Happy New Year! & Some Blog Candy

Happy 2009! I hope it is a good one for us all. We spent New Year's Eve at my folks', munching the night away. I made Sausage Soup, a recipe I got from my stamping friend, Erin, and it was yummy! We watched the movie Down Periscope and then watched ABC's coverage of New Year's for the last half hour of 2008. At midnight, with the noise makers squeaking, we had fun strewing streamers all over Mom & Dad's living room from all of the poppers we'd brought, had some Asti Spumante, and then cleaned up. After we got home and the girls were in bed, I was wide awake, so I spent some time working on an upcoming swap in my newly reorganized craft room. For our team swap the end of January, we are going back to our technique page swaps. I was looking through the technique ideas on Splitcoast and settled on reverse spotlighting. I loved Beate's card for the tutorial she wrote on reverse spotlighting, and wanted to do something similar without simply copying hers. I hadn't used my Haiku designer series paper yet, so I decided to use the colors that coordinate with that for my card (Old Olive, Tangerine Tango, So Saffron, More Mustard). The stamp set I chose to use was Eastern Blooms, one of many sets in my collection that hadn't seen ink yet. The sentiment is from Simply Said. The flower centers were stamped in Chocolate Chip and punched out with a 1/2 inch circle punch. I love how they top off the flowers. The green paper filling the circle spotlights is from the Haiku DSP.

I finished a second version of the card this afternoon and would appreciate your comments. Do you like the monotone flowers (top) or the one with multicolored flowers? Do you like the Olive or the Tangerine ribbon? Do you like the Olive brads or the Mustard brads? Do you like the one with the sponging (top) or the one without? Please leave me your comments and the winner will receive the stamp set So Many Sayings (new, unmounted - the picture is from an ebay auction so you can see what it looks like) and a 25 yard spool of 1/4 inch Spring Moss grosgrain ribbon! I'll randomly choose a winner on Friday, January 9 when I get home from work that day. Good luck, and I look forward to reading your comments!