April Challenges

I love participating in the challenges at Scraptastic Club. There are card challenges in the Forum every Monday, and a new challenge on the blog every Thursday. The first April blog challenge is to create a birthday card and send it to someone. What could be easier for me, since I'm always making cards!? This one is for our son, to be mailed out in the next couple days:

He likes plaid, and I've been saving this last scrap for him!

Next challenge was to create a project using numbers. I made several variations of this card:

There is also an "anything goes" challenge on Simon Says Stamp this week. I like to try new things, and this background was my first attempt at letterpress: ink up the raised side of an embossing folder before running the paper through my Cuttlebug. At first I didn't like it because the ink was splotchy, then I decided I did like the look -- sort of distressed -- and I thought it was a great background for some brightly colored banners using the Folded Banner die from Simon Says. They have quite a collection of little dies that are pretty inexpensive, and I've been using this one over and over for cards. My next issue was using a three-line stamp on three different banners, but post-it notes came to the rescue to mask all but the line I wanted.

Off to work on some more challenges!

The last Thursday challenge for April at Scraptastic was a great sketch from Jana Eubank. I followed the sketch pretty faithfully and I have to say, this is a rare layout for me -- one I'm actually pleased with when it's done! Did I mention I loooove this sketch?!

There's one more challenge I missed, using paint on a project, but I'm not sure if I'm going to get to it, mainly because I only have a vague idea of what I want to do. I still have a few days to let that idea roll around in my head.