I had a bit of time today, so I figured it was time to dust off the old challenge skills.  It just feels like I haven’t spent nearly enough time doing challenges since we moved.  I am excited that the start of school for the kids is only two weeks away, and I may be able to carve a little more time out for my crafting roots.  Never the less, here are a few cards…

Up first from the gals over at Less Is More is the dreaded one layered card challenge this time featuring the theme ‘Vehicles’.

I pulled out a (I think retiring) stamp from My Favorite things and stamped out a space shuttle plus a few other space things and colored them up with my copics.  I really wanted to go nuts with the background, but LiM likes lots of white space, so I only added bits of color to make it look like the shuttle was flying through space.

This month over at Ellen Hutson’s Classroom’s Mix It Up Challenge, they are challenging us to blend Ellen Hutson Essential products and Avery Elle products.  Do you ever feel that you really had to force a card….that’s sort of how I feel this one ended up.  I think the idea was there, but in the end the execution just wasn’t.

I took Avery Elle’s Hot Chick clear stamp and the Fabulous Florals clear stamps and combined them with EH’s Bohemian Garden and Brushstrokes Hello die.  Something I think got lost in translation, but like I said, the idea was there.

The gals over at The Paper Players  have a beautiful color challenge happening this month.  The colors they are looking for are, bermuda bay (or what I guessed equalled Distress’s Peacock feather), calypso coral (or as I guessed the equivalence of Worn Lipstick) and Pear Pizzazz (or Mowed Lawn) for this week’s challenge.

I pulled out some (which turned out to be a mistake) a sheet of card stock and blended the equivalent of the challenge colors in distress into the paper.  I then stamped out in black archival ink the retiring a retiring stamp set from My Favorite Things floral images.  I pulled a simple, but sweet sentiment from the stamp set and stamped it on.  I sprayed a little water onto the card (this was a mistake since it wasn’t watercolor paper) and let the ink do it thing.  I trimmed the paper down and added some silver thread to the bottom of the card.  I added on last fancy jewel and called the card done.

There is a super difficult challenge happening over at Art Impressions, or at least a really difficult one for me.  The challenge this time is “Showered with Love”, and frankly, while I have a rather large collection of Ai stamps, I didn’t have one that fit this theme.

Then I re-looked at the the stamp Birdie and the Girls and I had a memory of my bridal shower.  The shower was mostly made up of the ‘adults’ I grew up around, and each one brought a recipe to add to a made with love cook book they compiled for my married life.  I remember looking at the recipes and being horrified.  I mean seriously, what woman really made casseroles…  Now almost thirteen years and three kids later, I find that I reach for those recipes that those women so generously gave to me so long ago.  Casseroles are a staple in my house with busy schedules and frankly little desire to stand over a hot stove.  I am so thankful today to have those tried and true meals that were given in love so long ago, that when I go to a baby or bridal shower now, I always include several easy but delicious recipes for the gal being honored.  And that’s what this stamp sort of said for me.  So I stamped out the image and colored it in with my copics.  Under the image I added some really old paper from my stash that says just married.  This may not be what AI was looking for when they set up this challenge, but for me, it brought back this lovely memory of how foolish I once was and how much those gifts mean to me now.

The angels and devils over at the monthly challenge Naughty or Nice have a sort of difficult two part challenge this month.  They have the theme of “On the Move”, plus an optional color challenge to toughen up the stats.

I have never been an angel when I play with this group, because lets be honest, there are far too many great punny sentiments out there, so I went with it.  Actually, I always pick out the sentiment first and then find the image that goes with that.  I pulled this time a Funny Bones sentiment and a Penny Black stamp and watercolored around it.  I really tried to play with the colors in the challenge, but I sort of got lost.  However, I like the card non the less.

That’s it for now, but tune in tomorrow morning (Wednesday morning) for a fun new series I am starting!