Challenge #85

Happy day after Thanksgiving everyone!
I hope your holidays are off to a good start - and that if you were one of the fun and brave ones who ventured out into Black Friday, you had a great time and found all that you wanted! 

Thank you all for the beautiful food entries - after getting stuffed it was fun to visit all the yummy cards! Congratulations to the following entries:

Marilyn

Sarah

Fiona

Such a great variety, thank you all for joining in on our weekly challenges! Ladies, please email me at jonjinko@hotmail.com for your chance to debut next week's challenge with us.
And speaking of challenge, are you ready for this easy peasy theme? One that I know will come in handy this time of year, for sure:

Thank You/Grateful

All that is required that either of these words are on your card (any form is totally acceptable too!). To get you inspired, here is some inspiration from our Guest Bar-Tenders:

Sally

Naomi

Just beautiful creations ladies! Thank you Sally and Naomi!
And from our Designers:

Wanda

Thanh

Joni

********

Challenge #84

Hello beautiful friends and a very happy Friday to you all! This time of year is so exciting, I just love the busyness of it all. Thank you so much for joining us every week here at Raise The Bar, we truly appreciate your participation as the holidays approach! Thank you especially to our two entries from last week, such beautiful cards that celebrated Veteran's Day:

Naomi

Sally J

Aren't these just amazing? Just beautiful! I love the poppies and color scheme of Naomi's card, what an elegant creation. Sally's gorgeous layout makes me wish I scrapbooked. The vintage colors are just stunning with her photos. Thank you ladies! Please contact me for next week's assignment, you are joining in on the fun as Guest Bar-Tenders!
Now for this week's challenge, we'd like to get a jump start on the holidays. Next week is our Thanksgiving, so our challenge is:

TIME TO FEAST

We would like to see food on your cards! Well, not literally, but you get the idea. ;) heehee! It doesn't have to be turkeys, just any type of delicacy is fine with us.

For some amazing inspiration, here are the wonderful Guest Bar-Tenders who joined in on the fun this week:

Laurel

Helen

Susie

And from the designers:

Wanda

Thanh

Joni

****

Challenge #83

Hello everyone and happy Friday!
Thank you so much for joining us on this nice long weekend.
You will notice that our gallery is a bit more sparse than usual, there was a last minute change in our challenge and I didn't want our Guest Bar-Tenders to scramble at the last minute. For those of you who contacted me, I will be emailing you with next week's theme to join us! We also have our wonderful Julie on a hiatus, and our lovely Jan has stepped down from our design team. We will be doing a month long design team call in December, so please keep us in mind if you would like to be a Bar-Tender!
And now on with the show...
Congratulations to the following entries in last week's no embellishment challenge:

Nerdette

Susie

Helen

Beautiful job ladies! Please contact me at jonjinko@hotmail.com for your next assignment, joining us as a Guest Bar-Tender!

And now, since it is Veteran's Day in the US, we are dedicating the challenge to a:

MILITARY THEME

Create anything patriotic like our lovely designers did below, please click on their links to see the details of their gorgeous cards and Thanh's special post and poem:

Wanda

Thanh

Joni

******

Challenge #82

It's a beautiful Friday! How wonderful is it that the weekend is upon us? We also have an extended weekend with teacher conferences happening on Monday and Tuesday - yeah! No school for the kiddos so we get to {hopefully} sleep in a bit later and enjoy the lazy time together. Thank you all so much for your beautiful entries in last week's Sew What challenge! WOWZA! You all amaze me with your incredible creations. I can sew a semi-straight line, then after that my Genome goes back on to the shelf until I am brave enough to try it again. lol!
Without further ado, congratulations to the following entries:

Laurel Seabrook's adorable wood grain sewing:

 Natascha's awesome panel stitching:

 Joanne's sewn balloons and birds:

Congratulations ladies! Please contact me for your opportunity to debut

the next Raise The Bar challenge with us!

And now on for this week's fun theme. Are you ready?

NO EMBELLISHMENTS

As in no brads, eyelets, ribbon, do hickeys, doodads, hardware, etc. BUT you are free to use paper related decor as in die cuts, paper edges (as in Martha Stewart punches), or anything paper made. I can't wait to see what you all come up with!
Here are some wonderful examples done by the Guest Bar-Tenders for this week:

Ali's {aka Dragonlady} beautiful distressed piece:

Jennifer's awesome paper pieced and gel-pen accented card:

Thank you so much Ali and Jennifer! 

I hope you had fun debuting this difficult challenge! :0)

And from our Bar-Tenders:

Thanh

Wanda

Joni

 ******