SSD Sketch Tuesday and Hop(e) for Haiti!

Its time for another Skipping Stones Design Sketch Tuesday, AAANNNDDDD its our Blog Hop(e) for Haiti! Make sure you start back at the SSD site for the beginning of the hop in case you arrived here otherwise. You should have arrived here from Jen del Muro's blog.

Heather, the super-duper-amazingly-talented (and of course awesome and super sweet!) owner of SSD, is donating $2 to the American Red Cross for every stamp set that is sold over the next week. How cool is that?! Wanna know some more cool news?! Since you are on this hop, you can bid on the cards you see today! That's right! ALL proceeds from the auction will go directly to the ARC!!! Please visit the Skipping Stones Design Blog for further details on the auction!

As a company, we wanted to do something to give back to the people who have been so devastated by the Haitian Earthquake. So we thought what better way than to invite some of our favorite stampers to join us in this cause. Each card you see on the blog hop today will be auctioned on E-bay with all proceeds going to the Red Cross in support of the Haitian Relief Effort (please check the Skipping Stones Design Website for the link to the auction). 100% of the proceeds of the Ebay auction and $2.00 from every stamp set purchased from February 16 - 22 will be donated to the Red Cross. We know that we can make a difference.

Also, I got to ask two of my blogging friends to participate in the hop, and I was super excited when they accepted! Make sure to leave some love for my awesome friends, Courtney of Practicing Creativity and Sharon of Ladybug Designs!!

(Such a cool sketch right? Belinda rocks!) The Stamp Tramps are using this sketch today in conjunction with the blog hop. On this particular card I first decided I wanted to tackle that circle part. I didn't have a stamp set or color scheme in mind AT ALL. So I thought, start small and work around that. I looked through my stamps and figured out what I thought what would be a good "focal image" for that circle. I ended up picking one of the hats in the Well Behaved (Special Edition) set. After I picked that hat it was like everything just exploded in my mind!

I immediately thought of doing an elegant type card and I pulled out this really cool Hambly paper and some matching cardstocks. My thought was to use the swirly squares as the two different sides, but when I put them side by side it look waaaay overboard. So I reached into my scrap pink pile and pulled out an already embossed little square. Yep, already embossed with the Swirls CB folder! How perfect right?!

Here is my finished card, but let me tell you a little more about it!

After I stamped the hat and laid my pieces together I thought something was missing. (Just a note the CB swirls didn't have ink at this point it was just a plain pink embossed piece) The hat looked a little lonely. So I took a strip from the Frills set and curved it around the circle and clear block. Voila, instant frilly border around the hat! Then I added the pearls and I sighed a happy sigh. Do you ever have happy sighs in your crafty room? I love em! ;)

So here I am laying everything on my card and the pink embossed piece is just blah, so I put it directly on my ink pad and slowly and *gently* rubbed it in the pad. This made it so only the embossed portions picked up the ink and not the whole piece. Yay my swirls now stood out! The last piece was the sentiment. I initially did it on pink, but it just stared looking too pink. So drawing from the cream in the pearls I used some vanilla cardstock and inked the edges in chocolate to make it stand out.

Ok a totally long winded dissertation on the making of my card, but I thought it was fun to share. ;) I'm always intrigued by how different sketches, color combos, or even stamp sets are used. I love the versatility and talent/skill I see all over and its just fun to me! If you decide to make a card with this sketch I'd love to see it!

Sooooo if you want to bid on this card along with a few other designers cards, take a look at the SSD Blog for all the info!

Your next stop on the blog hop is Sankari Wegman's blog!

Now, how about a prize? In addition to the fabulous eye candy, we have decided to hide a prize somewhere along the hop! There will be a few pre-release sets up for grabs hidden along the blog hop. The fun part is...we're not telling you who it is! So as you hop, make sure you leave comments on every post so you have a chance to win!!

Supplies
CS: Pink Pirouette, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla
DSP: Hambly Screen Prints
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Stamps: Well Behaved and Frills by Skipping Stones Design
Misc: mini pearls, Cricut George (circles), Swirls CB embossing folder