I am always pleasantly surprised on days like this…days that you think will be one thing, but in the end be a whole lot more.  Today seems to be one of those days where there are really great surprises around every corner.

First off we had plans for today, but when I woke (an hour later than I normally would) I discovered that my entire family had decided it was a pajama day and had canceled all the plans we had!!!  So here I thought it would be another day of going, going, going, and I discovered I was going to have all the time in the world to clean (the art desk), craft, paint, and plan for what next months projects would be.  It was a great surprise!!

So I cleaned my desk off and sorted through some stamps to clean my stash out.  This is where I had my next great surprise.  I discovered with a specific stamp brand that I only seemed to own stamps by one particular artist.  I looked up the brand, and they have other artists do design work for the company, but I don’t seem to ever buy those.  Only this specific artist…and so I googled him/her…and she had her own line of digital stamps filled with fantasy (my little corner of happiness) and a monthly challenge.  JACK POT.  (one of her designs and challenge is in today’s line up).  My pocked book was needlessly to say a little surprised too.

I also finished some class work I have been doing.  I haven’t been real happy with my color pencil work as of late, so I decided to take some online color pencil classes through Kit and Clowder.  I just finished my first project, and guess what…my work isn’t as bad as I had felt it was.  Now, I just need to gain confidence with the medium.

I also have been painting a giant new piece…not ready to share this yet, but it is coming along better than I expected.  WooHoo!!!

And now for the three unexpected, but because I had some extra time, card challenges!

So the first challenge comes from this artist I like so much, Mo Manning and her Digital Pencil.  Seriously, check out her stuff, especially if you like fantasy, you won’t regret it.  She has a monthly challenge group called Mos DP2 Challenge.  This one (any maybe all of them) was an Anything Goes challenge.  So I took the Jerry and colored him up.  I used my copics and the combinations where as follows:
Skin: E70, E74, and E59
Hat and Jacket: E17, E19, E09, E18
Ruff:  E40, E42, E44
Pants: BG72, BG75, BG78
Ears: YR21, YR24, YR27
Hair: YG61, G94, G99 and the Patches were a combination of all of above.  I wanted him to be very muted and earthy, and I think I got what I was going for.  I couldn’t find a sentiment I liked so I just added some card stock to the side and called it a day.  My husband has already stolen this one, and framed it.  He put it with a bunch of framed pictures of the kids, making my entire day!

There is a new challenge over at Art Impressions, one I found particularly hard to conceptualize.  This challenge was to ‘make it mini’.  The problem is that Art Impressions stamps are known for being beautifully large.  So it took me a bit to figure this one out.  

I finally settled on the little Whoots image along with a cup of coffee from Hot Java Mama.  I colored them in with my copics using my full range of E30s to create the browns in the owl.  I trimmed a bit off the side and added some olive green card stock and added a sentiment from the Java stamp set.  I don’t know if I made this mini, but I made it CAS, and I actually really like it.

The team over at Your Next Stamp have a sketch or color challenge going on right now.  Being the weirdo that I am, I missed the word or, and instead did both the sketch and the color challenge.  Yep, that’s me, over achiever who can’t read instructions.  Anyway, here is what I can up with.

I pulled out a YNS stamp set and colored up the image with my copics really focusing in on the orange and yellow colors in the challenge plus some green.  I thought it might be cool to make the girl black and white, saying you are starting your trip in black and white, but you are going into full color.  Maybe this is too deep for a greeting card, but oh well.   I added some colored papers, and heat embossed the sentiment onto the card with some white embossing powder.  I added a few gold dew drops cause frankly it needed some grounding.

Finally, I have a card design for the monthly challenge group Naughty or Nice.  This month the challenge is three of something with an optional Easter twist.

I went with three different three of somethings and of course pulled out an Easter digi I wanted to use before Easter came and went.  So I colored in the Bugaboo Stella image with three different color combinations.  Then I added three different printed papers to the side.  Finally, I added three dew drops (unevenly) to tie everything together.  I love the muted colors of this.  Seems exactly how Stella would celebrate Easter!

Okay, that’s it.  I’m off to see if I can screw up the large canvas I’ve been working on.  Wish me luck.