Last week In Style Stamps hosted a Birthday Bash challenge to help Operation Write Home celebrate their birthday.  Anyone who made a birthday card to donate to Operation Write Home and linked it to the In Style Stamps blog by Sunday afternoon (Sept. 26) would be eligible to win a great prize from In Style Stamps.  ISS was generous enough to even provide a free digital image called Birthday Chloe to use on the cards!  I thought, “This is GREAT!  I can get a super cute image to use on my card for the challenge, and just maybe I’ll be lucky enough to win the prize!” 

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond ISS’s control, there was a delay in getting the free image out to the people who requested one.  Birthday Chloe didn’t arrive in my email inbox until Friday morning.  Because of work, helping out with our high school’s marching band at Friday night’s football game and a competition on Saturday, and spending time with my family, I didn’t have a chance to work on a card until yesterday afternoon.  I was relieved to see that ISS had extended their original deadline… but then, I don’t know if I’d misread the information on their blog early yesterday, or what, but suddenly I realized I had only 50 minutes to make my card, photograph it, upload it online, and then link it to the ISS blog.  ACK! 

I’d already printed out the image and had a vague idea for my card layout.  Because of the time constraint, I knew I had to keep the color scheme pretty simple.  I don’t know why, but I felt a strong pull to use green on the card.  I hastily flipped through my Basic Grey papers and found a green floral.  I matched it to some SU cardstock, grabbed my Prismacolor pencils and started coloring.  I ran some Nestabilities dies through my Big Kick, assembled all the layers, and there it was – a simple, super quick 4.25″ square card.  I snapped a couple photos of it (literally – usually I take 4 or 5 photos to compare and upload the best), rapidly chose one of the two to use online, and uploaded it to my Splitcoaststampers.com gallery in a hurry so I could get it linked to the In Style Stamps blog.

I made it with 4 minutes to spare.  Whew!

Even if I don’t win the prize offered by In Style Stamps, the real winner here is Operation Write Home.  I’m happy to be able to help their worthwhile cause. 

And now, here’s the card.

Supplies:
Digital Image: Birthday Chloe (In Style Stamps)
Cardstock: Kiwi Kiss (SU); Basics White (Papertrey Ink); green floral print from LilyKate 6″ x 6″ pad (Basic Grey)
Other: Labels Nine and Petite Oval Nestabilities dies; Premier colored pencils (Prismacolor); odorless mineral spirits