You Saw the World in a Darker Shade of Blue..

Did you know you could get to Sweden bloghopping?

You can if you are a Doodle Factory fan. Starving Artistamps is running a Swedish Collage Card challenge. There are some incredibly talented women from Sweden who send their DF cards in to Tracey and they have this very colorful, distinctive style - bright colors, square cards, lots of embellishments, and this sunny, sweet and humorous feel to all their cards. Those of us on the design team and fans of the blog look forward to the shipments of these cards halfway across the world to Tracey for posting. Browse the gallery and see what I mean.

In the meantime, if you want to get outside the rectangular card box and re-define collage - which I think we think of as more somber, with darker colors and more serious subject matter than these cards - challenge yourself to a Swedish Collage style creation and upload a link to your card.

Here's my version - this is from the new Doodle Factory Halloween II set - with Lorelei smooching an embarassed ghost with her movie star red lipstick!!

I colored the image with Copics (RV29, C5, V09, V04, YG13, G07, B60 and YR07) and used some Stampin' Up! retired Halloween DSP, as well as Green Galore, Basic Black and Lovely Lilac cardstock. The cute flocked X & O are from the paper studio - Hobby Lobby was having a big sale so I splurged - this is outside my norm but I knew I'd need em for the Swedish card!

Want the best part?

A winner will be selected by raffle for a FULL SHEET OF YOUR CHOICE OF DOODLE FACTORY SHEETS!!

So for everyone who has been coveting my little monsters, head on over to the Starving Artistamps Blog and check out the Swedish Collage Challenge!!! Enter by October 1!

I now have a kitten in my left hand so I need to be brief.

I will have some VERY exciting news about Darden Smith's Be an Artist program this week though!!! I cant wait to tell you. For those of you who are outside of Austin, Darden Smith is the musician who was kind enough to let me use Boy as the music for my show. If it's not already on your Ipod, when you hear it (click here), I think you will understand quickly why I love this song so much ;) So stay tuned for the news.

I hope to stamp a little more after the Maddie Bat wakes up and gives me my arm back. Till then - happy stamping!