I made this card for the SCS Fan Club sketch challenge (DSKETCH0409). Are you a fan club member? It is a great way to support a great community! {SCS Fan Club}

When I first saw the sketch I had lots of ideas, but after a week of rain, I am looking forward to the bright summer! The letters were easy to make. I took glossy cardstock and used markers to make stripes. Then I stamped the outline alphabet and cut out the letters.

On the inside I used a leftover piece of the “rainbow” glossy paper. For some reason this TAC set doesn’t include a sun (the only sentiment in the set is “sizzlin’ summer” – you’d think they’d have a sun image *grin*) but I found another TAC set that did.

Today I was ruminating on the topic of style – not clothing, I don’t have any style there! No, I mean my card-making style. I generally recognize a few styles: collage, vintage, clean-and-simple, and lots-of-layers. I never seem to keep to one particular style, though some styles are definitely harder for me. I always cop-out on style questions and say eclectic. About the only thing I truly know is that I enjoy working with bright colors, which I find interesting because I do *not* do bright in any other aspect of my life.

I made this card for Beate’s Weekend Sketch (WSC72) – which, this week, was provided by Jenn Balcer. Such a fun sketch!

To make the background I used my Curved Rectangle Nesties and used ribbon to cover where they overlapped – this was the first time I’ve done that but I doubt it will be my last! Somewhere I remember reading a challenge for using bugs, but I think it was a limited challenge, which I’m sure I blew LOL; nevertheless, that is why I chose to use the ladybug set I wanted a bright card, so I dug into my pattern paper and pulled out this cheery pack. A few primas and brads and I was done!

I have a family friend who loves birds. I wanted to make her a gift set of cards that could be easily sent through the mail without requiring extra postage. I knew I needed to skip the knots/bows and all lumpy embellishments. This was hard for me – but I love how these cards turned out! I popped the focal image up on dimensionals and still managed to work in some ribbon.

I kept the sentiments somewhat generic so the cards could be used for whatever came up. The pattern paper is actually made with the Stampin’Up! Beautiful Borders – I love that set! I just repeated the border to make the background. I also used that same border on the inside and envelope.

VSN is still in full swing. Here are a few more of my challenge cards. On the left is my “Fancy Nancy” card. I love those CTMH girl stamps! I paper pieced her jacket to match the pattern paper used along the bottom. I’ve done punch work on the bottom of a card before, but never the top – I really love how that turned out.

The next card is “Purple”! The challenge was to use purple – even just a little bit – but I wanted the whole card to be purple. I love the SU Dots & Daisies background because of how cute it looks when you color in the flowers.

The final card, “Find Beauty”, is for the watercolor challenge. I’m not a big fan of watercolor crayons, but I wanted to try something different with them. I colored directly onto the rubber, spritzed with water, and stamped. The images aren’t as dark as I would prefer, but since the idea is watercolor, it works