A FireCracker Blog Hop!

Happy World Card Making Day!! I hope you all are able to get a little crafty today! I'll be getting A LOT crafty today - I'm spending the entire day at the Austin Splitcoast Shoebox Swap! Woohoo! I'll be back tomorrow to tell you all about it! But in the mean time I have something fun to share with you... My new boss over at FireCracker Designs by Pamela (yep, Pamela herself!) was inspired by a recent PaperCrafts magazine to issue a little challenge to her new design team. We were to make a card, send it off to another team member, and see how they could take it, add to it and really make it "POP". Fun, yes??! Want to hear what's even more fun?? We're revealing our cards in a blog hop (I haven't even seen what was done to my original card yet!!) - travel around to all the blogs on this hop, check in with Pamela, and you might win some blog candy!! So, let's start by showing you this adorable "Step 1" card I received from Karyn. Oh, what to do with it?? I thought and I thought... and then I had the grand idea that I should SEW on the card to make it pop. Well, let me tell you what I learned the hard way - sewing on a card, when you aren't that great at sewing, and you have to do it right the first time because you can't start over - well, not the brightest idea I've had!!! Don't look too closely or you will see many mistakes!! But, I do think it made the card "pop" - so, mission accomplished! I also added a few little flowers I colored with my Copics to mimic the flowers in the DP Karyn used, attached some brushed copper brads to the centers and along the sentiment, and also did a little bit more coloring on the super cute bird, just to try to show that a bit of shading in your coloring can also make a card "pop". (NOT that I claim to be an expert at coloring - but I love to color and find it hard to make a card without doing some sort of coloring, even on this challenge card where the image was already colored!!! I'm a coloring addict! LOL!) So there ya have it. What do you think?? Now let's go and see what the others did - from here we'll visit Lisa, who received my Step 1 card shown here. I can't wait to see what she did with it!!
(REMINDER: Head back to Pamela's blog once you've completed the blog hop, let her know what was your favorite, and you might win some blog candy!! The contest is open until midnight Sunday night!)