Christmas in....March?

Yes, in March!  I'm so glad I found the Christmas Cards all Year 'Round blog!  This is a procrastinator's dream come true.  If you make the monthy challenge cards (five of them) you'll end up with 60 cards by Christmas!  This is my first time entering in the challenge...I can't wait for next month's challenge.  I set aside a box to keep them all in so I'm ready to go come Christmas!

Above is a Snowman on a mostly green card (the challenge requirements).  He has a green stickles scarf and hat and a little frosted lace stickles for the icy coating on the snow at the bottom.  There he is below with his little snowy friends.  Hope they don't melt before Christmas!

What??? Three posts in one day??  Yep.  There was a major water main break here in Baltimore...there are still 15,000 of us without water since SATURDAY!  YUCK!  I'm finished living like a pioneer...heating water on the stove for a "shower".   It's trying to come back on today...cross your fingers for me!  But it made for lots of time at home since businesses and schools in the area are closed.  (I work at the school my youngest son attends...so we're all home.)  Sam (12) is hoping against me that the "drought" continues...since he could care less about showering (eeewwww!) and he's geting out of school, homework and mandatory state testing that was supposed to start Monday! 

Charlie tried Aimee's Challenge!

I don't know how many of you have kids that like to craft with you, but I do.  My sons are interested in anything "art."  They get just as excited as I do over Cuttlebug Folders and Prismacolor Markers.  They help my husband pick out gifts for me because they know the stampin lingo.  Last week, I came across Aimee's Challenge Blog.  It's the blog of a little girl and her mom and they sponsor a Mother/child challenge.  My son, Charlie (8) wanted to join in this time.  The challenge is for "things with wings."  He thought butterfly, then he wanted my dragon stamp.  Finally he chose for a duck image.  He colored, picked his nesties (I cut!) and his papers and ribbon!  Then he said, "where's your card?"

Mine took two more days to find some time!  And a sketch challenge!  This is my first time trying A Sketch For You to Try.  Wow...is Jen's sample springtime-y colorful or what?  Mine is a little ( a lot!) more subdued - but it has a cute spring chick - a "thing with wings" to go with Charlie's card over on Aimee's blog.  I'm glad Charlie is interested - it was fun to work on them together!

Curtain Call Colorful!

I had some time today to try the new Curtain Call Color Challenge - Act 20.  One thing these challenges do is make me think outside "the box."  My "box" in this case is very, very small -- not a lot of wiggle room and certainly we don't mix bright, beautiful colors! (But I'm trying...!)   I just couldn't resist this one - when I saw Stacey's inspiration picture, I immediately thought of this stamp from PTI's Autumn Abundance set and had to give it a try.    

Color Dare!

I came across the Color Dare just today...and found the perfect reason to use this beautiful ribbon I bought forever ago...and then couldn't figure out what to do with it.  (I'm sure that NEVER happens to any of you, right??!)  It's actually brighter IRL than it looks in the picture.  But it's the perfect colors for the color dare - celery, rose, turquoise and white!  What else can I do with this kind of thick/wide ribbon?  Any ideas?

Love Those Border Punches!

Sharon must love them, too!  And what a great idea for the No Time To Stamp challenge on her blog!  I use border punches all the time, but wanted to do something "extra" with it since it was a challenge.  How about "extra-patriotic?"  This is an older SU! set that I got from a friend last week.  It just put me in the mood for the red, white and blue!

This card uses the scallop border punch, but it's not necessarliy for the challenge.  It was supposed to be a CASE of a card on Lynn's blog...however, it morphed as I stamped!  The butterfly became a dragonfly!  Magic!  I wanted to catch that irridescence of the beautiful dragonfly wings...so I tried a black image with turquoise stickles over top.  It gives me that feeling..so I'm happy.  (Always a good ending to a stamp outing!)   

Color and Layout Inspiration...

...with challenges!  I finally got a chance to get inky this week and wanted to participate in a few challenges.  I love the FTL81 layout on Clean and Simple stamping!  Boy, lots of ideas came to mind when I saw that one.  I made a few.  Nothing like a straightforward layout sketch to get your creativity flowing when I had no time to stamp all week!  The circles "said" so many things to me...strawberries, snowflakes, citrus slices, patterned paper, etc!  Here, they said "christmas ornaments!" (Then they said..."ha, ha...look at all that red glitter all over your kitchen table!") 

While these are all based on FTL81, one incorporates the Color Q challenge which I've never tried before.  The challenge was to use  navy, celery, sahara sand, baja and white.  Great spring/summer colors!  I was also inspired by Nadia's creation that I found while perusing all of the Mr. Linky submissions!  (Love to do that!  Very inspirational - lots of "ah-ha!" moments).

The last one has a spring theme, which was the idea on Pals Paper Arts challenge.  Pink and cotton-and-glitter-tailed bunnies definitely say SPRING is almost here! 

Seeds and Challenges - some on time...some late!

I wanted to play along with the new Poppy Seed Challenge on Lisa's blog.  The three "seeds" we needed to "plant" in our design were using a flower stamp, using the color yellow and using crystals/rhinestones.  Once the color yellow was mentioned, I immediately thought crocus or daffodil.  (Yep, spring fever has set in!)  Come to find out...I have neither image as a stamp!  I used an old SU! set instead and went for the yellow gladiolus - still looks like springtime to me!  Thanks to Lisa for the fun new challenge!  It may be my Mom's birthday card in March...she lives here in western Maryland where the snow this season has reached 265 inches...she NEEDS a little springtime!

I was able to fit two other challenges together this morning:  The FTL80 challenge on the Clean and Simple Stamping blog (I love the ideas others came up with for this one!) and the PTI Spring is in the Air color challenge on Nichole's blog.  Funny thing is, I loved the colors Lisa (see above paragraph!) chose for the challenge:  pink, cream, kraft and brown.  I used those colors to finish off the layout for the FTL80 - another great sketch!

I tried the inspiration challenge over at Pals Paper Arts, too!  I thought "birds" the whole time, but of course, it didn't happen!  Butterflies happened!  I'm too late for the Mr. Linky...but I wanted to post it anyway.  (The picture has a weird "crease" in it...I tried to upload 2x.)  These were great challenges and I have a few more I want to work on before the week is out.  I hope you get some crafty time, too!