When I set this month’s challenge at Scrappy Hours, I didn’t expect to complete a card for it this morning…but, I did. I combined it with a couple of other challenges. A Spoon Full of Sugar’s challenge this week is to use non-traditional Christmas colors. My Time to Craft asked us to include Winter Pals. I think that this card effectively combines these three challenges:

Last I checked, orange and blue were not considered your usual Christmas colors, and these penguins seem to be getting along just fine, so I would consider them winter pals. I think the Lights part is easy to see as well. What do you think?

As usual, I love the new sketch over at Mojo Monday and could hardly wait to create a card inspired by it. I shifted the elements around a bit and came up with:

I used patterned papers from the DCWV Holiday Stack. I stamped the image in gold ink (which really does show up much better IRL) and the sentiment in bright red. I really like how it turned out and how quickly and easily it came together. I will be using this sketch again.

The other day as I was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, I was reminded again and again that Macy’s theme for this holiday season is believe. For whatever reason, every time I think about that, my mind wanders to the Journey song, Don’t Stop Believin’. When I was younger, I used to love Journey and now my 14-year-old loves them almost as much as I did when I was that age. In honor of the love that my son and I share for Journey, I selected this challenge. I want to see cards, layouts, etc. inspired by one of the following Journey song titles:

Don’t Stop Believin’

Who’s Crying Now

Lights

Send Her My Love

If you aren’t familiar with the songs, don’t worry. You can focus solely on the song title as your inspiration. Now, get creating and share your results on your own blogs and then post a comment with a link below.

For whatever reason, I haven’t visited Card Patterns in a while. Last evening, I visited and now I am even more puzzled about why I ever stopped visiting. They posted a fantastic sketch this past Friday and I could hardly wait to give it a try:

I love this happy little trio and I guess I like the symmetry with the 3 stripes. My snowflake isn’t quite right, but other than that, I really like the card. What do you think of it?

If you read me regularly, I apologize for talking so much about my new craft room, but I absolutely am loving having such a joy-filled space. At first, I will admit that I wasn’t going to create a card for yesterday’s sketch challenge over at Our Creative Corner, but after working on my scrapbooks a bit and looking at the sketch, I decided to give it a go after all. I am very happy with how it turned out. See for yourself:

I bought a sheet of clear stamps with Christmas sentiments/themes and the “joy” and “love” are from that set of stamps. I used dark green ink to match the other greens on the card. I used the Creative Memories scallop circle maker to create my “ornaments” using solid green paper and printed paper from my DCWV Holiday Pack. The gingham with poinsettias and holly was a sheet that my friend Laura gave me the other day. The ribbon and threads were from my stash. What do you think?

This holiday season gets crazy for so many of us, and with so many people out of work or underemployed, I can imagine that tensions are running higher than normal for many. I guess with that thought in mind you could consider my latest card a holiday card. I used the latest sketch from Penny Black Saturday Challenge and created this:

Okay, so this isn’t really a holiday card at all, but I needed a break from all Christmas all the time (since it starts at Halloween) and decided to use a stamp I love and some fun papers. Fortunately, most of my friends are still doing okay, but I suspect that it won’t be hard to find someone to send this cute little guy to.

About a month or so ago, my hubby and I started talking about converting my step-son’s bedroom into my crafting room. At the time, we had so much going on that we couldn’t really get started. With the long weekend, we were able to transform the room over the past couple of days. We took it from:

To:

and:

and:

I am thrilled to death about having a real room to do my crafting in. I was so excited that I had to make a card. The latest challenge over at Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge is Christmas Trees. I created a card using the Sketch Saturday sketch as my starting point and here is what I came up with:

I’m not 100% certain that I love the card, but I am sure that I love my new room. Of course, after all of the work over the past couple of days, I am beat. Maybe if I were more awake, my card would be more inspired and inspiring. Oh well.

The latest challenge over at Cute Card Thursday this week is Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails-in other words, make a card for a little boy. I knew immediately which stamp I wanted to use but wasn’t sure about how to lay it out until I saw the sketch over at Friday Sketchers this morning.  I grabbed some Bo Bunny papers and this is how it all came together:

I love the U Bug Me papers from Bo Bunny for boy themed projects and thought that they went nicely with this little boy who is obviously proud of the frogs that he has caught.

When I saw the new sketch over at Mojo Monday the other day, I thought that I might finally get to use my darling reindeer stamp that I got from the dollar bin at Michaels. It featured a small square for an image that I thought would work so nicely. I combined it with the challenge over at A Spoon Full of Sugar which was to use brown and either pink or blue. I selected blue and created this card:

I don’t know if the photo shows the blue the best (it almost looks grey in the photo) but it really is a light blue. What do you think? Isn’t this reindeer just too cute?

As the holidays approach, I thought work was supposed to slow down. That certainly has not been the case. I am still managing to make a few cards here and there. For my latest one, I used an image that I stamped over the weekend when my friend came over to make Christmas cards. When I saw the new sketch over at 2 Sketches 4 You yesterday, I thought it would work well with this particular image. See for yourself:

I added an extra corner that was included in the original sketch since I thought it completed the visual triangle. The DP are from my DCWV Holiday Pack and I used chalks to color the tree. I added Stickles to the star just to give it some sparkle. I think this may be the one that I send to my friend so that she can see how I used her stamp. What do you think?