Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge #18 — Twilight Valentines!

Happy Tuesday — here’s an early wish for a Happy Valentine’s Day too!  This week it was my turn to choose the theme for the Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge and it was a really easy decision this time…it’s Twilight Valentines!  All of the details on the challenge can be found at our home base for the challenges, Twilight Tuesday.com.  As always, we welcome you to play along with us!  And, please visit the blogs of the design team members to see what they’ve created!

Beth ~ Dani ~ Eve ~  Jen ~ Margie ~ Rebecca ~ Tonya

The creative portion of the challenge is to make a card that could be given from character to another in the Twilight world.  Because I am totally predictable when it comes to choosing a Twilight character to focus on…yeah, I chose Edward.  I made a card that Edward would give to Bella.  In the Twilight world of my imagination.  (Just go with it — it’s more fun that way.)  More on the card in a bit.

The comment portion of the challenge is to talk a bit about the couples in the Twilight  world. Which couple’s story you might relate to or admire, which couple might not work for you (hey, imprinting on a baby theme – I’m looking at you!). Anything you like. I would bet that a lot of us love the stories because of the romantic elements — just elaborate on that a bit, and tell us what parts of that appealed to you. 

Hmmm…my favorite relationship would have to be that of Renee and Phil…yeah, just kidding — you all know what I’m going to say!  It’s all about Edward and Bella. {Or really, it’s all about Edward.  Has there EVER been a fictional character that has inspired this much adoration?  Seriously?!}

And for my least favorite relationship(s) in the story — I hinted at that one above.  The imprinting on an infant does not work for me, nor will it ever work for me.  So Renesmee and Jacob, Quil and Claire  = not my faves. 

My card for this challenge is not very black and red and Twilighty-looking.  I really just wanted to do a somewhat straightforward Valentine card, something that Edward might like for Bella.  (Again, in my imaginary world.)  There are just a few Twilight hints here.  Aside from adding Bella and Edward’s names to the heart shape on the card, the "forever" sentiment reminded me of the last scene of Twilight (both the book and the movie).  

And my nod to Edward — the presence of the rhinestones on the card, especially the rhinestone heart.  Was that not one of the loveliest of scenes, when Edward gives Bella the  diamond heart for her bracelet?  Edward seemed so thrilled to be giving it to her…so lovely.  So let’s take a moment with this; allow me to quote from one of my very favorite moments of the whole series:

On the opposite side of the chain from the wolf, there now hung a brilliant heart-shaped crystal.  It was cut in a million facets, so that even in the subdued light shining from the lamp, it sparkled.  I inhaled in a low gasp.

"It was my mother’s," he shrugged deprecatingly.  "I inherited quite a few baubles like this.  I’ve given some to Esme and Alice both.  So, clearly, this is not a big deal in any way."

I smiled ruefully at his assurance.

"But I thought it was a good representation," he continued. "It’s hard and cold."  He laughed.  "And it throws rainbows in the sunlight."

"You forgot the most important similarity," I murmured.  "It’s beautiful."

"My heart is just as silent," he mused. "And it, too, is yours."

I twisted my wrist so the heart would glimmer.  "Thank you. For both."

Eclipse, pages 438-439

Card components:

Paper:  Papertrey Ink vintage cream cardstock; SU! Riding Hood Red; 7 Gypsies Savannah flock paper – floral

Stamp: Inkadinkado from Love Letters set, Bella and Edward names computer-generated

Ink:  SU! Riding Hood Red

Accessories:  Cuttlebug:  Fiskars texture plate in dots; Nestabilities long rectangle and heart dies; SU! ticket corner punch; Martha Stewart floral lace border punch; rhinestone accents; ribbon; dimensionals

Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge #15 — The Cars of Twilight!

Spoiler Alert!  Breaking Dawn spoiler ahead!

Happy Inauguration Day!  It’s time for another Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge!  This week’s theme, chosen by Margie, is the cars of the  Twilight saga.  The crafting portion is to  make a creation using the cars from Twilight as your inspiration.  And the comment portion:  What would be your ideal Twilight car, and why?  Leave your comment on that at our new home for the challenges, Twilight Tuesday.com, where you’ll find all the details on this challenge.  Come and visit us there — the activity on our forums is picking up, so come and chat with us!   Also, don’t forget that the drawing for this month’s Twilight blog candy will be happening soon, so please play along and get your chance to win!  And that is not the only way to win, visit here or here to get the details on the blog candy.

So…cars. I’m not all that much of  car person. I mean, I would definitely notice if a Cullen-style car rode by me (and I would notice if someone who looked like a Cullen was driving!), but otherwise, it’s not a big deal to me.  But, if I won the lottery, I’d be driving something good (but environmentally friendly) — that I do know.  So my ideal Cullen car would be the Aston Martin (pictured at right).  I mean it is just so beautiful — that’s really all there is to it.

