Cheerfully Out of my Comfort Zone

Happy Monday! Hope your day went well. We are supposed to start heating up again this week. High 80s and low 90s most of the week. Can't really complain too much. The weather has been fairly nice most of the summer. Work went well today so that's a good way to start out the week.
I have 2 cards tonight. I've been thinking about both of them for a couple days so they just kind of fell together this evening. The first one is a cheery Christmas card.

The image is from Bugaboo stamps. He was a freebie at some point. That's when I got him. I cut the image out with Spellbinders circles and backed that with a Picot Lace Edged Circle. The candy striped paper is a scrap from my box. I cut a banner from a Simon Says banner die and stamped the Merry Christmas on it. I used faux stitching around the image in a light green shade and then added pearls around the edge of the picot lace circle. I colored half of the pearls red with Copics and alternated colors. The image is also colored with Copics. I am entering this one in these challenges:

• Catch the Bug Challenge: Tic Tac Toe; I used Bugaboo image, sewing and pearls.
• Christmas Stampin' All Year Long Challenge: Christmas stitches
• Paper Playtime challenge: use pearls
• Hiding in my Craft Room challenge: stitching

My second card tonight is way out of my comfort zone and very different from my usual style.  But I do kind of like it for a masculine birthday card.

The Friday Mashup challenge was to use your stamping block as a stamp. I hadn't tried that before so I thought what the heck, let's see what happens. So I inked up my block. I can't say it inked really well. I even reinked the stamp pad. I stamped with the block several times to get my background layer down and overlapped the block several times too. Then I stamped the tie and the speech bubble on top of the block layer. Both of these are from the Simon Says June Stamp kit. The sentiment is also from Simon Says and comes with the banner die. The sentiment is made especially to fit the die. I embossed the sentiment in clear embossing powder.What do you think? Do you like this one?
So I am entering these challenges:

• Simon Says challenge: monochromatic
• CAS(E) this Sketch: sketch
• Friday Mashup challenge: clear block stamping
• Seize the Birthday challenge: anything goes
• Outlawz Paper ala Mode challenge: birthday

 That;s it for today. Tomorrow evening I am headed for my LSS and I am going to take a Copic class. I need all the help I can get with shading! But I hope it's fun. Make it a super Tuesday!

Donna