So has anybody else thought this week, ‘wait a minute it is only Wednesday…’?  Yeah me too.  I’ve felt that way all week.  For reasons I don’t understand I have just felt like it has been just so much later this week then normal.  I think I am ready for the weekend.  I think I was ready for the weekend Monday morning when the alarm went off.  And maybe, just maybe I am as ready for summer break as my kids are.  Maybe just maybe it is time the schedule to be discarded and we all just chill for a while.

I would like to say the calendar has been crazy, but it has just been another week.  I’ve got a couple of large pieces up on my easel that I’m working through, so I’ve kind of been lost in the art.  I love being lost in the art.  And on that note, I love the fact I own two different crockpots so that my family can eat when I get lost.

On exciting news, at the end of the month I will be taking my first ever art class.  No, I’m not kidding.  Didn’t even take art in middle school or anything.  I am completely self taught and while I have kicked around the  idea of taking a class here or there, I’ve just never done it.  I mean, I could probably use a good basic drawing class, or even a ‘how to properly use acrylic’ class, but I fear that I would lose a bit of me if I let someone teach me how to properly do it.

But starting at the end of the month I will be jumping into an art class and an online one to bout.  Sandy Allnock, one of my favorite artists and paper crafters, who does things with color that fascinates me and leaves me in awe is teaching an online Copics class, and for the first time I jumped on board with the art class thing.

Now for a really long time I have been working with Spectrum Noir alcohol markers.  It was what I could afford, and honestly I like them.  They do somethings that I adore, and I have no intension of putting them on a shelf (and frankly they are the markers my daughters are allowed to color with since they have a bit of sturdiness to them and neither of them should be introduced to watercolor makers cause then we will never get them away from my desk).  But for the past few months I have been starting my Copic collection.  I don’t have that many yet, but boy can they do stuff that is really freaking cool.  However, I use them pretty conservatively and am often afraid to take big coloring risks with them.  That’s why I jumped into this class.  Sandy Allnock is known for the coloring risks she takes, and the color combination that on paper that doesn’t make since, but in reality works, so if I can learn anything for her, I’m all over it.

The Copic Jumpstart class doesn’t officially start till May 27th, and will be on sale until then if you are interested, but because I signed up so early, I got to jump in with a preview/early bird class.  We had a little early bird coloring project encouraging us to push the colors and how we see how we liked different line weight.  This is my first go at this project and will in the next few days try it out again with a little more confidence.  Frankly, the blue little guy is hands down my favorite.  Go figure right.  He was also the last one I colored so I think that I was getting comfortable with the technique.  One of the reasons I will be coloring this little guy again.

However, till class officially launches, I will continue playing with my markers seeing what I can get them to do in the landscape of cards and if I can find the time, maybe something more artsy.

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First up in our cards from weekly challenges is a color challenge from the designers over at Paper Players.  This time around they are challenging us to color with pink pirouette, pear pizzazz, so saffron, and wisteria wonder.

Now recently I got an Instagram notice that a stamp company I like, Technique Tuesday, was having a dump the warehouse extras grab box opportunity for very little cash.  Now there was no way in knowing what was going to be in the box, but I like the company so I took the gamble.  Let me tell you, the box was filled with all kinds of crazy good goodies.  There were like eight different old stamp sets that got me all kinds of excited to craft, and that doesn’t even begin in mention all the

paper and accessories that were in there.  It turned out to be a good gamble.

So anyway, this stamp image of the artist was so in the Technique Tuesday box, and I’m loving out little messy art girl.  I thought she would be perfect for this color palette so I jumped all over that.  I stamped her out in some black Memento and colored her in with my Copics.  Then pulling some coordinating colors of Distress ink I stamped out ink spots from the same stamp set (the little ones) and the rest from a Prima Marketing stamp set (the big ones).   I trimmed out the card and added a bit of pale purple glittery paper to highlight the card.  In the end I was right.  She was perfect for this soft palette.

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Next up is a pictorial inspiration picture showing some really cute little airplane cupcakes from the gals over at Inspired by all the Little Things.  More then the images, I love the color scheme, so I really wanted to focus on that in my card.

Now I feel like I have been using this airplane stamp from Art Impressions a lot lately (seriously like five different cards in the past

three weeks) which tell me two things…one I need another airplane stamp to rotate with this one, and two, I had to find a new way to stamp it out so it would be interesting (at least to me).  So I stamped the airplane so it was flying off the card, and made the main focus the sweet little parachuting dog.  I colored everything in using my Copics and Spectrum Noir (I am missing some colors in copic land to fill a whole color spectrum so I use the Noir to fill the gaps).  I trimmed the card so I could add a bit of blue paper and added a the banner sentiment from the stamp pack.  I know I say this a lot, but Art Impressions really is one of my favorite stamp companies.  There images are always so much fun to color.

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The Cupcake Inspirations bakers, who live for driving my sweet tooth into over drive, passed out a theme challenge this week encouraging us to use bunting.  And when you ask me to focus on something, I will over focus on it.  So you ask for Bunting, then I’m going to give you bunting.

I wanted to go with a tonal look in this card, so I pulled out some cream heavy card stock and folded it up, knowing I wasn’t going

to do much stamping or coloring, so I could use the card itself as the base.  I pulled out a strip of 12 inch baseboard (from my Technique Tuesday grab box) and trimmed it up so that it would work as what the bunting was hanging from.  Then pulling out a die from My Favorite Things, I die cut tons of banner images onto craft paper.  I distressed the edges of the banners with two different shades of Distress Ink and assembled everything with my super duper heavy tape.  I pulled out a sentiment pack from Fiskars and stamped out some birthday images and words and a couple of hearts.  I know the card is ridiculously simple, but for a man I think the card would work.  And anyway, the theme was bunting and I feel I may have given them that.

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Finally today we have a color challenge from the sleuths of card crafting over at Can You Case it.  This week they are looking for designs that highlight the colors gold, white and dark blue.

Now obviously, these colors make me think nautical, but that

wasn’t a direction I wanted to go.  In fact I had no idea which direction I wanted to go.  I wanted something simple, that just highlighted the colors, but what would work out well.  So I just started playing, and well, I think it worked out well.  I pulled out a rubber stamp from Dylusions and stamped out the image using Archival Ink in cobalt.  Then I tried to figure out what was naturally gold, and the only thing I could really think of was keys.  Keys after all are kind of gold-ish.  Now I have a think for keys.  I like the idea that they can unlock something, but it literal or abstract, so I have a lot of different types of keys in my world, be they stamps, craft keys or actual keys that no long had locks to go into.  The real keys were too heavy to use, and frankly the craft keys too thick, so I went for the stamps.  Now I have several to pick from, but when I saw these from Inkadinadoo, and realized they had words along with them, these were obviously the way to go.  The three keys say Hope, Love, Destiny, and I think those words are so appropriate for things that can be unlocked.  I embossed the images with gold sparkly embossing powder and backed the card with some metallic gold card stock.  I couldn’t find the right shade of blue to use in the background, so I just blended the same cobalt ink onto the base layer and called it a day.  I thought about adding a sentiment, but in the end, I liked how the plain and simple worked.

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That’s all for today, but I’ll be back later this week with another round of card challenges.  If I can find the free moments I need to, between now and Friday, I hope to get up some of the pieces I have done for the school for the past couple of weeks.  None of them are master pieces, but considering I painted them live in about 45 minutes in front of young children shouting out questions, I get a real kick out them.

Till we meet again dear readers, make something pretty.