Viva la Verve!

Good afternoon friends and followers.  Today I decided to work on some of the Viva la Verve! Sketch Challenges over at Splitcoaststampers.  Here is my first card for Week 1, designed by Amber Hight:

The butterfly and sentiment are from Verve's 'Blue Skies' set and are embossed in black onto brushed gold cardstock.  I LOVE the patterned papers on this card - they are from the 'Simple Elegance' mat stack by the Paper studio, and in addition to those beautiful golden tones they are foiled (not sure you can tell from the photo).  The butterfly is popped up with dimensionals and a touch of black velvet ribbon completed the card.

My second card followed Week 4's Sketch by Jackie Pedro.  I decided to go with a patriotic theme using Verve's images from their 'Blue Skies' and "American Hero' sets.  I stamped the notebook paper image (isn't it the cutest?!!) using Soft Sky ink to try to resemble the look of real notebook paper.  The stars in the background, which match the embossed stars using the stars Cuttlebug folder, which you can barely see, are stamped in Ridinghood Red and Night of Navy; I really like these two colors together, so classic.

My last card followed Week 5's Sketch by Sankari Wegman.  I took the liberty of converting the circles into butterflies and found some pretty patterned papers that I liked in DCWV's Blossoms & Butterflies stack and found colors in my stash to match them: Melon Mambo, Pretty in Pink and Peach Cobbler.  Again, I used images from Verve's 'Blue Skies' set and stamped the notebook paper in Soft Sky on white cardstock and added the sentiment in Chocolate Chip ink.  I loved how the swirls in this set closely matched the DP, and added a few flourishes in Melon Mambo.  So, which of the three is your favorite?

My hope was to finish all five of the Viva La Verve Challenges today, LOL, yeah, I know, a little ambitious given my health, but I have only two sketches left - week's 2 & 3 (which were trickier for me for some reason) and two days to complete them, so hopefully I should finish all five in time to post in the Viva la Verve Sketch Champions thread (insert Queen's "We are the Champions" music here).  We will see, health comes first and I hurt my back pretty good when bending down to pick up a stamp set I had dropped on the floor (I KNOW!  But my grabbers are not effective at picking up relatively flat items off of the floor!!) 

Thank you all for taking the time to visit my blog and see my creations.  I hope you like them.
~Crafty Math Chick