2017 Animal Art Challenge

UPDATE: Alphabet Animal Art Challenge – 6 months later

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Alphabet Animal Update Title

With the end of June it has officially been six months since the 2017 Art Challenge:  Alphabet Animals has come to a close.  I wanted to do an update since I have used those animals I created in quite a lot of new designs!  One of the goals of the Challenge was to create a library of illustrations I could use in various ways and in that goal I have had much success!  So today I want to share all the creations that I have made since the challenge ended.  If you are hearing about this challenge for the first time you can read the final blog post recap and see ALL the animals.  You can also see the other designs I created last year.

SURFACE PATTERNS

I’ll start with surface patterns.  All these have been created this year, so after the close of the challenge.  Since in many cases I ended up tweaking the animal illustrations I will share a look at the original animal and the pattern side by side!

All of the patterns I have created this year with animals so far have been created specifically for Spoonflower Design Challenges (although one did not end up being entered as you will soon learn).

Modern Farmhouse

Quail Illustration by Brenda Zapotosky

As you can see for this pattern the quail is playing a supporting role. I removed its top plume and did some recoloring to make it more “generic bird” versus a quail specifically.  I really love how it fits in so well with the other farmhouse images I created.  Modern Farmhouse is available in my Spoonflower shop.

Elephants and Polka Dots

Elephant Illustration by Brenda Zapotosky

For the “Endangered Species” Design Challenge I chose to feature my elephant illustration.  I didn’t make many changes to this character.  I changed the toe nail color to white and made the line weights for the facial features a little thicker.  (And overall color changes of course).  Since my elephant already had a unique polka dot detail I decided to build upon that for the pattern.  I actually created 4 different colorways of this design.  The Taupe colorway one you see here is the version that was entered in the contest.  You can find it and the 3 other colorways in my Animal Fun Collection.  This was actually the second time this elephant was selected from the library.  Last year I created a greeting card featuring the elephant!

Hedges and Hedgehogs

Hedgehogl Illustration by Brenda Zapotosky

The idea for this pattern was in my head almost immediately after creating the original hedgehog so I was very excited when the “Animals by Land” Design Challenge was posted giving me the perfect excuse to create it!  I kept the hedgehog mostly the same but tweaked the facial features again on this one, the most noticeable being that I gave it a round eye.  I think it is cuter that way!  The hedges got a bit more colorful too!  Find Hedges and Hedgehogs in my Spoonflower shop!

Mostly Happy X-Ray Tetras

X Ray Tetra Illustration by Brenda Zapotosky

Last but not least is my X-Ray Tetra.  For this one, I kept the pattern simple since there is already a lot of detail in the fish itself.  I did play with adding some polka dots, but I didn’t like them.  I did, however, do a fun little switch-up!  As the title suggests, not ALL these tetras are smiling… I added some frowny ones to the mix and reversed their coloring in places to make them just a bit more distinctive.  This design was created with a contest in mind but was never entered because I got the THEME wrong!!!  I thought it was Animals by/in/of WATER since the previous two contests were Land and Air… but for this one Spoonflower mixed it up and themed it “Animals of the OCEAN”.  Technically tetras are not ocean fish (which I learned through research, I am not a fish expert!) and I did not feel right entering this design.  Oh well… at least it gave me the motivation to create it since this was also a pattern idea I had in my head for a while!  Mostly Happy X-Ray Tetras is also available in my Spoonflower shop.

GREETING CARD

I have created one new card since the close of the challenge.  I have a niece and nephew who both turned 3 in June (cousins, not twins) and I thought the koala was a good pick since it was already holding onto to something making it easy to swap in the number 3. I also changed the hat to a party hat. I left the koala itself the same (even the position of the arms worked as is for the number 3!)

Koala Illustration by Brenda Zapotosky

I was there when my niece opened her card and upon seeing it she recognized it as a koala!  Granted she had recently seen a show that had koalas, but still, it made me really happy to know that my characterization was accurate enough for her to name the animal specifically!  I call that success.  The koala cards joins several other animal cards I created last year which you can find on my Cards and Gift Wrap page.

