Gearing up for my favorite time of year!

Think PINK.... one of my favorite times of the year is the month of Hope You Can Cling To Challenges at splitcoaststampers
     The best part is that this is not only a fun month of challenges and a chance to win fun prizes, but also a chance to participate in a card drive to provide cheer, hope and encouragement to breast cancer patients and their families. 
     Here are some sneak peeks of challenge samples I've been working on as a hostess for this year's challenges. 

Hope you'll come play along with us? If not, you'll miss out on the chance to lift the spirits of women battling breast cancer at MD Anderson, and also on prizes from your favorite crafty companies. Look for the challenges starting on October 1st and daily through the entire month!

Pounding Flowers

     The Mixability Challenge yesterday was to pound or smash flowers. I grabbed some while I took my dog for a walk yesterday and then took a few from my garden too. Today I tried out a cucuzza leaf from my squash plant after seeing a Dina's beautiful leaf print card.

These are the two prints from a small leaf. I fussycut the one on the right to use on my collage card.

Here the leaf, as well as several other elements, has been tea stained. Lots of distressing 

Here's a close up of the card I made using a larger leaf (this squash plant gets huge and has quite large leaves!) I used a regular pencil to add shading, blending with my finger. 

Here's the finished card; I kept it simple with some added spatter and sponging as well as script stamped using the leaf as a mask.Stamps: French Script, Gorgeous Grunge, You Are Loved Paper: Smoky Slate, Soft Suede, Watercolor Paper Ink: Soft Suede, Crumb Cake, Pear Pizzazz Accessories: Sponge, Leaf and Big Shot, Pencil, Sakura Gelly Roll Clear Star Pen Techniques: Sponging, Pounded Flowers, Pencil Shading, Masking

Read more:   http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/2657353#ixzz3jbQQwIFL

Here are some flowers laid out ready to pound.

You lose the true colors in the pounded prints.

My youngest wanted to get in on the action-instant art class!

This ended up being one of my favorites and I got two "prints" from this batch of 4 red carnations from my garden.

The green parts didn't really show up and I was working on another inspired card. I've added homemade embossing paste over the non-colored areas.