Cars really figure quite prominently in the Twilight saga.  Here are a few key automotive-related Twilight things:

• Edward.  Of course he’s first.  Edward’s a car collector and his cars are as beautiful as he is; the silver Volvo is practically a character in Twilight.  And he also has an Aston Martin, pictured above!  The only other person/character I’ve ever heard of with an Aston Martin is James Bond.  James Bond and Edward Cullen — yeah, sounds about right.
• Rosalie, the unlikely ace mechanic with the flashy red BMW
• Alice and the yellow Porsche that plays such a key role in New Moon.  (Seriously, what if Alice wasn’t able to steal such a fast car?!  Heaven forbid!!) 
• Emmett and his enormous, tricked-out Jeep, so like him
• Carlisle and his tasteful Mercedes, again – so like him.
• Come to think of it, what do Jasper and Esme drive?  I mentioned this to Tonya, and I think we figured it out.  Esme seems to be a homebody, so driving’s not very important to her, and I think that Jasper is just content to be with Alice, so I  imagine that he’d go along with her car of choice.
• Jacob, another mechanic (he actually has something in common with Rosalie!).  He helped with Bella’s truck, he rebuilt that VW in New Moon, he rebuilt the two motorcycles that play such an important role in New Moon.  (Yes, I know they are not cars, but they are really significant.)  And he even gets to drive the above-mentioned  Aston Martin in Breaking Dawn.
• And..finally Bella and her red truck.  Like Edward’s Volvo, the truck is basically a character in the books and the movie.  It’s such a part of her,

And that leads me to my own project, which concerns Bella’s "before" car.  (This is the spoiler warning; those who don’t want to spoiled about the plot of Breaking Dawn, read no further!)

In Breaking Dawn, Bella’s "before" car was the fictional Mercedes Guardian, based on the very real Mercedes Guard.  Edward’s thinking is that Bella needs the safest vehicle imaginable while Bella is still in her vulnerable human state; of course Bella wants to resist accepting his gift, but she does in the end.

Doing some research into the features of the real-life Mercedes Guard, which I believe is priced at around $400,000, was actually quite amusing.  Check out these safety features, courtesy of carsarmored.org:

• Comes fully armored. 
• Made of bulletproof glass and steel designed to thwart the following: gunfire, B6 and B7 protection levels secure passengers from rifles, hand guns and all military-standard small-arms in general. 
• Passengers are protected against grenade fragments

You know, I don’t think that Stephenie Meyer gets nearly enough credit for her wit — that is some funny stuff.  Why aren’t the troops driving these cars?!

So, my project — I did a little advertisement for the Mercedes Guard, with some of those key features listed, and a little Edward joke thrown in there.  My idea was to do a sort of spec sheet for the car, something that Edward might show Bella to tell her about the car he was getting for her.  So, it’s got a photo of the car, some of the safety specs listed below…and Bella’s rather crabby reaction to the car.  I did this on a notepaper to look as if Bella wrote a note and stuck it on to the paper — I was happy to even find a digital staple to use!  I used the font for Bella’s handwriting that was used in the books; it’s called Pablo.   Bella’s note, which is a quote from Breaking Dawn, is as follows. I actually think that Bella’s being hard on Edward here; when would Edward ever laugh at her, behind her back?   I just don’t see that happening. 

Ha ha. Because I was so fragilely human, so accident-prone, so much a victim to my own dangerous bad luck, apparently I needed a tank-resistant car to keep me safe. Hilarious. I was sure he and his brothers had enjoyed the joke quite a bit behind my back. (Breaking Dawn, page

Show some love to the design team by visiting their blogs to check out their creations for this week, and play along with us!

Beth ~ Dani ~ Eve ~ Jen ~ Margie ~ Rebecca ~ Tonya

Digital card components:

Car photo found online; all text computer-generated; fonts used: Times New Roman and Pablo; Digital notebook paper and staple by Katie Pertiet, from DesignerDigitals.com

Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge: A New Design Team & A New Challenge

Some exciting news — a new round of Twilight Inspiration Challenges is beginning and a new design team has been formed and…I am really happy to say that I am that team!  I am just thrilled about this!  And it has such a nice ring to it — just the words "design team" make me smile.  I am so excited to get things started!  Many, many more details follow, including a bit of history on me and my Twilight love, a listing of the team members, and the details on this week’s Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge.  Read on!

As part of the team announcement, we’re all doing a brief introductions of ourselves.  Here is a quick sketch of the basics: I’m Julie; I’m married to Dan and am a stay-at-home mom to our daughter, Caitlin.  We live in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts.  One day I noticed that a papercrafting/stamping store existed a mere five minutes from where I live.  The store wasn’t new, I had just never noticed it before.  I signed up for one of their classes, and once I got my hands on those Prismacolor pencils and gamsol, the love affair began.  That was in January of 2008 and it’s been full steam ahead since.  On the recommendation of my very kind and helpful teacher Barb (hi, Barb!), I began to visiting Splitcoast Stampers regularly and started my gallery there in July.  And then this blog came along in October — it’s all happened rather quickly.

And my Twilight history — I met Edward Cullen one fateful day in August….

