So I have been off for the past two weeks dealing with other things in life.  It has been a crazy two weeks.  Last week I was so utterly buried under the art I couldn’t think about anything else.

I was in the school demo-ing three different paintings for three different classes on three different days.  Which means I was mocking up, painting and cleaning up three different demo painting in about 24 hours each.  It doesn’t seem that big a deal until you realize I gift the canvas to the class for them to keep forever, so yeah, my perfectionism kicks in.  I hope to get the three pieces up on here this weekend (plus the one I did the week before that).  To add insult to injury the four paintings I did in the last two weeks before we hit spring break, were all for upper classes (three 5th grade and one 4th), so the art had to be a little more mature then what I do for the younger grades.

Then this past week the kids have been off on spring break, and of course the husband had a business trip, so the kids and I have been going full force all week without any responsibilities to anyone but ourselves.  It has been a blast.

And for the past two weeks I have been (like I said) buried under the art because a week from today I have a deadline for a submission for a gallery for five of my pieces.  As it stands right this minute two of the five are done.  Why I went with new pieces I will never really understand, except that was what I had to do for myself.  I am getting close, but any spare moments in life have been hovering over canvases.  When I am done I should have two mix media pieces, one acrylic, one oil paint, and one colored pencil.  If the pieces get through the first round of judging (fingers crossed) they will hang all summer in a fine art gallery.  Fingers crossed and hoping.

Anyway last night, I have a few minutes and was desperate for some FUN little work that in the end really didn’t matter and would only take a minute or two to make, so I dug back into the cards and completed a few challenges.

---

Up first after my hiatus is a color challenge from the sleuths of design, Can You Case It.  This week they have challenged us to drum up a design using the colors yellow, red and black.

I have fun new (to me) stamp pack from Penny Black

showing off some fun vintage girls including this stamp with this great car.  And lets be honest, that car is just screaming to be colored red.  I stamped out the image on some card stock and colored it in using my Copics (yes, I finally have given in and started my collection).  The gal in the car got several shades of yellow.  I literally tore some black card stock and trimmed up a pieces of embossed yellow card stock and assembled everything together.  I embossed in white the sentiment from the same stamp pack and left the card at that.  It might not be simple to the rest of the world, but for me that is about as simple as it gets, and frankly in my opinion anything else would have ruined how cool that chick really is.

---

The gals over at The Paper Players have extended another color challenge that color scheme really excited me.  There was something about this group of colors that made me really excited to craft.  They were asking for Melon Mambo, Soft Sky, Mossy Meadow, and Pumpkin Pie.

I pulled out a piece of watercolor card stock and stamped this cool diva from Deep Red in jet black Archival Ink.  Then taking four shades of Distress Ink (forest moss, tumbled glass, picked raspberry, and carved pumpkin) and smooched the color randomly in strips on the paper.  I had planned to leave the gal black and white, but really she was just screaming for color.  However, how do you color in an image that has a water based ink all over it.  I pulled out my colored pencils  and colored her in using the color scheme.  By the way, you can color over watercolor ink with colored pencils.  The world just got more interesting :).  I added a simple sentiment from Stampendous and trimmed the card stock down a bit.  I added some black card stock matting and left the card at that.  I know this style isn’t for everyone, but I love this look.  I love how the moss color drips a little through the image despite the pencil coloring.  And I loved that I learned something new that I can totally take advantage of it its fullest in the future.

---

Touching base with our weekly dose of the holidays the ever loving holly lovers over 52 Christmas Card Throwdown extended this week a, well lets just say, a color challenge.  They asked for us to craft with white and metallic gold.  So lets just say there was a bit of a limitation here.  Thank goodness all things Christmas look good in gold.

I pulled out a detailed and delicate stamp from Inkadinkadoo and tried to emboss it with my very metallic gold embossing powder.  The problem was that this was not a fine silky embossing powder.  This one has chunks (small, but chunks non the less) of gold glitter in it.  I didn’t know how the stamp would look with the powder, and while we lost s0me of the fine details of the bell, it didn’t come out too bad.  I added the sweet the reindeer in the same embossing powder and trimmed up the card stock.  I detailed the edges with my gold paint pen.  Then I added a sheet of metallic gold card stock and tied a simple gold bow, leaving the card simple and plan.  I like this, but the color palette was a bit limiting.  I think i would like this better with a bit of red or green trim somewhere  in the card.  Oh well, next time.

---

This week as we coat out sugar tooth, the cooks over at Cupcake Inspirations are asking us to whip of a theme.  This week the cupcakes were centered around the theme of patterns.  So I figured we could not go wrong with a bit of paper piecing.

Now, I found a new stamp pack last week, and I can’t

even begin to tell you how excited I was.  My favorite Christmas stamp pack, is the random little pack from Stampendous that has lots of heads and bodies that you can mix and match to make all kinds of elves, and deers and snowmen, and whatever in Christmas garb.  The possibilities are really endless.  Well, I found a spring themed pack like this from the same company, Stampendous.  I went with a little chick in the rain today, but trust me you will see a lot of this  pack in the future.  Using some bright printed paper I paper pieced my image onto the card, using lots of different patterns.  I added just a touch of gray copic to highlight and shadow different parts of the chick trying to give him some dimension.  I snuck in the cloud from an Ellen Hutson Essentials stamp pack and the sentiment from a different Stampendous sentiment pack.  I wish I had used a different paper for the ground , but in the end, I think the whole thing just ended up cute.

---

Finally today, we have a third color challenge from the designers over at Always Playing With Paper‘s The Challenge.  This week the gals have challenged us to use hot pink, green, teal, and yellow.

I pulled out my Gansai Tambi watercolors because they are

so thick and bright and added a rough block coloring onto some craft watercolor paper.  I snagged a Donna Downey stencil and pulled the color away using a baby wipe.  This ability to pull away the color to such extremes is one of the reasons I like using the Gansai Tambi for this technique.  I pulled out a House Mouse stamp from Stampendous and stamped it on using black Archival Ink.  It didn’t show up as well I wanted it to, so I pulled out my colored pencils and added some yellow to his fur, pink and green to the flower, and blue to the basket, helping the image stand out a bit more.  I added a sentiment from Dylusions, trimmed up the watercolor paper and added it to an A2 card.  I wish the image can out better, but I like the effect of everything non-the-less.

---

That is it for today.  Now, I need to go dig back into the paint.  Deadlines are looming, and well, I want this done so I can get back to my regularly scheduled program.  Till then, I hope your work is getting done and that they crafting, painting, and art is going well.