It is Thursday evening, and boy has it been a week.  With both choir and the art program at school my week is just crazy busy till Wednesday evening…

Then last night my friend’s dog ate a pack of gum, which is apparently all kinds of bad, and well, she needed some support and maybe a beer or two.  I had hoped to get this post out last night, but alas, supporting one’s friend and her 90 pound lab who thinks gum is good is so much more important.

Regardless, I have a couple of fun cards to share, so I thought I would sneak on here between evening activities and share what I whipped up.

I’m trying out some new (to me) challenges for fun and to spread my wings a bit, so when I found this one I was excited.  The design team over at Just Us Girls used just one word to theme their week.  The word simply was ‘leaves’.

I pulled out some distress inks and a really old red rubber stamp of some leaves and stamped them down some watercolor paper.  Afterwards I splashed a bunch of water onto the leaves and then let the ink run a little.  Afterwards I splashed out some perfect pearls spray so that they paper would reflect some shine.  I pulled out a My Favorite Things sentiment and stamped it in dark brown ink.  I added some wood grained paper and a bit of satin ribbon and called everything a day.

The gals over at The Paper Players this week have a fun theme challenge looking for a Halloween card this week.  I am loving this theme this week and was all over it.I pulled out a Stampendous stamp sent and used just the skirt, hat and legs of the witch and colored it in using my copics.  I stamped the sentiment in two different colors and added some fun Halloween paper off to the side.  The card needed something else, and I had some glittery spider webs and added it to the card.  No it won’t fit in the mail now, but it will slip into a lunch box perfectly.

The designers over at Always Playing with Paper‘s The Challenge this week had a nice sketch challenge this week.  I loved the idea of the sketch but wanted to see how far I could stretch the design.

I pulled out some brick printed paper and trimmed it up.  Then I pulled at a fun sentiment sheet of printed paper and added it to the card.  I stamped and colored in with my copics a Julie Nutting stamp.  I stamped out the sentiment from Fiskars in two different inks to look like the banners in the sketch.  I added the boy with some dimensional ink and left the card that simple.  I am trying to make boy cards that are a little more mature for my son (cause he is giving me a hard time that his cards are to little kid and too girly).  I think I might have come close to something for an 11 year old.

Finally today we have an inspiration challenge from the muse of the week over at The Muse.  This week the designer of the inspiration card has a beautiful leaf theme with a great boarder. 

I tried to emulate the corner theme from the inspiration card, but wasn’t quite up for the obvious leaf embellishment.  So I pulled out a Spellbinders die of vines and die cut out the image from some card stock.  I pulled some interesting paper in both gray shades and teal tones and added the details of the card.  I pulled out a sentiment from Avery Elle and added it wanted to keep everything simple.  I loved the white space in the inspiration card and wanted to hold onto it, but in the end felt I needed the white vines in the upper corner.

That’s it for tonight.  Till next time, be a little crafty.