Challenges are a fantastic way to get your creative juices flowing and stretch yourself even if you don't submit them. They are supposed to be fun, motivating and a way to get inspired.

Challenges can be pretty much anything:

• Ad Challenge - using an ad as inspiration, either following the layout or the colors
• Color Challenge - use the following colors in your layout
• Font Challenge - use specific fonts, use a certain amount of fonts
• Product Challenge - using a specific digital kit for your layout
• Quote or Word Challenge - Your take on a layout with a specific quote or word used
• Sketch Challenge - using a sketch, template as your starting point
• Technique Challenge - using a specific technique like image manipulation, doodling on images, etc
• Scraplift Challenge - Using another's layout as inspiration for your own
  
• Whatever you can come up with.

They are a way of getting folks to think out of the box and do something different. Posted on blogs, in books, etc. There are all kinds of challenges out there and more show up every day. And many sites offer a prize to the winner of the challenge which can be quite lovely. Depending on the site's primary focus in may be a digital ad on kit or a traditional paper kit.

If you find yourself needing a little inspiration, take a look at some of the challenges out there and see what you can come up with.

What kinds of challenges are out there:

• The digi dares - Every Thursday evening a new dare is posted with examples to get you started.
  

• Pencil Lines - Started in October of 2006. A new sketch is released every Sunday at 8pm (GMT). A guest artist creates a sketch and then the design team using that sketch to create their layouts before seeing the guest artists layout.

• One Little Word - "This is your place to reflect on and celebrate the power of WORDS. Every other week our Creative Team will bring you awesome pages and projects focused on One Little Word to inspire you. We encourage you to take the plunge and create along with us. Here anything goes...your imagination is the limit. And don't forget to check out the cool tips we dish out between each challege!!!!"

• Elsie Flannigan - 52 Scrapbooking Challenges - Designer Elsie gives you 52 fun scrapbooking challenges. Most of them are focused on traditional methods but many can be done digitally as well. She also posts challenges on her blog A Beautiful Mess from time to time.
  

• Parts of Speech - Challenges - Layouts, cards, altered projects are all game. But you need to use the selected part of speech as the main inspiration for your item. Past items have included adjectives, pronouns, verb and nouns.
  
• Scrapjacked - New jacks are posted on the 1st and 15th of each month. They select an artist and post a layout that you use as inspiration.
  
• Category Stories - No idea exactly what hte challenges are going to be but it launches September 1st. The ladies heading it up are fabulous so I can imagine it will be great.
• 30-Day Digi-Scrap Business Challenge - a peer coaching challenge for sharing tips for designers, S4O's, store owners, bloggers, and anyone else who works in the digi-scrapping industry. Hosted by DSD-Professionals.com during the month of September.