Designed to Color new INSPIRATION challenge sponsored by Fresh Brewed Designs!

GOOOOOOOD Saturday morning, chickens!  are you suffering heatstroke too?  it's ridiculously hot this week in South Jersey and i wish i had a pool so i could just jump in to cool off.

instead, i'm packing boxes and moving things into my new house and running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  yep.  NEW HOUSE!  so exciting, and can't wait to set up my craft room!

right now, i just want to share the brand new Designed to Color challenge because this is my first one as a member of the GLITTER CREW!  yep.  i've been with them since the magazine kicked off, and now we've started this new chapter for the blog and our challenges, and we have some AMAZING sponsors lined up for you!

our June challenge is sponsored by the super fun and cute Fresh Brewed Designs, who offer THIS little guy:

 cute, right?  that's Squeaker's Ride, and you can get him HERE!

here's the inspiration photo for our challenge:

take anything that inspires you from this photo and CREATE!  all we ask is that you colour an image - after all, we are working with stamps and images that are DESIGNED TO COLOR!  :)  i like the newsprint with the pops of colour, particularly the red and blue...  here's what i did with this one:

so take those patterns from a big room, put 'em down to a smaller scale, and voila!  that's what worked for me.  mostly a CAS kinda card here - Squeaker did all the work for me!  ;)

here's the breakdown...

Prismacolor Pencils
Colors: Mouse - 1052, 1054, 935 (nose), 928 (ear); Cheese - 1003, 1094; Car - 924, 1065; Lights - 1069, 917; Tires - 935, 1063, 1061, 1065; Smoke clouds - 1052, 1060
Cardstock: Georgia Pacific (for image), Canvas Corp
Image: Squeaker's Ride (Fresh Brewed Designs)
Elements: patterned paper - Out of Print (BasicGrey); tags - Chic Tags; twine - The Twinery; tape - #849 (love my tapes); pigment ink - Studio G (Hampton Art); bling - Lush (My Mind's Eye); other -
3-d Dots (EK Success)

and that's that!  CLICK HERE to play along with our challenge - you have two weeks to join in the fun!  if you have any Fresh Brewed Designs images, we'd love to see you use them on your project!  if not, that's okay too.  maybe you'll just win some to use on future projects!  :)  have fun, and i'm off to do some moving!

(linked up at Paper Issues for the new "Say Cheese" theme - there's actual CHEESE on the card!)

Monochromatic coloring at Designed to Color - CONTEST #5!

so you caught wind of the fact that there's a MAJOR celebration going on at Designed to Color, right? we are throwing confetti and cutting the cake because we have more than 1000 likes on Facebook, and for a new outfit, that's kind of unheard of! the response has been phenomenal, and we couldn't be more pleased. Carisa, you have come a LONG way in a very short time, and your Color Crew is very proud of you! :) i am totally honored (and always humbled) to be a part of this amazing team.

we have a few FANTASTIC giveaways that are going on right now, so you're going to want to PAY ATTENTION! :)

first of all, there's THIS ONE... follow a few simple steps to get in on the action, and you could win a $20 gift certificate to spend at Paper Makeup Stamps!

next, we have THIS ONE... create something for a celebration, and you'll be eligible to win one of three new and utterly adorbs CLING STAMPS from Stampendous!

then, we have a THIRD CONTEST... lots of ways to enter this one, and you could win a MYSTERY PRIZE from Lil' Inker Designs! they have loads of cute clear stamps and matching dies!

FOURTH CONTEST... a super mysterious MYSTERY BOX, courtesy of Designed to Color! follow the steps to enter, and we promise you will LOVE the goodies that arrive at your doorstep if you're our lucky winner!

and now, we are bringing a FIFTH CONTEST! this time, i'm challenging you to try a technique i've absolutely fallen in love with, and i think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the results when you try it, too! up for grabs is yet ANOTHER mystery prize package (i call it a pack of happy!), and here's what you have to do...

pick an image, any detailed image, and grab all of your markers, colored pencils or paints that are from the SAME color family. use those, and nothing BUT those, to color your image, but you cannot use the greys or browns ('cuz, well, those have been done before, and most of us have rocked that style plenty of times already). choose your greens, purples, reds, pinks, blues, yellows, whatever, and color your image all nice-nice. you might come up with something like this:

(clear stamp is Gifty Gwen from Some Odd Girl)

or maybe this:

(digi is Unicorn Mae from Some Odd Girl)

i've busted out my Prismacolor pencils and used only the pinks for Gwen and the blues for Mae - nothing else! SO much fun to limit yourself and not much thinking involved - just varying shades that are SO easy to blend and layer!

if you choose to finish a project using your monochrome colored image, great! show us what you've got! but it's not necessary for this contest - this one's all about the coloring. share 'em with us HERE, and be sure to submit before the deadline (September 26th), and you might win a pack of happy! :)

so there are PLENTY of reasons to celebrate with us, folks! play along, good luck, and happy coloring! (and if you're not a subscriber, you'll want to check out our FREE PREVIEW of our current issue - there's some GREAT stuff in there... check out Page 9!)

we also have our September sketch challenge going on, and our December/January call for submissions, so stop reading my blog, and off you go! ;)