Virtual Round Robin

Today I have 2 cards that were made basically the same way.  I made them yesterday as a part of a challenge on the Paper Wishes Message Board for National Card Making Day.  The challenge was a "Virtual Round Robin".  Every hour or so we were told something that we needed to add to our card.  After each addition, we took a picture and posted it.  Here's my process for the 2 cards I created:

1) Use a flowered patterned paper for your background paper.  I chose more subtle flower patterns because I needed to make a birthday card for my brother and hoped that at least one of these would work for that.  Here are my two cards after step one:

2) Our next step was to add a coordinating pattern - along with some plain paper or card stock.  Here's what I had at the end of step two:

3) Next we were to add an animal focal - a dog or cat was highly suggested.  This changed my design.  As you can see from the above pictures, I had figured I'd be making a horizontal card, but I knew I wanted to use this dog and cat (Stampendous stamps & dies - see previous post for how I made the cat, and the dog) and they really didn't work well with my horizontal layout.  I had thought to put them on a piece of white card stock (like I would have stamped on if I weren't using dies & cutting them out), but I really liked the look of them against the backgrounds I had.  However, they really needed something to sit on to anchor them. Unfortunately, I couldn't sit them on the coordinating paper I had already added because the card would open the wrong way!  SOOOO, I added a similar smaller strip on the other side of the card and let them sit on that - attaching their heads with wobble springs.

4) Our fourth directive was to make the card a get well card!!!!  So much for my birthday card idea!  Except by now I really wanted the blue card for my brother's birthday card since they have for many years had dogs that look a little like the one I added for the focal!  So - I made it into a get well card (as you can see in the picture below), but planned ahead so I could change it later! :)

5) I was feeling pretty good about my cards at this point, but the next directive was to add some "bling".  Wow!  How was I going to add that and still have something I liked?  I decided to use some Dazzles Stickers - Jewel Dazzle type finish.  This was pretty easy for the green card - added some green Jewel Dazzles by the sentiment and in the bottom left corner.  For the blue, I tried blue dazzles, but they really weren't the right color.  Silver ones didn't go as well with the dog as I would have liked.  Then I saw my copper ones - PERFECT!!!  I liked my cards even better than before!

6) The final instruction was to add some Dazzles to the inside of the card - along with stuff that coordinated with the card front if we wished.  This was my result:

7)  At this point, the cards were supposed to be done, but I still needed to transform the blue one into a birthday card! First, I swapped out the sentiment on the front:

8) Lastly, I stamped a birthday sentiment to the inside (HOTP stamp from "Birthday Cheer").  There!  Now I can write a message and get it in the mail to my brother.