Stampin' Up! comes to town

I made a decision over the weekend to become a Stampin' Up! consultant. I'm thinking mostly it will just be to sell to myself - if I'm serious about doing craft fairs, I'm going to be needing lots of stuff. (Thinking positively here that I'll be able to sell what I make... right?) But if I do get some orders, then that's another source of a little income, and that never hurts. I can always advertise myself as a demo when I do craft fairs. So we'll see how it goes. I met with my upline (the consultant I signed up through) to fill out paperwork this morning and mailed it off, so it should be official within a few days. Wish me luck!

Here's the card I made today. The Dirty Dozen on SCS (the "official" expert stampers) have always posted a gallery of cards on the 15th of every month, but now they're going to have challenges to go along with it so everyone who's in the Fan Club can play. Woohoo! I combined the sketch challenge and the inspiration challenge, which was a cool Starbucks bag. I decided on a travel theme and picked up the colors from the bag. I went through several different tries and kept having to pare down because there was just too much going on. I'm not sure how I feel about the result... thoughts?
Stamps: Stampendous leaves, Inkadinkado suitcase and compass, Cat's Pajamas sentiment
Paper: Bazzill cardstock
Ink: SU certainly celery and wild wasabi, Vivid coffee bean, Versacolor paprika, Versamark
Accessories: deckle-edge scissors, dimensionals, brads, oval punch

I also thought I'd share the card I made for Saturday's SCS inspiration challenge. It was a frame shown here and I found it most definitely challenging. I used the purple and green color scheme, the semi-impressionistic feel, the nature theme, and the oval shape. I used my chalks to color the butterfly and accented the background swirls with glitter pen. This was also my first time using a cutting tool to make large ovals, which I think turned out nicely.
Stamps: Impression Obsession butterfly, Autumn Leaves swirl, Hero Arts sentiment
Paper: SU perfect plum, Bazzill cs
Ink: Color Box velvet, SU perfect plum
Accessories: curvy cutter, organdy and satin ribbon, Pebbles chalk, glitter pen

Since I love inspiration challenges so much, I have been thinking maybe I'd try offering up a weekly challenge on my blog. I have a long list of ideas for inspiration cards, and not only would it give me incentive to actually do them, but others could participate as well. If you're a stamper reading this I'd love your feedback - would you welcome this? It seems there are lots of challenge sites out in the blogosphere but not too many inspiration challenges, at least that I've seen.