How is it already March…no seriously, wasn’t it Christmas like yesterday.  Oh well.

Yesterday, was the start of the seventh #thedailymarker30day hosted by Kathy Racoosin.  It is always such a fun 30 days where you get to see so many different colorists, from beginning to advanced from all over the world.  I will periodically drop in the things I color here, but I will be posting daily over on my Instagram account.  This little Irish cutie was my day one color, because I really was stunned it was already a new month and I wanted to start the in the month with some fun.

The team over at Can You Case It have a fun color challenge going on, featuring the colors black, silver, red and pink.  And you know what, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop myself from making a card that look too much like a valentine, so in the end, I just embraced it.

I also used this cute little Skunk from Craftin Desert Divas as my coloring for today, day 2 of the #thedailymarker30day.  I printed out the digi and colored him in with my copics.  I also used a little bit of Spectrum Noir Sparkle markers in silver to highlight the silver areas on the skunk.  I backed the image with some black card stock and added some silver glitter paper under it all.  Finally, I added a sentiment also from Craftin Desert Divas in the vain hope that this would look like a love card instead of just a valentine card.

The gals over at Less is More this week have a CAS sketch challenge happening.  I am not going to lie…I really struggled with this one for quite some time.

Finally, I decided to play with some watercolors and see if I could create something that would follow the sketch, just not follow it so litterally.  I pulled out a Clearly Besotted stamp set and stamped out the two critters and the sun.  Then pulling out my Daniel Smith Primetek watercolors and started painting.  I colored the duo in with dark colors, made a little island for the duo to stand on, and surrounded them with water.  I painted in the sun and then tried to show the reflection of it within the water, finishing off the circle in the sketch.  Finally, I added some wavy lines in three different colors, and hit them with vast amounts of clear Sperctrum Noir sparkle pens to move the color a little bit.  I lost control of the lines, and am not crazy about them, but I love how the sun and duo turned out.

If you can believe it, I am finished with my card on the second of March for the month long challenge over at Naughty or Nice.  This month the theme is to feature a creature, and of course, I choose to go naughty for the challenge.

I printed out this really fun digi from Bugaboo and started coloring him in with my copics.  After I finished with the image, I realized it wasn’t really enough yet, so I started making a great floor for the selfish kitty to sit on.  After that, I wanted to place the cat in a world that the crown would make since, so the red curtains got drawn, then colored.  In the end, I was really happy with this card.  Finally, I added some gold and vellum paper behind the image to help bring out the gold tones in the crown.  I also grabbed my white gel pen and added some white highlights to the sentiment.  But my favorite part of it, is absolutely the little color marking mustache I gave the cat.

  The design team over at CAS on Sunday also are having a challenge that is featuring critters.  I am however, only just no realizing that I used a cat for both of my critter/creature designs.  Oh well.

For this one I used a Tim Holtz crazy cat and stamped him onto some good card stock.  I colored him in with my copics, leaving the majority of the card white.  I did however, pull out a really snarky sentiment from Riley and Company Funny Bones and stamped it out.  This sentiment makes me laugh..cause it is true.

I am still celebrating the third birthday of Winnie and Walter.  The next challenge on their challenge palooza was a mood board.  I got a little silly with this one, because the mood board reminded me so much of one of their free digis.  So I printed out the digi so it would fit an A2 card frame and started stamping out flowers from a Winnie & Walter stamp pack, masking it so that the flower or leaf only ended up in each box.  Then I started coloring the whole thing in with my copics.  I may have spent way too much time on this one…just saying.

The next challenge in the line up was a technique challenge looking for us to smooch ink onto our designs.  I however made, what in the end was a happy accident.  I knew I wanted to use my distress ink to smooch ink, so I stamped out a flower onto some watercolor paper.  I unfortunately (or fortunately in the end) stamped the image in with NOT waterproof ink.  So when I started smooching water sprayed ink, the stamped ink started running.  So I grabbed a paint brush and really started letting the ink run.  Then I dried the card, and went back to ink smooching.  I wanted the card to look vintage, so I used brushed corduroy, tea dyed, and hickory smoke.  I then trimmed up the watercolor paper and added some printed paper that followed the distress inks I choose.  I like how this turned out in the end, despite the huge mistake I made in the beginning.

The final card I made today to help celebrate the birthday bash was a card featuring a critter.  I had one major problem facing me with this one however.  I don’t own any Walter and Winnie critter stamps.  So being resourceful, I printed out a free digi from them, and started coloring it in with my copics.  I then stamped out a tiny little critter from another company, and colored it in with similar colors.  I assembled the card, and problem solved…small critter, check, feature of the stamp, W&W product.  Haha.

Okay, that’s it for tonight.  I’ll be back with some new designs before you know it.  In the mean time, go ahead and join in for the 30 day coloring challenge.  It is always fun!!!