ARTWORK

The biggest thing (literally) that I created with the animal illustrations is a poster that incorporates ALL of them!  As I mentioned above my niece and nephew turned 3 and I decided that for their gifts I would create this poster.  It was actually quite a bit of work to pull it all together and fit them in a logical way and adding in all the text circles, title, etc.

Alphabet Animals Poster by Brenda Zapotosky SM

In addition to removing all the “props” that were originally paired with I also did some minor re-scaling, both enlarging and reducing scales of some of the animals to get them to work better as an ensemble.  Other than that all the animals except one stayed the same as the original in look and color (all the tweaks I made for the patterns came later).  The one animal that DID get changed was the armadillo since that was my very first illustration and it did not have the same “cute” look that I started with letter B.  Here is the “Before” and “After”.

Armadillo Illustration by Brenda Zapotosky

It was actually my husband who suggested I make them “cuter” after seeing the first animal, armadillo.  I am so happy he did, because it definitely enhances my already slightly cartoon-ish interpretations.  And I am glad I changed up the armadillo for the poster!

It is definitely a bit of a gamble to give the gift of art.  Especially BIG ART that is intended to be hung in someone’s house.  I took that chance because I thought my niece and nephew as well as their parents would like the gift.  And because I expected these to be hung in the kids’ rooms and not the main house.  I am so happy to report that gifts were well received AND have both already been hung!  Here is a look at the posters “in the wild”.

Posters in the Wild

I printed these posters at a standard 20″ x 30″ but sized the poster border proportions to work with a favorite IKEA frame line that I love (Its similar sized frame is 19.75″ x 27.5″). (Seriously, almost every wall frame in my house is from this line).  For the smaller frame on the left (which I framed) I trimmed it to fit the slightly smaller proportioned frame.  My sister opted for the same IKEA frame but with bigger dimensions so it has a mat (on the right).  It is fun to see the two looks side by side.

My husband’s reaction to seeing the poster for the first time was that I should sell them!  After selling greeting cards for a number of years I decided that being a producer really wasn’t for me.  I have been focused for the last several years solely on designing and selling my work where someone else does all the work.  However, these posters, which I am extremely pleased with, have me actually considering maybe selling (on a VERY limited basis) again.  It is just an idea at this point.  I would probably sell them both wholesale and retail if I did.  If you are a retailer or an individual and would be interested please let me know!  If there seems to be enough interest I would start investigating larger quantity printing!

And that about wraps it up!  I anticipate using more of these animals in future design projects.  Do you have a favorite you’d like to see used in something?  I’d love to know!

Thanks for reading!

Brenda

Alphabet Animal Art Challenge: The final recap!

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Alphabet Art Challenge 2017 Final Review by Brenda Zapotosky

Finished!!!!!!!!!!!

That was the elation I felt when I completed the final animal in the Alphabet Animal Art Challenge!  52 weeks, 26 letters, and I created both a prompt list and an animal for ALL of them!  It is quite an accomplishment if I do say so myself, and NOT easy.

I had several reasons/goals/ideas when I first dreamed up this challenge and I am happy to say that I met them (and perhaps even surpassed them!) There is so much to share, in fact, that I hardly know where to begin… (And, if you are just hearing about this challenge for the first time you can read the original post here).

First, the animals!  All 26 of them.  One for every letter of the Alphabet and almost all of them posted within their allotted 2 week time frame!

26 Animal Illustrations by Brenda Zapotosky

It is rather amazing seeing them all together.  Such a wide variety!  The first animal, armadillo, is a bit out of place.  After that first letter, and motivated by a comment from my husband, I decided to go “cuter” with the look of my animals.  I am really glad I did!  I think that I was able to achieve a pretty good consistency of style throughout the year and, scale aside, these animals could work well in combination in addition to solo.  (In fact I plan on tweaking the armadillo to use in a project I have planned). I chose a handful of favorites to create the title art for this post, but honestly, while I definitely have ones I don’t like as much, there is future “potential” for most of these.  One of the great “side effects” of this challenge is that I now have a large library of animal characters ready to use in patterns, greeting cards, and any other sort of art.  In fact, many of them have already been used in these ways, which you will see below.

