Just Us Girls #14 - Sketch Challenge

Happy New Year everyone. If I have appeared to be MIA it's because I was! My family and I took a two week vacation to Germany to visit my oldest daughter who lives there. It meant a LOT of prep work to have some posts ready to go while I was gone but it was SO worth it. We traveled quite a bit throughout the country while we were there and we even took a day to visit Salzburg, Austria as well. I'll post photos and more details later but let's get on with today's SKETCH CHALLENGE brought to you by Just Us Girls! It's our first challenge of the new year and Lisa has  come up with a super fun sketch for you.

One papercrafting tradition I started about two years ago was to recycle some of the beautiful Christmas cards I receive. Some of them are just too gorgeous to throw away. So, for today's sketch challenge I chose an adorable little gingerbread man card and recycled it into this...

Now, that striped paper looked a lot like the new Throw Me a Line paper from Kristin Bueter for My Time Made Easy so I was inspired to use a bit of That Hit the Spot digital paper to coordinate with the stripes. I added chocolate card stock and brown buttons to highlight the brown felt gingerbread man. A simple bow and a small thank you tag completed the card. My goal with my recycled cards it to keep them simple.

Here's a close up:

Here's the card I started with:

Just too cute to throw away - right? At first I thought the card was homemade (I don't recycle my special homemade cards) but it was from a commercial card company. And now, it will be making its way to someone special in a slightly altered form. :-)

I hope you'll come play along with Just Us Girls today. I'm willing to bet that a lot of you received some stampin' supplies for Christmas so now's the time to get them out and be inpsired by Lisa's sketch and show us what you came up with. Be sure to provide a DIRECT link to Mr. Linky on the Just Us Girls' site so we can see your work.

Now - for some additional inspiration - please visit the rest of the Design Team. I promise you'll be tickled with what they have come up with!!!

Edited to add:

I so forgot (boo me) to mention and link up our first ever Featured Designer - Gabby Arriaza. (Sorry Gabby - my brain is still jet lagged and I'm not functioning on all cylinders! I just "talked with you a couple of days ago - ack!) Gabby was selected as our Chic of the Week a while ago and, as such, was then in the running for a spot as a Featured Designer - She is our first and will be with us for the entire month. PLEASE pop over to her blog and give her a warm JUGS welcome! Gabby is quite talented and certainly deserving of her spot with us - we are happy to have her with us this month.

Alicia

Dana

Kristen

Lisa

Mona

Maria

Tracey

 Happy New Year - It is my wish that 2010 will bring you abundant joy and blessings.