I love Fall!!!

I truly think that fall is my favorite season. The colors are beautiful and vibrant, the world seems to be doing it's very best to decorate itself and there is pumpkin and apple flavored EVERYTHING here.
We are lucky enough to have an exchange student visiting and I've gotten to spend time with some of my best friends lately which has kept me busy, but I've also been VERY busy on the creativity front.
I saw a picture of these on the internet, and was reminded that my Gram had taught me to make a version years and years ago... so here are mine.
I'm out of practice, but they're SO pretty!!

 


And then... I made this for me because I really wanted to have my stuff organized and handy and at my fingertips. I was SO happy with how it turned out and I am still just giddy when I look at it!
When I showed it on facebook, so many people wanted one I decided to make them and put them in my etsy shop. (They're only $35 and include the pens for right now if you are interested, you can check it out at www.whimsybykelly.com)
And then I promptly got a ton of orders! YAY!

I also had several orders come in for custom converse and some cute geeky earrings. :)

So, I've been busy working on all of that.

I've done a few other things including this mini-mandala

And then I got to participate in this weeks Diva Challenge 189 which was UMT Yuma. This was my first attempt at this tangle and I struggled with it a little, but I love the idea of them feeding off the leaves, so I used green to add to it. I rarely use color but it seems to fit on this one!

I'm behind one, 188, which is one that I'm actually excited to work on, it's a LGBT alliance tile and I haven't skipped it, I just was short on time last week and didn't want to rush it, so I'll get back to that asap!

In the meantime, everyone have a great week and I'll check in when I can! Now, I'm off to go have some apple crisp or a pumpkin muffin! 

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!!!

I finished this earlier this morning.. Day 5!

So I've been working on a project ever since I saw the whole sharpie on mugs phenomenon take off and I loved it.. but I was skeptical.
I made sure to find items that rendered my finish project food safe because..
1. I want to make an entire set to match the kitchen decor I've ALWAYS WANTED BUT NEVER BEEN ABLE TO FIND!!!! (Strawberries are NOT THAT WEIRD people!)
2. As soon as I mention it I had people want to buy sets. Ok then. I'm not going to sell them if they can't eat off them so began my quest until I found items that would be fine.

Here's my test piece. I started it yesterday and finished it up today. It's not terribly intricate because the next step is to pass it around to every member of my family with the explicit directions to try and destroy it, and I knew I'd be sad if they were successful and I'd spent tons of time creating it. Plus, this is a favorite design of mine. (I do promise to update on how it holds up!)

So that is what I did to be creative today.
How are you coming along in my 30 day Kreative challenge?
( Update because I forgot to add a prompt earlier, Thanks Bev for the reminder!so here it is!)
For your project today, consider doing something you've been wanting to try for a while, a new pattern, a new technique, a new project! 

Rules and prizes can be found here... 

Some questions I'm getting asked a lot...
Q:Can I jump in even though you are in progress?
A:Yes, please do!

Q:Does this count?
A: Did you feel like you were creating something? If so.. yes!

Q: Can I submit something for a different day?
A: Yes, but only until the Sunday of that week for it to count towards contest entries.

So add your link to wherever you posted what you made in the linkey, leave me a comment so I can come check it out and make something fun!

Creative weekend.

I got some new tools this weekend and I've been having so much fun with them.
I wanted to share some of what I've been doing in the interest of beating my perfectionism as well as just to let you know how much fun I'm having... and isn't that what the whole creative thing is about? Having fun with it anyway? None of these are my "usual quality" or really anything I put any REAL effort into. And that is kind of the point of this post.

So I got 2 sets of Aqua markers, which are watercolor markers. I've not really played with any like these before, and it's been a lot of fun, but I didn't use watercolor paper so I had a lot of pilling, which kept things from going clean and the colors didn't photograph right... so there's that.

I also spent less than 10 min on each of these, cause I'm just seeing what they do. :) (I tell people all the time, just do it! Don't hesitate to post it! Just DO it!)
Neither of these is any good (can you hear my inner critic??? She's a loud mouth isn't she?) and yet I really love both of them, mostly because while I was making them I was having so much fun just PLAYING with my markers. I wasn't worried about making art, it was making itself, I was just having fun.

Earlier this weekend I posted about my spiral art set, which I just love. I've played with it ALL weekend!
And then my I did this with my spiral art set... again... just something really quick to see how it worked.
Again, not more than 10 minutes and it was after midnight when I did it!

Then our other project was creating homemade ice chalk. (and erupting ice chalk!) It's finally going to be gorgeous out and we love chalk here so we thought we'd try something new.   I didn't take many pictures because we were still experimenting... but I will share some of our creations if it worked out right.. and if it did I'll do a post on it. (NOT my creation ... and I will find where I got the idea originally to share with you as well!)
I did snap this shot as I was mixing 1 batch though. Isn't that gorgeous?

Well... What did YOU do this weekend?
I hope you are doing something great!

The rest of my day is going to be spent playing with erupting ice chalk in the driveway with the kids and then making ribeye and shrimp kebabs... YUM! so I think my art with take a backseat today, although I will probably be posting the recipe for my kebabs on my other blog if you're interested. I don't post there very often, but I try and post fairly easy, really tasty food.


In case I don't post tomorrow, Happy Memorial day.
Memorial day is... well... I'll post about that tomorrow ok?
Please remember what the day is about and take a moment at some point to remember.




Only a few days til the challenge kicks off here! Do you want the details in advance or should I post them on the 31st like I was going to?

Ack! It's been a week!

I have an excuse or something. LOL

No, I really don't. I've just been kind of in a funk. I did do some drawing but I didn't like it enough to even finish it, and then I got ready to start a project and kind of "artist blocked" but I think I'm ok now. 

I also spent time playing with the puppy... because LOOK AT THAT FACE!

Plus it's nice out, and I am a SUCKER for nice weather. See my liliacs? I'm working on a sketch for them... but it's not going as well as I'd like. 

And then I broke out my pens and paper again. 

First, the Diva's challenge this week was to use rain. (I'm seriously sick of rain... so I wasn't thrilled with the idea lol) but it did not seem to invoke the results of a rain dance or anything. Plus I like how it turned out. 

So here is my completed piece for Challenge 168.

Then the Tackle it Tuesday challenge was the letter M.

It did not go the way I planned at all, but it's kinda fun and different.
I used

• Meo
• Mak-Rah-Mee
• Merryweather
• Mooka

And then some daisies found their way in there all on their own. 

I posted in a few other places that I'm going to be starting a 30 day challenge in June. I really hope you'll consider participating. It should be fun and I'm going to give something away at the end. 

More details on the 31st though! I don't want to give everything away in advance!

Inspired

I find inspiration in various areas of life... in this instance, from another artist.

So the other day I saw this video.... and it looked like fun. So I watched it again... and then a third time, and then I subscribed to her videos on youtube. You should too.

And when I was done watching,  I drew this, really fast.... because her directions are GREAT! Seriously, it probably took me 10 minutes.

I just kind of thought about how she did it and realized.... I had something else in mind. So I played with it a little bit and now there is this!

Eventually I want to do another one in full color and with a lot of whimsical stuff on the flowers, but for now, drawing this made me really happy.

Where do you get your inspiration from? Or at least.. where did you find inspiration today?