Tour de Craft Guest Designer - Lisa Spangler!

I'm so excited about today's Tour de Craft guest designer post. First of all, it's my #1 fellow Tour de France crazed & bike fanatic friend, Lisa Spangler!! Even though Lisa & I became friends IRL when I lived in Austin, we initially bonded over Twitter due to our mutual love of all things stamping and bikes! She's the one that I chat about cycling gossip with, the one I geek out to when something awesome happens (like a tweet reply from @Vaughters!), and the one I hope to one day take a trip to France with to actually watch le Tour in person. But I'm mainly excited because her card is just so totally AWESOME!! It's absolutely perfect for this exciting day in the Tour, the double climb up my favorite of all of the Alps, the one and only Alpe d'Huez!! I hope the stage today is as EPIC as Lisa's card...! Here's what Lisa had to say...

Howdy all! I'm so happy to be here with you for the Tour de Craft -- that Libby is a genius to have thought of this, don't you think? I've been a huge bike nut my whole life. I loved to ride my mountain bike on trails behind my grandparent's house. So fun! Then in college my best friend started dating a cyclist who was on a team for a local shop so we went to watch him race. I thought it was like magic being able to go that fast! 

Fast forward a few years to moving to Austin, TX, home of Lance Armstrong. Everyone here had Tour fever! Awesome. This was before there was a video broadcast of le Tour...so I followed the live *text* updates on cyclingnews.com. (I'll admit I kept it open in a window at work, too! And one time I screamed out loud cheering for Lance and startled my officemate. Oops!)

Now we're spoiled to have video access to le Tour. If you haven't watched it yet, you really should. It's like poetry on wheels to me. And there are all these subplots, too! There's the green sprint jersey, the polka dot jersey for the king of the mountains, and of course, yellow for the overall leader.  And just like life, there are good days and bad days. But le Tour keeps on rolling!

So I thought it was ironic that as I was making my card it started pouring rain at le Tour...and just as I went to photo it, it started pouring rain here too! LOL! So I decided to keep it real and go with it for the photos! Here's my card:

I had asked Libby for a mountain stage, because those are my favorite. I just can't believe how fast the riders can go up the mountains -- not to mention making their descents! I've been known to go super slow downhill -- once I get over 40 mph it's just too fast for me ha! One of the things I love is how the fans come out and cheer the riders on, shouting "allez, allez, allez"!!! Which means roughly "go go go!" So I had this idea to hand-letter "allez" on some watercolor paper.

Then I watercolored the "A" to make it like a mountain, and colored the rest of the letters to represent the jerseys. :)

To finish off the card, I wanted to add a bike going up the side of the "A" -- but all of my stamps faced the wrong direction...what to do??? It dawned on me that I could flip the carrier sheet so it was going in the the direction I wanted, tape it to a window, then put my paper over top and trace it. Woo!

To finish off the card I added some splats...and that was that!

Thanks so much Libby for having me and to all of you for joining me. Now let's all go craft! Allez, allez, allez!!!!! xx

Thank you SO MUCH Lisa, your card makes me smile bigtime! Be sure to visit Lisa over at her awesome blog: sideoats + scribbles

And thank you to all six of the wonderful guest designers who've joined me this month. It's hard to believe the Tour de Craft is almost over, only three more days to go. Then what will I blog about??