Next, I wanted to share all the “prompt” posts I did for Instagram.

26 Animal Prompts by Brenda Zapotosky

These were posted every Sunday (except for 1, which got delayed due to some major computer issues I had) to kick off the new letter and give some ideas to get participants started on their next letter. (Of course, after the first quarter most other participants dropped out, but I persevered in sharing the prompts anyways, always in hope of new people joining in!) Each prompt had 7 animals listed. I researched animals and created these letter by letter as the year went along.  You might be surprised to learn that I did NOT check prior to starting the challenge if there even was an animal for every letter of the alphabet.  Honestly, that didn’t matter to me.  I figured there would be an animal for MOST of them and I could always use adjective descriptors for a letter that did not have an animal.  It turned out, however, that every letter DID have an animal!!!  And in fact, I was able to fill all 7 “slots” on my prompt list for every letter (although for Y some of them are “adjective Y” animals)!  It was a bit of work putting together the lists but it was also fun.  I liked looking up the letter and discovering new and interesting animals.

As I mentioned above, I have built up an impressive library of illustrations that I can now use for other design projects.

Surface Pattern Design: I have ideas for patterns for many of the animals I have created, but so far I have only created one seamless pattern.  It features the flamingo and is titled:  Flamingos and Flowers. This design is now available as part of the Floridian Collection in my Spoonflower Shop.

Flamingos and Flowers Pattern Promo by Brenda Zapotosky

Greeting Cards:  I also created several greeting cards, basically on an “as needed” basis as occasions popped up throughout the year.  So far I have created 5 different greeting card designs, 2 of which, the elephant and owl, have 2 different color variations (I chose to only include 1 color version of each card below but you can see the other elephant here and the other owl here).
Animal Greeting Cards by Brenda Zapotosky

I think it would be fun to do some coordinating patterns for these as well.  I am particularly found of the Birthday Owl!

Onto my final thoughts:

  • One of my goals was to force myself to be creative on a regular basis.  This challenge definitely achieved that goal!  There were definitely times when I really did not want to create an animal for a particular letter, but since I committed to the challenge I did.  I am very happy for that.
  • Another goal was to improve my animal drawing skills.  Character design does not come easy to me, so this was a great way for me to grow that skill set.  I think some animals were more successful than others, but even my least favorites gave me good practice.
  • If I am disappointed with any part of the challenge, it was the dropping out of most of the participants after the first quarter.  I totally get it… it was hard for ME to keep up sometimes and I created the challenge!  But I did miss that social aspect of it.

I think that’s it!  It is a little weird to be done with this challenge.  But I am excited to move on to a new subject matter!  I announced the 2018 Alphabet Art Challenge theme a few weeks ago:  Fruits and Vegetables!  It will be a nice change of pace.  I would love for you to join me!

Thanks for reading!  I would love to hear which animal is YOUR favorite!  You can comment below.

Brenda

Alphabet Animal Art Challenge: T-Z

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The final group of letters for the Alphabet Animal Art Challenge is complete!  It is so exciting to be finished!  I considered combining the last quarter letter’s recap with an overall end of the challenge post, but for consistency purposes (and blog post length) I have decided to keep them separate.  So look for a final recap on the entire challenge coming (hopefully) later this week!

There were 7 animals in this final group.  Here is a look at all of them:

Animals Animals Letters T thru Z by Brenda Zapotosky

This was not my favorite batch, and included some of the most challenging animals from the entire year.  Even though I initially planned on avoiding fish (since I have drawn MANY in the past), for the letter X it ended up being my favorite choice, and it is definitely one of my favorite from this batch.

