Coloring in My Coloring Books for Inktober

If you have been around this blog long enough, you will know that I get excited for craft challenges. I like the idea of pushing myself a little each day to explore new mediums or master old ones. So this year, I have been thinking about Inktober. What is Inktober you ask? Jake Parker created Inktober in 2009 as a challenge to improve his inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. It has since grown into a worldwide endeavor with thousands of artists taking on the challenge every year.

Another thing you might know about me is I like to stretch challenges to fit my needs whether it’s a reading or crafting challenge, I always find a way to make it work for me.

So I am stretching this challenge to include my colored pencils and inks in my coloring books. That way I can also meet one of my personal goals which is to color more of my coloring books. Which we all know I have quite a large collection.

For the Inktober challenge you are supposed to draw each day. So I went through my coloring books and found one that might make the challenge less challenging for me. It is called. Matchstick Mouse – A Halloween coloring book and Matchstick Mouse – An Autumn coloring book. The images are really small and simple. So I might be able to complete one in a day or two.

Despite the fact that I am starting late, I will try to post a few days a week of the pages I color in this book for the remainder of the month.

Let’s see how many I can complete by the end of October. Let me know if you are participating in this challenge.

Happy coloring!

A New 2021 Coloring Book Challenge

10 books to color in 2021

You all know how much I enjoy my coloring books. However, new releases continue to saturate the market and I am always willing to add a new book to my collection. The problem is that I have quite a pile of untouched books.

Online, in the adult coloring community, I find that I am not alone and some people have set a goal to color in at least 10 of their untouched books. I decided that I wanted to join in on this challenge in hopes that I can make some progress in my coloring book collection.

Above are 8 of the books I need to color in before years end. I have started coloring in the Exhale book last weekend. So I am on my way.

I believe I bought the book above 2 years ago directly from the artist. The images are so beautiful and I think that self-talk has kept me from coloring in the book for fear of “ruining” such a beautiful book. But this year, I am going to make it happen.

I just purchased this one recently and I can’t wait to dive in and color the images. It’s so wonderful to have a coloring book with black women in it and having plants in it is a bonus.

So my goal is by the end of this year I will have completed a page or two in each book. I will be sure to update you on my progress.

Happy crafting!

30-Day Coloring Challenge – Day 1

Hello Everyone! I don’t know what I am thinking because June is a busy month but I am always up for a challenge. From June 1 – 30th is the 30-day coloring challenge created and hosted by none other than Kathy Racoosin at The Daily Marker. What I decided to do this time around is write a post three days in so that I have time to color, photograph and write a post before pushing it live. I also think I will limit this challenge only to colored pencils since I have some really amazing new coloring books that I absolutely have to color.  This is from Day 1 which was on Saturday. I convinced my youngest, to help me kick off the challenge by coloring with me.  He is coloring in one of my old coloring books that contain a bunch of mandalas. I helped him select a color scheme and he dove in. I think I will try to get him to color with me on another day too because although he didn’t want to admit it, he was having fun coloring and chatting with me. I chose the “In My Garden” coloring book. I am always discovering more about myself each time I sit to create. What I noticed was I gravitated to this smaller book to kick off the challenge. There is something comforting about a smaller canvas. It’s not too small it’s more of mid-range size about 8×8. So it’s fun to hold and easy to turn while coloring. I used one of my pre-made color swatches that I created a few weeks back to help me with my color selection. I find them so handy and when I use them the pages always look more cohesive.

I will be back tomorrow with day two.

Happy coloring!

Belinda

30 Day Coloring Challenge #4: Day 12: Forever my Valentine Card

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Hello my craft-lovin’ friends! It’s day 12 of the color challenge and I am still at it. Yesterday was a long day and so I was unable to complete my card. So this morning I was on a mission to finish coloring my image and pull together a Valentine’s day card.

One of the fun things about this craft is that from time to time, you get faced with a mistake that you must find a creative workaround to make them work. Sometimes, It might be my color combinations don’t work as planned, sometimes, it’s a stamping error, etc. Well I printed up multliple digi images on Copic paper to color for various projects. Sometimes I print them up with space for me to incorporate a drawn background and other times, I lay them out so that I can maximize the amount I can fit on a sheet with the intention of fussy cutting them out after I color them. Well in haste, I forgot to print a test view to see if everything fit on the page. So the balloon on this image was clipped.  I don’t like to waste paper and products so as a rule I find a way to make it work for the project or use on another to avoid wasting anything.

day12aSo I pushed the imaged flush right and cut off a little more of the balloon to line up with the right edge of the card.  Problem solved!! I also designed two sentiment designs (love, forever) on my Silhouette and played around to ensure the digi when cut out, would fit nicely with the word. I used the print and cut feature on my Silhouette (yes I use a Cricut cutting mat – don’t judge) to cut out the cards and then placed the image on each to see which sentiment I would use for this card.

day12bI ended up using the ‘Forever’ sentiment and matted it on American Crafts ‘Everyday’ patterned paper.

I think I might just use this card for my husband. That way I can still see her cute face around the house!

It’s really cold here (18 degrees) and I am thinking of stopping work early, making tea and grabbing my book and heading to my reading nook for a little comfort.

I will be back tomorrow for day 13!

Have a lovely weekend!

Belinda

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