So I have been crazy busy lately, so for you avid readers I am so sorry I haven’t been around.  Now, things have been crazy busy, but there hasn’t been a lack of creating on my part, just a lack of blogging about it.  But for today I am back.

This week we had Star Wars Day, also known as May the Fourth….so we did a little work with the force.  Apparently this year I could not find the side of good and only worked with the dark side.

This year I only worked in water color.  The image of Darth was done with only one color, bloodstone genuine from Daniel Smith Primatek collection.  Kylo was done in the same bloodstone plus hematite genuine (another shade of gray/black) and then piemontite genuine to create the shades of red.  They aren’t great, basically since I didn’t have the time to really do it right, but my boys (my husband and son) are fighting over who gets which one.

I’ve also been back in the classroom teaching and demoing art for the kids.  This week I hit up two different first grade classes, and boy are those kids fun to work with.  I promise to get the school pieces up here soon so you can see what I’m teaching the kids to do.

I have also been building lots of cards lately, but ones I just feel like coloring, and not necessarily ones that go with challenges.  I have been all about the coloring lately, so, I just have been doing what I felt like at the moment.

But today I am back with some challenge work.

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Up first today is a theme challenge from the design team over at Paper Players.  This theme was so hard for me, basically because the theme was bicycle, and I had nothing with bicycles on it.  Seriously, nothing.

I searched my stamps, them my paper, then my very old and now small stash (daughter sure can blow through stickers like it is their job) of 3 dimensional stickers.  Finally, while routing through my 7-10 year old stash of rub ons I found a kid on a bike.  This image obviously isn’t sweet and girly, so rough and grungy the card became.  But when all you’ve got is what you got, you simply go with it.  The sentiment was also from the rub on pack and the paper is old card stock from my stash.  I added some ink spill stamp images from Prima Marketing in ground espresso Distress Ink to help grunge things up a bit.  But at least now I’ve got a teenage boy card when I need one.

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The sleuths of design over at Can You Case It this week have tossed out a sketch challenge this week for us to drool over.  So, when it comes to sketch challenges I have been working on not taking them so literally, and adhering the suggestion not the letter.  I

hope I got a little closer to my goal today with this interpretation.

I started with some watercolor paper and adding black and orange brusho and letting it do it’s crazy thing all on its own.  I ran the paper through my Big Shot with a Sizzix tags die.  I added stars from an outer space stamp set from Hero Arts and embossed with white embossing powder to the big tag and the sentiment to the little one.  Then I adhered them to a black piece of card stock that I added a little shimmer to the background.  I added a strip of crystal along the bottom to act as the the strip in the sketch and added a few more crystal gems to the sky line and tag holes to star up the card just a bit more. I’m not sure that the card works, but I think it might.  It is pretty dark, but that may be what I like about it.

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The design team over at the biweekly challenge Sunday Stamps this week passed out a color challenge with the most beautiful collection of colors this week.  It was a pick at least

three challenge and I went with the pale blue, the coral and pale purple for my card.

I blended some shaded lilac, Victorian velvet and tumbled glass Distress Ink onto some card stock and then splattered water to get the distress effect.  Then stamping with Archival Jet black ink onto some Technique Tuesday stamps set, I put in the floral and insect shadows.  I white embossed the sentiment ‘life’ and added a bit of glitter paper to the both the bottom of the card, and under it matting the whole image.  Finally I added a dew drop crystal and called it a day with the card, loving how soft and demure the whole thing came out.

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Changing passes a little bit, we have a little bit of holiday cheer with the design crew over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown.  They had a funny little theme challenge this week, asking us to

search their archives of theme challenges and pick one to redo.  I went back quite a bit and pulled a June of 2013 theme of ornaments.

I probably didn’t pull a big enough ornament stamp, but I so wanted to use this particular stamp and watercolors.  So I white embossed the Inkadinkadoo stamp onto some watercolor paper, and watercolor the whole image with my Daniel Smith Primatek watercolors.  I matted the image with a very dark green piece of textured card stock.  I added some satin ribbon, and a few red crystals and called it a dy.  I know there is nothing special with the coloring, but I love this watercolor effect.

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The sweet toothed designers over at Cupcake Inspirations this week tossed out a lovely color challenge this week, asking us to us the colors of lilac, apricot, and gray.  It is kind of a fun grouping of shades and not one I would naturally pull together.  I will have to remember that these three colors really look good together.

I pulled out a new stamp from Technique Tuesday and stamped it out in Archival black ink and watercolored it in with three different brands of watercolor.  I really didn’t feel like mixing, so I pulled a Winsor and Newton lilac shade, a Grumbacher gray, and a Koi orangish color.  I backed the whole thing with a scrape of purplish colored paper, a strip of gray paper, and stamped it with some black ink.  I added some stripes of pearls to highlight everything and called the card done.  I don’t know if the coloring worked, but sometimes it is fun to color with non-traditional colors onto images.

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Finally today we have a very detailed sketched challenge from the gals over at Always Playing with Paper‘s The Challenge.  Here is an example of where I took the sketch very literally, because here I wanted to highlight the coloring and not the design.

I took several sheets of cordinating pieces of printed paper and arranged them the way the sketched was drawn.    Then I die cut out the sentiment from some Little B dies.  Then I took a cute little stamp from C.C. Designs and colored it in with my alcohol markers.  I know things are literal in my design, but I love the little elf image and the card I think came out cute.

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That’s all for today (cause that wasn’t enough right), and I’m off to work on some bigprojects for fun.  I hope all you moms get what you are hoping for this weekend, but it time with your family, or for yourself.  And I hope you all get time to make something pretty.