X is for X Ray Tetra by Brenda Zapotosky

I also really like how the Urial turned out! It is too bad it is a more obscure animal, not sure if/how I could really use him in the future.

U is for Urial by Brenda Zapotosky

I think another reason this round was more difficult, especially at the end, was the lack of time due to all the extra Christmas prep and activities etc. that I was doing.  More complex animals to draw (like the Yak and Zebra) combined with a time crunch equals less fun in my book.  One of the goals of this challenge was to force myself to be regularly creating new art, and it DEFINITELY did that.

During this last quarter I also created one new greeting card design using an animal from the previous batch, the raccoon:

Merry Christmas Raccoon Card by Brenda Zapotosky

I switched up his colors, added mittens, and placed him on some snow to give him a Christmas make-over!  (You can see the original version of the raccoon here.) This was a SUPER quick card design squeezed in to give to my husband for Christmas.  In the future, if I wanted to use the card again, I’d like to spend a bit more time on it, and use my own original font.  I am also considering a Christmas surface pattern featuring this guy and maybe a few other woodland animals.

That’s it for this round!  I have a ton of thoughts about the challenge overall which I will share in the final recap!  In the meantime, I’d love to hear which animal was YOUR favorite this round!

Thanks for reading!

Brenda

ps.  In case you missed it, I announced the theme for the 2018 Alphabet Art Challenge a few posts back!  Super excited for a new year and a new topic!  I would love for you to join me!

Alphabet Animal Art Challenge: N-S

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Hi folks!  I am back with the third recap in my year-long Alphabet Animal Art Challenge. 3/4 of the way through!  If this is your first time learning about the challenge you can see my original post here.  And recaps 1 and 2 here and here.

Let’s start with a look at the 6 animals I created for this portion of the challenge:

Alphabet Animals Letters N to S by Brenda Zapotosky

3 birds and 2 sea creatures in the mix. Very interesting.  Not sure if I can narrow down a favorite.  Instead I’ll make it a tie and choose both the nautilus and the peacock!  Here is a closer look at both of those:

N is for Nautilus by Brenda Zapotosky

P is for Peacock by Brenda Zapotosky

I don’t know how “marketable” the nautilus is to use for other things, but I just love him! The peacock on the other hand would be fun to incorporate into a pattern or a card.  I particularly love his fat belly and his feathers!  I could see a coordinating pattern using just those ovals from his feathers.

I have used one of the animals so far in a greeting card design.  The owl!  Here is a look at the super cute birthday card I designed in 2 colorways:

Owl Birthday Cards by Brenda Zapotosky

I especially love the new colorway I did for the second card with the pink and teal.  It would be fun to do a whimsical geometric owl collection using these two colorways.

Final thoughts:

This round was the same as most of the rest in that some animals were easier than others.  I write about my thoughts about each creation individually when I post them on my Instagram feed so I won’t bother rehashing that here.  One thing that is interesting:  I did not give any of these animals names!  I am big time into naming things so it is a little bit surprising that not even one was named.

With only 7 letters left, I anticipate some challenges in this final quarter.  I normally don’t research the next letter until I am ready to do my prompt post shortly before the Sunday I post it, so I really haven’t looked to see what my selection will be for the upcoming letters.  I can think of a few, but not many.  I have a hunch it will be slim pickings and possibly some creativity involved to get an animal for the rest of the letters (or else being force to draw something either really obscure or not very fun). The adventure continues!

I guess that wraps it up!  I’d love to hear from you in the comments.  Which animal was your favorite this round?

As always, thanks for reading!

Brenda

 

Alphabet Animal Art Challenge: G-M

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Well folks, we have officially reached the halfway point of the Alphabet Animal Art Challenge and it is time for the second recap for the year!  As time has progressed, I have found that participation from other artists is dwindling.  Bummer? Yes.  But… this began first and foremost as a personal challenge to myself and alone or with a crowd, I will continue until the end!  I certainly miss seeing other’s people work inspired by the letter prompts, but I totally get the difficulty of sticking with any challenge for a full year!  Honestly, it has been hard for me for a few of these letters to want to spend the time creating anything, especially when I was uninspired by the choices.  If not for my determination to stick to my goal I might have stopped too!  (Or at least skipped some letters).  But I persevered and am happy I did. Today I am sharing a look at the second batch of animals, G-M, and sharing some designs I created that incorporate animals from both the first and second round of creations.

