Valentine "WIN!"

I entered a Valentine contest! Yep. Me. My niece emailed me the other night and said, I heard this contest on the radio, make a valentine for Alpine Jeweler's, and you can win a loose 1/2 carat diamond. I have wanted to enter before, so I thought , eh, why not?

Well, I'm doing school. Lots of school. It seems to take every dang second I have, but I decided to do this valentine in my spare time. I started on the 3rd of February. The contest ended today.

This is what my kitchen table has been looking like for almost 2 weeks... well, 10 days anyways... :)

OK!!! SO!!! I won second place!!!! It was a $500 dollar gift certificate!!

Wanna see my valentine???

Here is what it looked like when I thought I finished it....

Here's an upclose of the top of it. I used wire for the handle, and then crystal beads. I used my cuttlebug and cut out letters, about 5 of each letter, and then I glued them together so they looked like chipboard.

Do you get what it says??? Hubby did not get it. It says, You Are My Love Potion #9!
Here is the back, I didn't want it to be plain, so I added a bunch of hearts on it. Each little tube has its own kind of candy, and each one has a test tube/flask as a tag on it. My cardstock is from Stampin' UP!, and one of the designer papers, but all of the other papers are from Express the Moment. Ones I got in a kit last year for valentines. The best part? I didn't buy any new supplies, they were all ones I had on hand! Yep!!

The only thing I had to buy, was some candy for it... I had some, but I spent $2.25 cents on other candy to finish filling it. Here's a side view for you. I put a test tube on the bottom side.
For the base, each tube is in its own separate little box. Then I glued all the boxes together, with the heart in the center of them. I then did separate sides to keep them glued together. They sit on two squares of cardstock, which sits on cardstock that I made into a fan fold, then glued together. That sits on 2 more layers of cardstock and then a layer of chipboard.
Here's a close up of the tags for each bottle.This tag is on the side of the heart, it is where the message is printed. Remember back in October when I went to Utah and saw that cute tag with the cauldron on it? Well, this is it, Valentine style! I didn't have the same punches, but the look is the same.
Here's the backside of the tag, it opens up to write in.
So, I thought I was finished, I called them to get the exact rules.... seems like you had to make the Valentine be addressed to them. Uh. Back to the table. I punched out a couple of hearts, stamped some letters, punched them and came up with their name on the top...
Finished!!!
Way fun to make. Way funner to get $500!!! (I already bought me some drop pearl earrings with emeralds on them! :) )

Hope you like!!

My first digital page...

So this month Stampin' UP! is offering a free 30 day trial of their Digital Program. I have been thinking about doing digital. Not sure that I really want to, so this is a good test to see if I want to make that big purchase.

I am a more hands on kinda a girl I think. But this is my first try at making something from their digital program.

I can't tell you how many times I got the error message. It does not like me. And then in the end, it doesn't look exactly how I want it to look. Why can't we color in the stamped image? Why can't you get background paper to fit where you want it to fit without stretching it out of proportion...I have a lot of questions...guess its a good thing that it is a trial version!!

One of the drawbacks... you don't get a whole lot of stuff to work with. This is the only stamp image in there, besides some circles made of dots. So, am going to play around with it some more.

Anyone out there in cyber land have this product? Can answer some questions???