200 weeks of Inspiration Challenge

Happy New Year everybody!!!! After two weeks of constant swimming, playing board games and running around with the kids, I thought it was time to jump back into the card making world and 'blogland'!!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas and the summer weather has been the best for years. So I've developed quite the tan!! There are still four more weeks of the school holidays to get thru, so hopefully the rain will stay away and my energy levels will be able to cope with it all!

I have to admit, after doing no crafting for a few weeks I've lost all confidence in my crafting abilities and my mojo has COMPLETELY left the building. Its quite a scary feeling actually. I know it will return but at the moment my brain is blocked to all ideas, so please bear with me while I kick-start the thought processes again. Maybe its been overloaded by all of the chocolate I ate (well, ok I'm still eating....) over Christmas.

I've been wandering around blogland during this time though (my goodness my bloggie friends have been blowing me away with their cards lately!!!) and came across a challenge and giveaway that Kara is having on your blog K and R Designs. Each week she posts an update of her Friday Inspiration File, which is her Pinterest board filled with cards and projects she has found on the blogs she visits. 

She has now been doing this for 200 weeks (amazing!!) and decided to celebrate this by having a challenge and giveaway. She is asking people to pick a project from 'The File' and link up their CASE. Her 'File' has the most incredible cards on it (a lot are on my Pinterest boards too...), so I thought this would be a perfect way to get my creative juices flowing again.....

I immediately pounced on this card by my idol Laura Bassen. I loved this card too when I saw it before Christmas and for once, I actually have the same village dies. So a CASEing I did go and this is what turned up:

Its similar and a lot different at the same time, which is good because I don't like the idea of just copying someone else's design. I want to put my own spin on it.

I started by die-cutting the circle in the front of the card. I then die-cut the village and tree's with white CS. So not to waste the CS, I cut a hill with scissors from the circle negative and then a square from white CS to cover the circle from the back. It was then the fiddly process of gluing the houses and tree's in front and behind the hill and then on the backing piece. I stamped the sentiment in black ink and for a bit of warmth, glued on the veneer tree and snowflake. I also added Wink of Stella along the top edges of everything but hard to see in the photo.

I LOVE lots of white space on my cards, so this 'white on white' card makes me so happy. Hopefully if Laura ever saw this, I would hope she would like it too!!

The circle die is from Couture Creations and the house and tree dies from Simon Says Stamp 'Village'. The sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp 'Christmas 3x4'. The veneers came in a prize pack so I don't know where they are from unfortunately.

Since this card is white and wintery, I'm going to link it to the Curtain Call - Winter Wonder Challenge where their inspiration photo is:

 
And with the die-cuts I used I'm going to link this to the Showcase Your Style Challenge # 5 where their theme is:

Will also link to the CAS on Sunday Challenge # 49 where their theme is 'Christmas'.






I'm also going to link to the Virginia's View Challenge # 11 where their theme is:

And last but not least, I can't resist joining the Simon Says Stamp - Wednesday Challenge where their theme is the ever popular 'Anything Goes'.

Whew, so many challenges for one little card!! I'm very excited to say that during today I developed an idea for a card. Who knows if it will work but so nice that my brain can still come up with something. Hopefully I will be back to normal and overloaded with designs in no time at all!!!

Take care
Shona