EXCITING NEWS and Challenge Masters Chopped Contest Rounds #1 & #2

 Have you heard of Challenge Masters?

I just recently found them, they are a wonderful site that hosts challenges on Sundays.  I noticed they were having a design team call, so I through my hat in the ring.  Guess what I was selected as a Challenge Masters Diva and will be hosting "Scrapping with Boys" challenges on 2nd Sundays of month.  Be on the lookout as my 1st challenge will be on April 10th and my challenges will be all about those boys/men in our lives!

 Well I wanted to get involved and start getting to know my way around on forum, so I jumped in head first to a challenge/contest.  Have you ever seen the show Chopped?  Well if not they have chefs and they compete in appetizer, main dish, dessert rounds using a basket of ingredients.  So the contest if along the same lines and we are given a list of "ingredients" to use.

Well I survived round one with this layout of my sweet Lucas wearing the new hat that grandma knitted for him.  Our challenge was to use "lime green, circles, and paint." So I started rummaging through my papers and found this patterned that had lime green in it and matched with some blues.  With some help from my scrappin' friends (thanks Kim S.) we decided on Simple Contrast layout on page 28 of CTMH Cherish Idea Book. For the painting part, I used a dark blue to paint the edges of all the white pieces as well as patterned paper.  You can see I have the circles covered, including some added circles embossed on blue paper on right side and I embossed the left side with distressed strips. Then I took the embossed pieces and distressed them by sanding to show white core.

I am entering this layout in following challenges:

 Now for round 2 our challenge was to use "yellow, scallops, and dimensional flowers.  What a dilemma as yellow is one of colors I have a limited supply of paper for.  This time I turned to my CTMH Magic Idea book and went with page 29 and layout called "backstage."  This is my niece Mya, isn't she the cutest? OK back to the challenge, the yellow scalloped circle is embossed with polka dots and then edges are inked with CTMH Creme Brulee ink. The patterned blue is from CTMH Miracle paper pack and inked with CTMH Crystal Blue and then I used my Stampin' Up border punch.

Now for the fun part, I made my flowers using my Stampin' Up scalloped circle punches (thanks Arielle for showing this to us at card swap).  To create these first you punch 4 circles, fold them in 1/2 and then 1/2 again.  Now what I did was ink the edges and then punched a 5th circle to mount them on. For the centers, I used my Die-Namics mini rose die.  The yellow paper was already embossed wit polka dots, so for my blue flower I ran it through Cuttlebug using Swiss Dots folder.  Some pearls from $1 section at Micheal's for center and ribbon for stems.

Cross your fingers that make it to the nest round!

I am entering this in the following challenges:

Catered Crop- use any of listed ingredients (recipe: pp ( mini print- blue pp/yellow-polka dots), colors- blue, embellies- flowers/ribbon/pearls, tools-border punch/scalloped punch/die cut-mini rose & Cricut, theme- spring/childhood (spring colors & flowers + pic of my niece), shapes-circles/scallops
Cupcake Inspirations- see photo (inspired by yellow & flowers)
Gingerloft- die cuts or punches
Paper Sundaes- embossing