I guess I should start that again — I read the Twilight series for the first time this past August.  I had heard of the books for a while, but assumed they were only meant for younger readers.  (Bad assumption on my part.)  I finally decided to read them after Entertainment Weekly did their first cover story on the books (with the now-infamous photo of Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart on the cover).   And like so many others, I read the four books in less than a week.  I have now read the books four times, seen the movie twice, spent countless hours over at Twilight TwitterMoms, and made some truly great friends through it all. 

A couple of months ago, I was really thrilled to stumble on a Twilight challenge creation on Splitcoast Stampers – that was it for me!  I was so excited to start to participate in the challenges, and combining cardmaking and my very huge love of all things Twilight has been so much fun.  And through this, I met Tonya, the founder of the Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenges, who practically acted like my own personal coach.  A more encouraging and kinder friend you could not find.  That’s the beautiful of Twilight — it brings people together!  I’ve heard it said online before and it’s so true — "Twilight Is Love."

The Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge Design Team & Upcoming Challenges

This new round of challenges, with this new and awesome team is going to be so much fun!  The team has expanded quite a bit for this new round and is comprised of a lovely and multi-talented group of people.  I’m thrilled to be working with them!  Their names and blog links are listed below; visit their sites and show ‘em some love!  And the expansion of the design team brings a new medium to the challenges — we now have a jewelry-maker and artist on the team, the lovely and talented Jen!  I can’t wait to see what our talented team creates!

There are still so many Twilight themes that we can cover with the upcoming challenges.  Twilighters are all still pretty excited about the movie having just been released and being such a huge success.  I don’t think that many Twilight fans are done with seeing the movie in the theater.  And, with the news that the movie for New Moon will be made, this an exciting time to be a Twilight fan!  The challenges will eventually focus specifically on New Moon once that movie gets closer, but for now the challenges will be more general. 

There are many fun things planned  – blog candy will be a very frequent thing!  Stay tuned to learn all about it!  And I can’t say this enough — please play along!  These things are so much more fun with more participants — join in!  We won’t bite.  (I know, I know,  it’s such a cheesy joke — but I couldn’t resist.)

Here’s the Team

The Original Design Team

Tonya, Stamp Happens

Eve, This is Bliss

Beth, Stamp Insanity

The New Team Members

Julie, Stars Fall Creations

Danielle (Dani), Count Your Beautiful Blessings 

Margarita (Margie), Oh Bumble Is Me

Rebecca, Bella Carta

Jen, Deconstructing Jen

This Week’s Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge (#10)

In addition to introducing the new team this week, we’re also exploring the results of the Twilighters Anonymous quiz to find out which female character you are.  Take the quiz here; it’s a fun thing to do, and Twilighters Anonymous is a great site to visit. They are seriously up-to-date with all the latest Twilight news and photos.

And the results…I’m an Esme, which is pretty obvious with all of the photos I’ve included of Esme (aka Elizabeth Reaser).  It seemed that a lot of my friends got this result too.  Perhaps that’s just a mom thing given the maternal nature of the character. I think that getting this result is a compliment; Esme is consistently a very kind, nurturing, loving character.  As a mother figure to the Cullen family, Esme has worked to make their home environment a beautiful, comfortable, safe place for the family.  I would say that her care and nurturing are her vampire skill!  In Twilight, Edward said of his home, "it’s the one place we never have to hide." Much of that comfort and safety is due to Esme’s loving presence.  I talk up Midnight Sun at any chance I can get, and I will again — Esme has many very nice moments in Midnight Sun.  Given that the story is in Edward’s point of view, we can really see Esme’s role in his life.  She is so concerned for him, so worried for him, and so hopeful that he can work out his inner struggles in regard to Bella.  That aspect of Midnight Sun is really very touching.  And this woman is so beloved to her husband, Carlisle, that he even purchased an island for her!  And actually named it Isle Esme.  That’s love, people!

I think that Edward, as always, says it best in Midnight Sun.  This is one of my favorite lines in the entire series:

If Carlisle was the soul of our family,then Esme was the heart. 

That Edward — he always did have a way with words.

The Crafters’ Portion of the Challenge

This week’s challenge, Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge #10, is to create a design that represents your Twilight quiz character.  If you are uploading your project to Splitcoast Stampers, the keyword to use is TTIC10.  If you are so inspired, please play along with us!  If you do post on Splitcoast, you can comment here with a link to your creation.

And, finally, here is my card.  The key with this one was to go with a feminine look; that says Esme to me. As usual, I used a photo of the character and I added her name to the photo in Photoshop along with changing the photo to sepia tone.  No bright colors on this card!  Although I wanted the look of the card to be very soft, I still couldn’t resist using metallic cardstock (Bazzill Bling in tiara).  I don’t think I’ve made any cards about Twilight characters without fitting a metallic cardstock in there!  Any Cullen card needs a little sparkle.  The small tag on the card is stamped with the word "love;" that’s Esme to me.

Card components:

Paper: Papertrey Ink vintage cream, Bazzill (two shades of peach); Bazzill Bling cardstock in Tiara

Stamp: Crafty Secrets

Ink:  Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Tea Dye

Accessories:  Cuttlebug: floral fantasy and Swiss dots embossing folders; ribbon; EK Success deco corner punch; Kaiser pearls; Making Memories floral brad; dimensionals