The kids are on the spring break and my husband is on vacation, so needless to say my family is going a thousand miles per hours doing, doing, doing.  We seem to be in a car a lot getting places, so I have been carrying my travel color bag and working on some things while commuting from this place to that.  As my family will freely admit, I am not the best passenger in a car, so needless to say coloring is one of the best ways to keep me from driving everyone else nuts.

So during a week when I didn’t think I would be able to get any cards made, I have gotten several.  Yeah for car rides (first time this statement has even been said).  Anyway, I hope you enjoy this week’s card challenge cards.

First up is a color challenge from the gang over at The Paper Players.  This week they are looking for designs that feature the colors perfect plum, mint macaron, and sahara sand.

These colors sort of seemed like a sad substitution for Easter colors (don’t get me wrong, I love the colors, they just aren’t your typical pink, spring and white).  So I pulled out an ironic Easter digital stamp from Bugaboo and colored it up with my copics markers.  This guy makes me giggle so much…and with each passing year, I feel I am becoming more and more like Gus.  The card needed a little more, I felt, so I pulled out some off grey (if that is a color) card stock and dry embossed it with an embossing folder from Darice.  Again, this looks more and more like my kind of Easter (which I almost forgot since it is at the end of the week of craziness…don’t ask me how it happened, I’m not certain.)

The team over at Catch the Bug‘s weekly Saturday challenge have a fun theme challenge happening this week.  This week they are looking for cards that fit the theme of ‘raining cats and dogs’.

I pulled out this digital stamp, BugKittyBlocks from Bugaboo, and printed it out so it would be a fairly large size.  Then I colored it in, choosing to color the background with blue shades so it would have a bit of that ‘rain’ feel.  The blue combinations were B21, B24, and B26, as well as, B32, B34, and B37.  The three cats were colored in with YR23, YR24, and YR27, E41, E43, and E44, and finally E70, E74, and E79.   I pulled out some blue printed paper and matted the image with it.  Finally, using an Ellen Hutson Essentials sentiment, I stamped it out, and called it a day for the card.

Also going on at Catch The Bug, in the biweekly sketch challenge, Stella has a fun new sketch to play with.

I pulled out this fun cute rag doll monkey and colored her up with my copics.  (Sorry, I can’t remember my copic combinations).  I did however pull out some retired Graphic 45 papers and tried to match up to my coloring.  I distressed all the edges of the paper with some barn door Distress Ink and stamped out a sentiment from Ellen Hutson Essentials.  I wanted to add some dew drops that matched the paper, and decided that my Nuvo drops would make the best ones.  The card ended up a little too yellow, but the monkey is cute.

There is a fun single layer card challenge happening right now over at Less Is More that is centered around the theme ‘curves’.

I needed a kind of sympathy card with out being a true sympathy card, so I though this might be the challenge for me.  I cut out some watercolor paper to mimic an A2 frame.  I pulled out a birch tree stamp from Altenew and curved the tree like it was bent and struggling and added the branches to fill the space.  Then I watercolored the image with my Daniel Smith Primatek watercolors.  Instead of using the leaf stamps, I just my watercolors.  Then I pulled out two sentiments from the same stamp pack and used them to create my non-sympathy, sympathy card.

Additionally, Altenew is celebrating their 3rd birthday, and are looking for projects with their stamps that we are proud to have crafted, and this is certainly one.

Finally, there is a new inspirations challenge up over at Muse.  The inspirations card has all kinds of great graphic circles and it totally inspired me.  I pulled out an older Paper Smooches stamp set and started stamping out the circles in different colored ink onto some kraft paper.  I grabbed a sentiment from Craftin Desert Divas and stamped it out on the bottom of the paper.  The card needed a little something more, so I added some glitter pen to trace the circle images.  I trimmed up the kraft paper and added it to an A2 frame.

That’s it for tonight.  I am going to crash on the couch for the five minutes that we aren’t ‘going’.  If your off-spring is on break, I hope you find some time to color too.