Ah…it is one of those lovely rainy days where you don’t have to venture out into the wet.  No, instead we have hunkered down and been allowed to do as we please today.

The boy has spent hours upon hours staring at his Pokemon cards…to what avail, I do not know (or frankly care), but have found great joy in his distraction to being stuck in doors all day.

The girls have done as young girls do and have had several fashion shows, done everybody’s hair, and dressed and shown off many baby dolls.

The husband had to work…hahahaha…that’s what you get for abandoning me on Valentine’s Day to sugar filled children, so football, or sports, or random show about weird science trivia, I care little about has been absent on the television…and I, besides the many hours I had to prepare food and snacks for growing children…got to play in the paint and color of the desk.  So, I am here, sneaking in on a random Saturday night as the rain dribbles down outside, with a cold beer in my hand, to share a little of the joy of my day!

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Up first tonight is a Stella Says Sketch challenge from Bugaboo’s Catch the Bug.  I dug through my stash of pre-printed digis, focusing on the Bugaboo ones and found the image I really wanted to play with.

There is something so tacky about this gal, Gertrude…and frankly, I fear many days I am her.  Somedays I feel it is just because the medicine I take to keep the migraines at bad leaves me slightly groggy in the morning.  Most days however, I suspect it is because I have entered the wonderful stage where everything I do embarrasses my kids and I feel it is my duty as their mother to pay them back for all the years that they embarrasses the snot out of me.  So I decided in the playing of this digi, I was going to go over the top and tacky with this card.  I colored in the image, really trying to make her look significantly out of sorts, playing with color that I don’t normally do.

Then I pulled out three coordinating, but not really matching papers and trimmed them up to match the sketch.  I backed everything with black card stock to help all the image and the paper to pop just a bit more.  I am not normally a paper piecer, and rarely do it well when I try, but this time I think I might have found my stride.

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The gurus of color over at Color Throwdown this week have a really fun color challenge.  This week they are looking for the colors turquoise, sage green, kraft, and dark brown.  See, a really interesting color palette.

I like a weirdo, decided to use a couple not in the passionate throws of Valentine’s love, but in my opinion, a more realistic opinion of partnership, for this color challenge.  Someday, I may create in a more mainstream way for a color challenge, but until then, everyone is just going to have to deal with my strange image choices for a color challenge.  (can you tell someone said something less than kind to me this week about my choices for images in challenges….and my passive aggressive way of dealing with it 🙂  I pulled up another Bugaboo image and started coloring it in with my copics, trying to capture the right color.  I think I got pretty close in the end.  I trimmed up the card stock and backed it with a bit of kraft paper.  I added some kraft colored dew drops to the corner, and called it a day.

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A new challenge is up over at Art Impressions Blog, and this time they are looking for designs that feature “Playful People”.  Being Art Impression, there is some many different choices when it comes to picking a stamp set that features playful people; Art Impressions after all is all about playful people.

In the end I decided to go with this image, because at the center of this stamp is the pure joy of play.  I also feel many of my friend and I have at times (possibly under the influence) have acted like these gals.  I stamped them out onto some watercolor paper and started coloring them in with my Inktense pencils.  I love how vibrant they come out in comparison to other watercolor pencils.  And more important, I think that I have finally come up with a pale skin tone with them, something I have struggled with until now.  I used a white gel pen to drop in some highlights on the sentiment, and used a glitter pen to highlight the bounces.  I trimmed a little off of the end of the paper, and added a bit of pale pink glitter paper to the edge.  I also added a stitched edge die cut to the end of the water color paper.  I think I have missed the mark here, but I do think I managed to find the play I was looking for.

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This week a really fun inspiration card has been given to us crafters over at Muse.  I really like the play on the pill bottles and the wise for health on the muse card.  I really wanted to take that idea and run with it.

I pulled out two pill bottles from an Art Impression stamp pack and stamped them all over a piece of card stock.  I also stamped out a sentiment from the same pack, and I hope the message corresponds to the muse card.  I colored the pill bottles in simply with my copics, leaving no shadows on the actual pills, and only a slight one on the caps and labels.  I trimmed a little off the card stock, and adhered the paper to an A2 card.  There are so many things that may be off here, like the spacing of the bottles, but I frankly don’t care.  I like it.

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Finally there is a new pin board challenge over at Ellen Hutson’s The Classroom.  This one is filled with beautiful pale turquoise images that in my mind just sparkle (or at I pretend they do).

I grabbed my Ellen Hutson Bohemian Garden stamp pack and pulled one of the flowers out, and stamped it repeatedly onto some scrap card stock.  Here is where I made a bit of a mistake…I should have done this on watercolor paper…oh well. I grabbed this little pot of pale turquoise watercolor paint that I’ve had laying around for ever, and frankly don’t even know where I got it from, but it sparkles like nobody’s business.  So painted all the flowers in with it, keeping a bit of shading on the edges.

Then from another Ellen Huston stamp pack, Spread the Sparkle, I pulled a sentiment and stamped it out using some white embossing powder.  I love how this card sparkles in real life as light reflects off of it, and wish the camera could really capture it.

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Okay, that’s it for now…I’m sure I’ll be back soon since the weather isn’t going to change anytime soon.  Movies, popcorn and painting it will be!!!