BasicGrey Challenges and DESIGN TEAM CALL !

Happy New Year and welcome back ! We hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year with your family and friends.

The start of a new year always brings new beginnings and its with sadness that we have to say goodbye to some of our Design Team members. We are so sorry to say that we are losing Chris Dark, Christine, Kim and Martine.

Martine was the founder of BasicGrey Challenges and gave a few of the first DT members their first break in the World of blogging and Design Teams. She has worked tirelessly for 2 years running the blog and posting all the challenges etc. and we would like to thank you Martine from the bottom of our hearts for all that you have done not only for BasicGrey Challenges but for us personally and we all love you.

Having given you all that sad news, we are pleased to say that BasicGrey Challenges is here to stay - whooo hooo ! and here is our first challenge of 2011 with details of our DESIGN TEAM CALL following.

The challenge for you this fortnight is DOTS or SPOTS !!

We would like to see dots or spots somewhere on your project.

You are able to use any brand of papers for this project if you find dots or spots hard to come by in your BasicGrey stash and they can be on the flowers you use, the ribbon, punched holes, buttons BUT as always, please remember that you have to use at least one BasicGrey product on your project to qualify for the prize. Please also mention the BasicGrey product you used in your blog post or email entry so that we can easily identify it !

The Design Team have made some amazing cards for you again this week. You will notice that we have listed the BasicGrey products we have used on our cards for your information and inspiration !

We are absolutely thrilled to tell you that we will also be inviting Guest Designers to be joining us !

Our first Guest Designer is the super talented and lovely SANDIE (sandieshores) of The Crafty Side of Me. Visiting Sandie's blog it is an absolutely must as you will be blown away with her gorgeous projects.

We also have a fabulous prize of a $25 shopping spree with our wonderful sponsor Simon Says Stamp (please see challenge blog for conditions).

The DP's I used for my card are a mixture of BasicGrey "Oliver" which is the red spotty paper and Cosmo Cricket "Material Girl" for the button paper and tape measure paper.

The image is by Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps and is called "Mona the Seamstress". I just love how quirky these images are ! I have coloured the image with ProMarkers and paper pieced the piece of material she is sewing with the BasicGrey Oliver spotty paper. Mona is layered onto a Nestie lacey square.

The lace is from my stash and the buttons and brads are both by BasicGrey.

The cotton reel and needle are from a mini chipboard pack from Maya Road with lots of gorgeous mini chipboards of sewing items. I inked them with some distress ink and then wrapped embroidery cotton around it.

I also again had time to decorate the inside of my card !

The stripey paper is from BasicGrey "Oliver".

The sentiment I made myself on the PC and attached it to a Nestie Fancy Tag.

We look forward to seeing all your fantastic creations for our new challenge and also your Design Team applications ! All the details of the challenge and the Design Team call can be found on the BasicGrey Challenges Blog. If you have any queries at all, please feel free to email us and we will get back to you ! There is a "contact us" button at the very top of the challenge blog.

Thank you so much for your visit, it was lovely to see you again today !

Have a super, fantastic weekend ! I can't believe that this time next week I shall be waking up 40 years old !! I never thought when I was a teenager that I would be 40, it always seemed so old and in flash, I'm in the last week of being 39 ! I just hope that life does begin like they say !!!

Love 'n' hugs,