Too... many... challenges!

Holy cow - I couldn't believe the overabundance of challenges yesterday. In addition to the usual sketch challenge and the special holiday challenge, SCS had a special day of challenges for New Year's Eve, and there were so many good ones! I hope I get a chance to make some cards today. Yesterday I managed to complete two cards so I thought I'd share them with you before I get busy making more.

This card was for yesterday's Holiday Challenge Extravaganza challenge. Katherine provided a great sketch that was perfect for an image that I watercolored a few days ago but hadn't done anything with yet. I had stamped the bouquet from Bloomin' Beautiful in basic black and then watercolored using tangerine tango, baja breeze, and old olive reinkers. Unusually for me, I didn't do any layers on this card. My patterned papers came from the tangerine patterns pack and the Hawaii Papaya collection. I used a new toy for this card - the Spellbinders Piercerabilities pinking border dies. These borders are so cool because you can cut and emboss the border and then add a paper-pierced pattern. To match I added piercing on the corners of the stamped panel, then inked the edges with baja breeze. I did the same with the oval-punched sentiment from Sincere Salutations, added some baja breeze ribbon, and mounted the flowers and sentiment with dimensionals.

Up next: a card that was for both the week's sketch challenge and the 7 P's New Year's challenge. This was a fun one, to use at least four of piercing, paper piecing, pink, polka dots, patterned paper, pop dots, and punches. I think I used all of them - it really wasn't that hard! I started with the Crazy for Cupcakes image, chocolate chip ink, and pink pirouette polka-dot paper from the patterns pack. I pieced the cupcake paper, then colored the candle and sprinkles with blender pen and pink pirouette reinker, and finally added glitter pen on the sprinkles and the flame. I used more dot paper for the background and also a strip of chocolate chip striped paper from Hawaii Papaya. The sentiment is from A Muse and was punched with the wide oval punch, then I added piercing around the cupcake and the sentiment. For the oval I used the plastic guide from the mat pack, repositioning the holes to match the curve of the oval. I added some pink pirouette ribbon and dimensionals - that was it!

I hope you all have a great day today with some time to play these super challenges. Thanks for stopping by!