Pals Paper Arts.

I wanted to pull out an old picture and show you our sailing experiences, but I think I have opened every folder on my computer and can't find it.  It's a wonderful shot of my two boys in their younger days on our sailboat with snow-covered mountains in the background.  Our boat is docked at the Frisco, CO marina on Lake Dillon right at the summit of the Colorado Rockies.  So it's a very unique sailing experience.  It can actually be fairly difficult as the winds swirl unpredictably and can be very strong.  Here are a couple of other pictures that I found from 2004 when we were all so much younger.(Notice that the mountains don't look huge - that's just because the boat is docked at 9,000 feet up!)

• Stamps: Paper Smooches Wicked Nauticool, Spiritual Sampler
• Paper: Stampin' Up Crumb Cake
• Ink: Stampin' Up Pacific Point, Real Red, Memento Black
• Accessories: Papertrey Ink Woodgrain Impression Plate, Ellen Hutson Iridescent Water sequins