Welcome! At Inspired By, we believe creativity can spark from the simplest things—a cozy photo, a fun sketch, or a seasonal theme. Each week we share a fresh inspiration image and a coordinating sketch to get your ideas flowing. Whether you’re into cardmaking, scrapbooking, mixed media, or any type of project, you’re invited to interpret the challenge your way. There’s no right or wrong—just inspiration and creativity. We can’t wait to see what you create!

Current Challenge

recent posts

  • Winter Knits Duo with Amy

    Hello and Happy Friday Eve! My project was inspired by the newest Inspired by Challenge: Winter Knits

    I was inspired by the theme and colors. My card features the following products:

    • Concord & 9th – Sweater Season Bundle | stamps + dies
    • Concord & 9th – Stay Cozy | stencil Pack
    • Waffle Flower Crafts – Postage Collage | die

    For the Bundle Up card I used the following inks + cardstock:

    • Spellbinders Celestial ColorWheel | cardstock
    • Concord & 9th – Wheat | cardstock
    • Distress Oxide – Picket Fence | ink
    • Distress Oxide – Stormy Sky | ink

    For the Stay Cozy Card, I ink blended the following Distress Oxides and popped it behind the sentiment:

    • Stormy Sky
    • Prize Ribbon

    Thanks for stopping by!

    Affiliate links at no extra cost to you:


  • Baby It’s Cold Outside!

    Hello everyone.  Von Marie @vonmariedesign here today taking over the blog and I’m so excited about our New challenge Winter Knits #IB370 and we have a fun New Card Sketch for you.  If you are New to this challenge it’s really easy you can be inspired by the photo, card sketch, or both.  Link up your card to the linky on the Inspired by…challenge blog.

    Okay let’s get started:


    I was first inspired by the lovely photo. I love knit hats and especially in the Winter.  I don’t own a knit hat with these colors but now it’s on my wishlist. Next, I was inspired by the card Sketch.  I love the simplicity of it.  On my card, I used 2 stencils from A Colorful Life Designs (use VonFan10) called Scandinavian Quilt 6×6 and I ink blended this stencil first for my background using white cardstock with Pinkfresh Studio ink cubes in Blue Jay, Warm Buff, and Slumber.  Next stencil I used Cozy Knit 6×6 and used Blue jay and Warm Buff inks on Kraft cardstock. I trimmed both my background and Kraft cardstock. My background is 4 1/4 x 5 1/2. I placed a strip of white stenciled cardstock in the center of my Kraft to mimic the card sketch.  

    I also used a retired stamp and coordinating die set from Reverse Confetti and these knit hats were perfect I think.  I stamped my images with the same ink colors.  I love the strings and pom pom. I inked the eggs of my Kraft hardtack with Warm Buff ink.  I glued everything to a A2 top folding Kraft card base and popped up 1 knit hat with foam tape.  Since my hats have sentiments it made this card even easier.  I had fun with this challenge and I cannot wait to see how you are inspired…

    Crafty Hugs,

    Von Marie

  • Bear Hug in a Mug

    Hi, it’s MarDi and I’m delighted to share my Winter Knits card with you today. My inspiration came a little from the colors, a little from the sketch, but mostly from the textures.

    I used a mashup of products for this bear hug in a mug design. This card is full of texture, whimsy, and color pops from the light strands. Where I live, we don’t have extremely cold temperatures so whenever it gets below 70 degrees, we pull out our knits and wear them as long as we can, which is usually until the afternoon.

    The background panel was created with the Cable Knit embossing folder from Sunny Studio Stamps. I used two other embossing folders to create texture for the bear’s sweater – Nordic Holiday from Taylored Expressions, and for the mug – Diamond Plate from Spellbinders.

    The mug is from a die set by Frantic Stamper called Cocoa Cup and the rest of the dies are from a Spellbinders set called Festive Friends. The sentiment is from a very old club kit from Hero Arts.

    I hope that you’re inspired to join the challenge this week. You have until the end of the day on Wednesday to link your project. Hey, if you’re finishing up with knitting or crocheting mittens, socks, beanie, blanket, or scarf, take a photo and link it up via your blog or social media account. We love to see how you’re inspired.

    Big bear hugs,
    MarDi

  • Winner… Inspired By Snowmen

    What a great gallery last week. Loved seeing all the snowmen! I am still wishing for snow here – instead we are getting a lot of rain.

    Rosemary D

    This is just so pretty. Love the embossing, the line of snowflakes and the pop of orange! Congratulations Rosemary! Hope you play along this week!

  • Winter Knits with Cathy

    Sharing my take on this fun challenge…first glance at the inspiration and sketch reminded me of a winter knit hat. So that was my jumping point. I used an svg file from the Silhouette store and then from that shape, made the card base. You can find that file here. I really enjoyed creating this card and I used the perfect collection from Echo Park: Winter Fun.

    Thank you for joining us ~Cathy

  • Winter Village with Laurel

    I really love this week’s challenge I am all about being cozy, wearing warm clothes and I love toques, or maybe you call them beanies. I hope to create a couple more cards for this challenge but here is what I made so far. I was inspired by the theme and the blues and brown.

    I combined an image from Angie Blom Designs with paper from Simple Stories. Kind of like a bucket list card for me, one day I would like to spend the weekend at a ski Resort (maybe Whistler), not necessarily to ski, I don’t think my knees could take it anymore, but maybe cross country ski or snowshoe. Anyways back to the card.

