Welcome to a bonus Saturday post.  I had some extra challenge cards laying around, and I try never to post more than five on any give post, so guess what…this week you have a bonus five cards.

On a sad note, basketball sucked last night.  All of my teams lost.  All of them.  Ugh…so needless to say I went to bed cranky.  I woke up less cranky, but still disappointed.  It was a sad way to end my basketball season, and now I have to wait till fall before basketball gets underway again.

I am typing this out quickly, because we have the most excellent family weekend planned, starting with Saturday brunch instead of dealing with high prices and crowds tomorrow on Easter Sunday.  No tomorrow will just be for faith and family.

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First up in the line up of challenges is a clean and simple inspiration challenge from AAA Cards.  The designers were searching for a card that showed, well, simply, Easter.

I wanted to combine both the faith

of the holiday and the fun of the holiday and mashed up the spiritual and the bunny part.  I have never tried to emboss with a folder with plan printed paper instead of card stock.  But I wanted a gentle print under the embossing folder from Darice, and guess what it works.  The paper is delicate under the embossing and can tear simply, but the paper looks good regardless.  I then took three shades of Archival Ink, rose madder, venetian orange, and french ultramarine.  I snagged two little eggs, from a Poppy stamp pack, one solid and the other just the outline.  I stamped them out in a pattern.  I then from the same stamp collection I pulled out a bunny and stamped him too, giving him a little shading with a light gray copic.  The card is simple, but yet effective.

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This week during out weekly dose of sugar, the designing chefs over at Cupcake Throwdown handed out a color challenge with an Easter theme.

I pulled out my little chick stamp pack from

Clearly Besotted Stamps.  I love these little chick because they are solid little images that you get to add eyes to.  They really are just stinkin’ cute.  Any way I stamped out a phrase from the stamp pack in Distress Ink in spice marmalade.  Then I snagged mowed lawn and shabby shutters and stamped out all the chicks all over the card.  I snagged the eye stamps and stamped them in black.  I snagged a few other phrase stamps, and stamped them in the negative space in the orange color.  I added a piece of printed paper under the card and called it a day.  Yes it is simple.  No, chicks are not green.  And yes, I like it.

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The color gurus over at Color Throwdown presented us this week with another color challenge.  This color combination is one of my favorites that I’ve gotten to play with in a long time.  I don’t know what about it draws me so much, but I like it.  The designers were looking for the use of teal, aqua and gold.

Now I just snagged a new gold india ink, this time from Liquitex since my old gold is nothing but goo.  This card I new was the perfect place to pull out a little gold ink.  First however, I pulled out a piece of watercolor paper and prayed it down with a mist of water.  I then added Distress Ink in tumbled glass and peacock feathers to the paper.  I stamped out a martini glass from Paper Smooches, and die cut the ‘cheers’ from My Favorite Things through not only the watercolor paper, but a piece of teal foam too.  I added a smear of gold ink to the base card under where the die cut would be.  I painted in the martini glass with gold and splattered the whole card with the ink.  I didn’t plan on the darker blue shade to end up looking like clouds, but I like that it did.  I don’t like the bloom on the right side, but there is nothing you can do about blooms sometimes.

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Next up, from the designers of Always Playing with Paper‘s The Challenge is a photo inspiration photo with all kinds of great pink and orange colors.  Or a least those were the colors I pulled from the photo.

I embossed in clear embossing powder the word ‘fantastic’ onto a piece of white card stock.  Then I blended in Distress ink in both pink raspberry carved pumpkin making certain to blend them into each other.  Then using my Memento Lux ink I stamped out some flowers from Ellen Hutson Essentials and clear embossed them as well.  I sprinkled the card with some water drops so the card had a little interest.  Finally, using a sentiment from Stampendous stamped out the birthday sentiment.  I like this card.  It is bright, which is so not my normal thing, but there is a happiness in it.

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Finally today on our day of bonus challenge, we have a sketch challenge from Freshly Made Sketches.  Today’s sketch is the kind of sketch I totally dig.  The options are always endless with a sketch like this.  And sketches like this are, for me, always easier for me to keep clean and simple.

I reached into my really old stamp grave yard, the place where old wood stamps have been repurposed into cling stamps and stored in an often forgotten binder, and pulled three square stamps.  I stamped the solid square in Distressed dried marigold with a little mist, and then stamped over it with the square images in rusty hinge.  I cut down the card stock and added a strip of colored print paper under the sliced image.  I stamped a few leaves out onto the card in twisted citron and added a few wood dots.  Clean and Simple for me is usually rather hard, but for once I feel that I managed it successfully.

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I hope everyone has wonderful plans arranged for this weekend and maybe just a little time to craft something spring like.