December is a BUSY month!

First things first... a little note about orders and cut off dates. I've been sharing this on some friends facebooks with their permission so you may have seen this before. 

It's been a busy couple weeks. I have orders going out pretty much daily and coming in that way too! Happy Happy Holidays right?!!?? It's exciting! 

Another really exciting thing is that my art was in ArtVoice this week. 

For those that aren't local to my area, ArtVoice is the local "What to do, What's going on in the area" magazine. It's fairly well read and it's pretty cool that this is a thing!
Here's a picture from that! 

In other news...
I have a Zentangle workshop next weekend. I still have space if you are interested, it includes a catered lunch and beverages, all supplies and the complete introduction to Zentangle. If you are interested you can email me at whimsybykelly@gmail.com
I have some orders to complete and some advertising to do. Tomorrow my Buffalo Etsy team is having a gift wrapping party for the gifts we have for our adopted holiday family. :) That will be a lot of fun!
I also need to decorate. I am one of those people that doesn't decorate til around the 2nd week or so of December, mostly because I don't like feeling like I want it down before Christmas gets here. I only like the decorations up for a fairly short period of time. I'm weird. :) 3 weeks is about perfect and they stay up til just after New Years.
I'd love to see pictures of everyone's decorations if you want to share!!!

Also starting January 1 I'm going to be kicking of a Creative Challenge for the entire year.
I am going to have a little giveaway every couple months and anyone that completes the challenge will get a little something from me and I think I'm going to make certificates. :)

It's a big.. a 300 or more creative challenge. All the details will go up on New Years Day, but basically the short version is you know I want all of you to keep being creative every day right? I believe that staying creative not only keeps you creative but actually inspires creativity. With that in mind...  I want you to make something 300 times. I will provide some prompts here and there, but mostly it's going to be up to you to make something and share it. 

I look forward to seeing what you do. :)

Better run. Time to get out my paints!

Work in progress....

This is a different project than my pen and ink and something I love to do.

I thought I'd share it with you!

It's not done yet, but it's getting there!

Getting started, I want this one to have a very tropical theme and my work area really set the mood too!

I'm messy... you can see the paint splattered everywhere already (including on the plant in the background!

A little bit of detail work.

Some shading and highlights

Flowers now... I'd have done more, but it started to drizzle and that's not good for painting!

This is going to go up on my etsy shop, Whimsy by Kelly when I'm done. (If you haven't taken a peek I'd love to have you look!)

Anyway, I  love to paint and play with color, which might not always be obvious in my other projects, but paint is up there as one of my favorite things ever. 

So this is what I'm currently working on along with my mandalas and the plan for my next challenge template!!!

Last week we grew gardens, this week let's build houses!

I had fun with the template I put out there for you last week and it looks like a few other people did too! YAY! That's the whole point right?
Anyway, I have a new one for you.... this time, let's BUILD A HOUSE!

It almost looks like a face.. lol. You can turn the page any way you'd like and I can't wait to see your creations!

Download the template from here.. TEMPLATE

And then come back next week and share your link in the Mr Linkey thingey.

And here's mine!

I look forward to hearing what you think about these challenges! 

I haven't forgotten about you! Template 1-Grow a Garden!

So I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do as my next challenge, I didn't want to give you an outline or a string, I didn't want to limit the type of artwork and I didn't want to be doing something that anyone else is.
 I welcome feedback on the idea and I know it seems really simplistic, future ones I'll make a little more detailed but your finished project doesn't NEED to be it can be whatever you want it to be. I hope you like this idea and concept and if you do I'll do more of these, if not, I'll come up with something else!
Please note... There are no prizes for this challenge, but I hope you'll play anyway!

So here is the template for this week.  I call it "Grow a Garden" and this is what it looks like. Please use the link, don't try and print from the pic.

Huh? Is that what you're thinking? Well... ok, a little more info for you. I don't like taking creativity away from people and everyone has their own methods, styles, etc so I wanted to give you something that would force you to incorporate something small into what you are doing while still being "you" in your artwork. So take the template, add to it, using pens, markers, paints, chalk, whatever you want and show me what you've got. Turn it any way you like, there is no right or wrong to this!
Please upload by next Friday.  I'll have mine up probably tomorrow.

OK, here's mine! It's a little chaotic, but I was kind of going for that. It's been that kind of week!