Clean and Simple and Inspiration Challenges

My most recent cards were inspired by challenges over on Splitcoaststampers.  Yesterday was the "Clean and Simple" (referring to design style) challenge.  We were challenged to use a card by Loll Thompson as a sketch/inspiration for making a color-blocked background.  Here is Loll's card:

And here are the two I made:

The first used a stamp by SavvyStamps as the background.  I stamped it 3 times in light rose ink, then stamped the Inkadinkado dress form over it in brown, and finished with the word stamp, also from Inkadinkado.

I layered this onto a piece of brown cardstock and punched the corners, then used mounting tape to layer it on top of some of the pink and pink and brown plaid pattern papers I have been using like crazy lately.  I really had to remind myself that the idea is to be "clean and simple" and hold off on adding more and more embellishments.  It looked a little unfinished to me at first, but has grown on me until I really like it!

For the second card I experimented with sponging ink through a stencil to form my background.  I initially had a vague idea of some sort of tiki/fruity drink theme inspired by the stencil shape, but realized that the color went perfectly with a Christmas sticker I had and hadn't been able to figure out anything to do with, so it became a Christmas card!  I applied the sticker over the background, layered that onto some green cardstock and added light green eyelets at the corner.  It didn't look quite right alone on the card, so I went back into my scrap drawer and found some blue cardstock that complemented the blues and greens from the sticker perfectly, and really set the card off.   I will be revisiting the CAS challenges soon, I really liked having to pare down a bit and make a simpler card.

Today I tried the Inspiration challenge.  Every Saturday the challenge moderator posts a website with some kind of art or design elements, and the challenge is to pick something on the site as an inspiration and make a card based on it.  It's very open, so you can make a card using a similar color scheme, or design shape, or anything reflecting some aspect of the inspiration piece.

Today's inspiration site is Land of Nod, which is a subsidiary of Crate and Barrel specializing in decor and items for babies' and kids' rooms.   I found so much inspiration it was very difficult to narrow it down!  But this pull toy caught my eye:

and reminded me that I have had a sheet of stickers featuring pull toys for ages that I have been meaning to make a baby card with.  Today was the day!

The stickers are from Frances Meyer.  I stuck them to card stock and used an X-acto knife to cut them out so they had a little more sturdiness to them.  Since they are pretty large, I decided to go with a 7.5" by 4.25" inch long card.  I layered dotted patterned paper onto the card, then added the striped paper, layered onto plain yellow cardstock for some contrast.  Finally I used mounting tape to stick the three pull toy stickers on, which gave the card some dimension while making a place for me to stick the purple fiber that connects the three toys into a little baby-welcoming parade.  I finished it off with the sentiment, also from Savvystamps.  So glad I finally used these stickers!

Thanks for looking, and have a great weekend!