#SCinspires {Blog Hop and Giveaway}

Thank you for hopping by from Natalie's blog! As we are heading into fall, Studio Calico offers you a free printable fall poster by one of their talented in-house graphic designers, Jasmine Jones, as part of a contest. It comes in two versions for you to download, full color and another with a white background.

So pretty, isn't it? I think, I'll have it printed on grid paper or light colored patterned paper… or maybe even vellum? Anyway, to participate in the contest:

• Go, download the printable to enter the contest!
• Share a photo on your social networks and tag it with #SCinspires. In your photo caption, explain why the photo is inspiring to you. It can be a picture of you and your free printable or anything else from Studio Calico that inspires you! 

You are in to win some amazing prizes - and: As the shares with #SCinspires grow, prizes will grow, too! :) Curious to learn more? Contest details including prize sneaks can be found here and SC will also update you on their blog every Friday on the progress/number of shares so far. The contest ends 10/31/14 at 11:59PM Eastern.

Probably, you wonder what inspires me about Studio Calico? I will tell you a little "behind the scenes" story from the past few days. On October 4th, we celebrated World Card-Making Day (WCMD) and Kelsi from the SC offices asked, if some of the Creative Team members were up to contribute a challenge for the lovely message board members. I happily joined to put together a color challenge for the occasion.
Originally, I planned to just pick some colors from the Color Theory swatch book based on a recent card I made from the The Underground card kit but, well… I was inspired to create a whole mood board with supplies from the kit that subbers were to receive soon and other stash/shop items.

These are some of my absolute favorite colors, especially for "manly" cards that we often struggle with and I'm sure I will reverse the process again in a few weeks to make a card from the mood board. 

But back again to WCMD! I wanted to offer some choice to members playing with my challenge and created a second mood board, this time with a warmer berry palette with lavender tones, pink, orange/copper and red colors, mostly with items from current and previous SC kits. It's a trendy fall season palette but surely one that I at least wouldn't usually pick for a project. Nevertheless, both mood board version sparked many beautiful cards with our members (look for them in this thread) and this weekend I created a card with the berry palette colors in mind, too...

What can you take away from this? Studio Calico inspires me to create, their products often inspire big chunks of my creation process. The kits prevent me from spending an endless amount of time searching for the right items since it all goes so well together as is, without being overly matchy-matchy.
Then, their new Color Theory system is a great way to mix in coordinating basics and embellishments and as you see above, something simple like the swatch book can inspire your projects... and challenge you. What is particularly fun is that the kits sometimes make me use items which I wouldn't necessarily pick on my own, but it's often these things that have me thinking creatively outside of the box, let me explore different styles and spark an idea so that I will end up loving to work with the product anyway.

Giveaway time!

Now, fall is the season of gratitude, isn't it? As a way to say thanks for your continued support, SC offered to send a brand new October card kit to one of my blog readers. (If you aren't a regular reader yet but want to become one, you can subscribe here.)

To enter for a chance to win a The Underground card kit, please leave a comment on this very post - with your SC user name if you have one already - until October 31, 2014, at 11:59pm EST. I will also grant you extra chances if you follow me on Instagram and/or Pinterest. Just leave another comment telling me where you follow (of course you can enter extra comments, too, if you do already). I will draw a random winner on 11/1st!

To continue with the blog hop, you can always refer to the full participant list on the Studio Calico blog - your next stop is a lovely and talented scrapbooker from Singapore, Lilin Fang. Good luck for the contest and giveaway, all! I'm looking forward to hear in which ways #SCinspires YOU :)

EDIT: We have a winner!