Hello and welcome to the first Friday of the New Year.  Many of the challenge groups are on holiday until this weekend, but with my life returning to normal, Christmas finally stored, the kids happily back at school, and the husband back to the work grind, I find myself itching to craft.

So I went searching for a few groups that continued to run through the holidays.  I did manage to find a couple, and am excited to share a couple of cards with you.

Up first isn’t actually a challenge but a fun card I crafted with a couple new digi stamps from Craftin Desert Divas.  They had a some new releases recently and I got to play with them.  I took both Cupid in the Clouds digi stamp and Love Struck Cupid digi and combined them into one look and printed them out onto some card stock.

I then took some copic markers and started coloring them in, trying to hint at Valentine’s Day without using red and pink.  I think I did a pretty good job with the color selections, but wished I had done the Cupid in the Clouds hair with that pale orange/peach color that I used in the back ground.  I have been playing around with backgrounds lately, and knew I wanted to do something special with the background, but I also knew I didn’t want to fill the background with color.  I went with the swirls of color, hoping it would look like heavenly swirls of air.  Finally I pulled out some Comet Sequins to make the whole thing look a little more special.  I also took a bunch of wink of stella and added a hint of glitter to the hair, the dresses, the swirls and the wings.

Less Is More is hosting this week a recipe, looking for the main ingredients Dimension.

I decided to use dry embossing to add that dimension.  I pulled out a Sizzix embossing folder and embossed an A2 sized piece of card stock.  I know that Less is More likes to see a lot of white in their CAS challenges, I decided to leaved the dry embossing white.  I then pulled out a stamp pack from Technique Tuesdays and stamped out the little artist.  I gave her a quick coloring with my copics, keeping everything simple.  I think this card is exactly what I need to be reminded of at the start of the new year.

The gurus of color over at Color Throwdown this week has a really fun color challenge this week.  They are looking for designs with green, hot pink and black.

I pulled out a Julie Nutting stamp and stamp it out onto some white card stock with a bit of Memento Ink.  I colored in the image with my copics.  I used RV13, RV14, and RV19 for the hot pink.  The green shade was done in YG61, YG63, and Y97.  Finally I did the black tones with C5, C7, and 100 (black).  I did add a skin tone shades to the stamp using E00, BV00, and E21, and I used C7, B34, and 100 for her hair.  I fussy cut out the image and added a bit of dimension tape to the image.  I also stamped out some flowers from Stampendous in black ink, and added some vellum with a Funny Bones sentiment on it.

The design team over at the CAS group, Freshly Made Sketches this week have a fun and simple sketch.  It was one of those sketches that has a lot of possibilities, but I decided not to use an image, just a sentiment.

I trimmed up some white card stock so that it could be raised up from an A2 card and leaving a bit of a gap between.  I added some pretty silver and black glitter paper to the base of the card.  I stamped out a Funny Bones sentiment and distressed some Victorian Velvet Distress Ink into the corner.  I added just a few splashes of the color to the card.  I grabbed some satin ribbon and adhered it to the card stock.  Then I added the card stock with some deminsional tape.

Finally today, I have a Christmas card from the year long Christmas card challenge group Jingle Belles.  I know this sounds crazy, but I have a completely deplete stock of holiday cards and know I don’t want to cram them into just the month of November and December.  So her goes the head start.

This week the challenge group is looking for designs that feature ‘no time like the “presents”.  I do not have any scrapes of holiday paper left in my house (especially since we didn’t open gifts at this home) so I could not use left over gift wrap.  So I pulled out a Darice stamp pack that featured a penguin in a present.  Also this stamp pack was an actual present.  I colored in the image with some copic markers.  I also pulled out a die set (that was a gift to myself) from Craftin Desert Divas.  I pulled out some Christmas card stock and die cut that in a larger set, and adhered both to an A2 card.  This isn’t too bad a start for the holiday card pile.

That’s it for today.  Hope everyone has a warm (cause where we came from over the holidays certainly wasn’t) and dry (cause it is rainy here) weekend.