A New Year - A New Challenge: "52 Card Pick Me Up"

Why is it some people can continue treating every January 1st as another day, while others treat it like a rebirth and try and become the person they want to be with thousands of resolutions that slowly start dying off on day one?

Well guess which person I am?

Yep, I'm the one who treats the new year as a clean slate - a do over on bad eating decisions, changing personality traits, organization and cleaning habits, and creative goals that should find me peace.

I would however like to change one of the ways I treat these aspirations - not to beat up on myself when I fail.  Oh well I ate two pieces of cake, oh well I let my boss get the best of me, oh well I didn't wash the dishes tonight, and oh well I didn't post a weekly challenge on my blog.

A weekly challenge you say? Why yes!  I love making cards and I spend entirely too much time staring at all of my goodies, wondering what card to make next.  I'm proposing a "52 Card Pick Me Up" to help streamline my creative juices when I do find the time to make a card.  I call it "pick me up" because I hope it will help me and yourself to perk up and never have to worry about "card block" ever again!

My idea is there are 52 weeks in a year... and for each week I will post a challenge each week to combat "card block".  Each challenge will result from one of the five basic categories.  Within each category will be more details of the challenge.  The categories are as follows:

• Tool Challenge: I will appoint a random tool to use to make your card.  This could be a punch, die cutting machine, stamp etc.
• Color Challenge:  Luckily there are more than enough colors in our gorgeous world to pick from.  There are weeks where we can create a card monochromaticly or use an actual color palette and have more than one color
• Sketch Challenge:  I will post a card sketch and voila! You won't have to think of a layout!
• Theme Challenge:  This can be anything!  Perhaps we can focus on an upcoming holiday or occasion... or perhaps it an be about puppies, bunnies, airplanes, flowers, etc.  Another category where the possibilities are endless.
• Grab Bag Challenge:  I will let the Card Gods choose for us.  I will pull three random pieces of paper with different products, themes, occasions, etc. out of my grab bag for that week's challenge.  So for example: My three pieces of paper could say:  Glitter glue, stamps, birthday.  We would have to make a birthday card that incorporated a stamped image and some glitter glue.

My goal is to post the challenge on a Saturday.  This will give us all week to come up with a card for the challenge.  I might feel extra creative and will make one or several cards with our challenge in mind.  The following Saturday I will post the creations I have made and off to the next challenge for the upcoming week.

I will see you January 4, 2014 - to announce Week 1's challenge - If I can, will post a card right away to get those juices flowing :)  Ready, set, create!