adventure of encouragement

This week's one-layer challenge theme at "Less is More" is leaves.  This card, made with the holly leaves from Bells & Boughs popped into my head one night, I could hardly wait to put it on card stock (Naturals White):

I used Always Artichoke ink and colored the berries with my Cherry Cobbler Stampin' Write marker.  The sentiment is from Contempo Christmas.  I finished it Sunday, the day after the challenge is posted - you have plenty of time to play along, by the way - and then lost all my card-making motivation.

I traced a sewing pattern that I've been wanting to try, finished reading The Book Thief, washed the dishes and did some other chores.  Monday I looked over my list of challenges, colored in an image with Cherry Cobbler and More Mustard for the challenge at Create with Connie and Mary but gave up after realizing I should have used Very Vanilla instead of Whisper White. I played some computer games and reorganized the book shelves while attempting to choose a book with a lighter subject matter.  The Book Thief takes place in Nazi Germany; I started it after the break from reading I needed when I finished The Kite Runner, which takes place in Afghanistan in the '70's-'80's.  I don't know what I was thinking.

This evening I started the laundry while reading the $2.99 Kindle edition of Everliving, which seems to be a ghost story romance.  I thought possibly I needed a break from stamping, but again, I don't know what I was thinking. Between chapters, I checked my email and found the encouraging comment that sweet Lauren made on my Jingle Belles card, and found my card-making motivation again!  I also found three more blogs I *need* to follow, one of which - Freshly Made Sketches - posted the sketch for this:

Card stock is Very Vanilla (textured for the base), Basic Black, and Cherry Cobbler.  The designer series paper is from the Spice Cake collection, stamps are Polar Party and Four the Holidays.  I used More Mustard and Cherry Cobbler Stampin' Write markers on the penguins. I was envisioning it as something like a family portrait hanging against the wallpaper?  Well, I don't know if that works or not.

While I was fiddling with the image that I stamped on Whisper White, I tried it on Bashful Blue using sketch #229 at Stamping 411.  It wasn't colored right for that either, but I liked the card, so I colored yet a third version:

The designer series paper here is from Letters to Santa, they were scraps left from the swap cards I was making two weeks ago.  The silver glimmer paper snowflake, cut with a sizzlit from the Snowflakes #2 set for some other project but discarded in favor of a different embellishment, was also sitting in the little scraps pile of things that are still good for something.

Thanks to Lauren for her kind comment, and really to everyone who takes the time to comment - it is so nice to find encouragement when your motivation deserts you!  Now, if I could just figure out where Blogger hides the word verification setting, so I can turn it off - Mandi and Chrissie have asked ever-so-nicely, but I just haven't figured out yet how to accomplish that.