    I embossed the white cardstock with snowflakes to carry out the them and of course, added some punched snowflakes.

    Can’t wait to see how you are inspired. Be sure to link up, and share in our Facebook group so that everyone can see it!

  • Inspired By… Winter Knits

    This week’s Inspired By Challenge is all bundled up in texture and charm! 🧣❄️ With rich earth tones, cozy Fair Isle patterns, and snug knit details, this photo evokes everything we love about winter warmth. Will it be the colors, the stitching, or the overall sense of comfort that inspires your creation? Let the photo and sketch guide your cozy project—and don’t forget to tag us when you share your wooly wonder!

    For those of you who are new to our challenge, every week we post our inspiration photo challenge and sketch and hope that you will join us by creating a project for our challenge.

    Just a reminder, an inspiration photo is exactly that- a starting point for inspiration. Will it be the colors, the overall theme, the texture, the actual items and/or something else that will inspire your card?

    How are you inspired? Create a project and in your post, let us know what inspired you from the photo, and don’t forget to display our inspiration photo and link back to our challenge 😊

    Now for our Design Team’s inspiration:

    Von Marie

    MarDi

    Laurel Seabook

    Cathy Harper: Inspired By… Winter Knits

    Amy Tsuruta

    You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

    Click here to enter
    https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

  • Warm & Cozy Wishes with Amy

    There’s a brand new @inspiredbychallenges – Snowman Party. I was inspired by the theme and colors. My card features the following products:

    ⛄ Pixi Dust Designs – Snowman Mug | dies
    ⛄ Waffle Flower Crafts – Holiday Cheer Combo v2 | stamps + dies
    ⛄ Miss Kate Designs – Cookies for Santa | 6×6

    Yes, I am smitten with all the @pixi_dust_designs mugs. We can’t wait to see how you’re inspired!

    How are you inspired?

    My card features the following products:

    • Pixi Dust Designs – Snowman Mug | dies
    • Waffle Flower Crafts – Holiday Cheer Combo v2 | stamps + dies
    • Miss Kate Designs – Cookies for Santa | 6×6

    I love the bit of aging on the whip with Distress Oxide Tea Dye.

    I can’t wait to see how you’re inspired!

    Affiliate links at no extra cost to you.

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  • There’s Snow Place I’d Rather Be

    Hello everyone.  Von Marie @vonmariedesign here taking over the blog today and I’m so happy you are here.  Our challenge this week is Snowman Party and we have a fun sketch too.

    Well let’s get started:

    Well first, I was inspired by the cute snowman theme, blues, bright pink, and bright orange colors in the photo.  I love the card sketch for this week too.  It reminds me of a poloroid photo.  

    I used a Sizzix Tim Holtz die set Chilly & Freezy that I had got from Simon Says Stamp.  I think at the time it was a free die set promotion and frankly not available anymore but I did find a similar set for you Winter Wishes.  I cut out my snowmen with white cardstock and the shadow layer with tan cardstock. I also cut out the scarves and ear muffs with white yardstick and used Copic Markers to color them in like the photo colors.  I colored some white cardstick with a black marker for the button and eyes and sandwiched it in between my snowmen before I glued them together with liquid glue.

    The arm branches are cut out with brown cardstock and the carrot noses were cut out in white cardstock and Copic colored with an orange marker.  I cut out the heart too from the die set and colored that with a pink marker to match.  The pattern paper is from my stash and it’s from Lawn Fawn Stripes and Sprinkles 6×6 Paper Pad.  I cut the papers with my paper trimmer. I then glued everything to a white yardstick panel A2 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 and then everything to a A2 coordinating card base.  I stamped a sentiment from Pink & Main Hello Winter stamp set with black Versafine ink on white cardstick.  I cut my sentiment and glued it to my card.  Voila and my card is finished.

    I hope you enjoyed my post today, affiliate links may have been added at no extra charge to you.

    You still have time to join us I would love to see how you are inspired.  Here’s how to join us link your card to our linky and you can tag us on instagram too.  

    Hugs Von Marie

  • Warm Greetings

    It’s a Snowman Party this week on the Inspired By challenge. I love the colors in the photo, so I took my inspiration from the colors and snowman. I also followed the sketch for a simple design with a pop of color from the patterned paper background.

    I love the cute snowmen and penguins in this older stamp set from My Favorite Things called Toasty Greetings. The patterned paper background is also MFT Stamps. It is sad that this company is no longer doing business. I’m certain that most of my favorite stamp sets and dies are from MFT. They always had great sales and I took advantage of them frequently.

    A quick internet search showed me that you can still find some online shops that have a stock of MFT products. I also found this set available on ebay.

    To finish my card, I cut glittery snowflakes with dies from a Sunny Studio Stamps set called Layered Snowflake Frame. The “Warm” word die is Spellbinders, and the “greetings” word die is Paper Smooches.

    I wanted this to be a winter card instead of a Christmas card since I have a few people I wasn’t able to send Christmas cards to.

    Are you still making Christmas/winter cards before moving on to Valentine cards? We would love to see your snowman creations, or perhaps you are more inspired by the colors or sketch. It’s always fun to see how someone else is inspired to use their stash. Simply link your creation (doesn’t have to be a card) by the end of the day on Wednesday (Pacific Time). If you post on Instagram, make sure to use #inspired_by_challenge at the end of your post.

    Stay toasty friends!
    MarDi