Letters G-M  There was definitely a lag in excitement when I hit the middle of this batch. Letters I and J were not very inspiring to me.  I came up with the idea to do multiple insects for I, which ended up kind of fun.  But J… the jellyfish you see here was actually just a re-working of an old illustration (and then scaled twice to create 3  different sized ones).  Thankfully the Koala helped me get some of my enthusiasm back!

Alphabet Animals Letters G to M by Brenda Zapotosky

I think my favorite of this batch is the Hedgehog.  I would definitely like to create a pattern for him using a maze of green hedges!

H is for Hedgehog by Brenda Zapotosky

Pattern and Cards:  So far I have incorporated 4 different animals from the challenge into either cards or a pattern.  These include my giraffe from this batch of illustrations and 3 other animals from my first round  (Letters A-F) of illustrations.  I absolutely love that I am building a library of animal illustrations, in my style, that are all ready to be used in other ways.

I created a seamless pattern with my flamingo for the Birds and Blooms Design Challenge on Spoonflower.  I absolutely love the bright, happy palette and am in the process of creating an entire collection around the signature print:  Flamingos and Flowers.

Flamingos and Flowers Pattern Promo by Brenda Zapotosky

The collection is not finished yet, but you can find the first two coordinates of Floridian, as well as the flamingo print available now in my Spoonflower shop.

I also created some greeting cards using my animal art designs too!

Animal Art Greeting Cards by Brenda Zapotosky

The cat card was a birthday card for my husband.  The giraffe card was actually a MOTHER’S day card (my mom loves giraffes) but I kept the greeting on the front generic to give it better flexibility for future use.  I had both a niece and nephew turn 2 in June, so I actually did 2 different colorways of the elephant card.  In my “girl” version (below) the elephant has pink toenails like in the original illustration, although in a brighter shade of pink!

Birthday Elephant Greeting Card Pink by Brenda Zapotosky

These cards were a lot of fun to put together.  I could see an entire line of animal cards along with maybe some matching gift wrap being developed at some point.  For now, I am enjoying creating them as the need arises.

Overall, I will call round 2 a success!  It is quite incredible how many different animals there really are!  I have discovered many “new to me” animals along the way.  Next up is the letter N, which marks the beginning of the second half of the alphabet.  So if you wanted to join me, or jump back in if you started and fell behind, this is a great time to start!!!

And be sure to follow me on Instagram, to see each animal as I finish them and see the reminder posts and animal idea prompts each fortnight!

Thanks for reading!

Brenda

Alphabet Animal Art Challenge: A-F

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Hey art fans!  Bringing you a little recap today of the progress for the Alphabet Animal Art Challenge I started at the beginning of the year.  If you missed the original post you can find it here.  We have now made it through the first six letters:  A-F!  (And are currently in the midst of the two week time frame for the letter G).  Here is a look at the first 6 animals I chose to create:

Alphabet Animals A thru F by Brenda Zapotosky

So far I am very happy that I embarked on this journey.  I have really stretched myself with some of these characters.  It is forcing me to step outside the box. Here are some thoughts as I reflect on the challenge to this point:

  • Looking back on the first six characters you might notice that the armadillo looks a little different than the rest.  I decided after I created him that I wanted to try for a more “cute” look to my characters and to be a little more playful with them.  I think this has been achieved!
  • I have no idea why I chose bats for the letter B.  It seems a weird choice to me now, although I did have fun creating their “looks”.
  • I thought the deer would be the most difficult for me but in the end it was actually the elephant that caused me the most trouble.  She is actually my favorite so far though, so completely worth the effort!
FIXED E is for Elephant by Brenda Zapotosky
Eleanora the Elephant

Overall, I think I am starting to have a nice collection of characters to add to my portfolio and future projects!  Ideas for incorporating them into seamless patterns are already running through my mind.

I am especially excited about how many others have joined in the fun!  I absolutely LOVE seeing them pop up in the #alphabetanimalart2017 tag on instagram.  Such a wonderful collection of creativity in a wide array of styles!   Here is a look at some of the stand-out designs that were posted for the letters A-F:

I’ll start with the letter A.  And first up is an alligator by Noa of worldofpineapple.  I love the bold colors she chose for her illustration and the clever way she made her letter “A” match her animal.

Print

Guncha from gunchakumar chose an Ant for her letter A.  I love how she decided to have him pose with the letter itself!  (Looks like the A is barely staying put!)

Ant by Guncha small

Next is the Letter B and for this one I have 2 different beavers to share!

Tina from tinatidesign created this adorable beaver!  I love his over-sized teeth:  Perfect for gnawing down the toughest of wood (or carving a pencil-like log!)

Beaver by Tina Ti small

Nehal Desai of designedbynehal also created an adorable beaver. He looks so innocent holding that little branch!  Love her color choices and the tones and subtle textures she achieved.

Beaver by Nehal Desai small

Onto the letter C!  Stacey of peppypattern created a happy crab!  I am a big fan of hatching and fills and I love how she creatively combined them with subtle color variations on its legs.

Crab by peppypattern small

For the letter D we not only have a dog, but it is a dachshund!  (Double letter D) This stunning illustration was created by Jill of jillbyersdesign.  She has placed each of her animals in a lovely scene.  I absolutely love the old German town setting she chose for her dachshund (and his matching lederhosen)!

Dog by Jill Byers small

Last but not least is Brooke from the busybdesignstudio.  Brooke is one of my “real world” friends and we met through the world of architecture (Me, buildings, Brooke, landscape).  I have loved seeing Brooke’s animals for this challenge and discovering a whole other artistic style she has! My favorite of her posts so far is this lovely elephant she has named Esme.  The flower crown she gave her is the perfect delicate touch of feminine.

Elephant by Brooke Slater small

You might notice I have not included any outside artist’s work for the letter F.  Sadly, enthusiasm for the challenge has dwindled as the weeks have progressed and there was not a really another F candidate from an artist not already shown here. (I made the decision to only chose one work by each artist).  I really hope that after this post there will be a renewed enthusiasm for the challenge because as I said earlier I have really loved seeing what others have created!  And if you are new to the challenge (or perhaps got a little lasped in your posts) feel free to jump right in at any letter!  We are currently on the letter G!

I hope you have enjoyed this recap and all the animal creations both here and on instagram!  Excited what comes in the next batch of letters!

Happy creating!

Brenda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alphabet Animal Art Challenge

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2017-animal-art-challenge-by-brenda-zapotosky

I am excited to announce a challenge I am creating for 2017!  It is a personal challenge for me, but I am really hoping that others will join in the fun.  I love all the fun “special” art creation events I see on Instagram throughout the year.  Events like Inktober or month long drawing prompts, etc.   But to be honest, most of them are intimidating in terms of commitment.  Truth is, I really don’t want to commit to something that makes me draw or create everyday.  As a freelancer, sometimes my work time is spent creating new art, but that is just one portion of a bigger picture.  That being said, I would really like challenge myself creatively.  So I came up with a more moderate challenge, tailor made to help me grow in an area that I would like to improve upon: creating animal characters!  Thus, the “Alphabet Animal Art Challenge” was born!  (Say that 3 times fast… ok, I did, it actually isn’t that hard… ha ha ha).

I love this concept for a few reasons:

  1.  By using the 26 letter Alphabet as my structure, it fits perfectly to a 52 week year!  One animal, per letter, every 2 weeks = 52 weeks in total, and 26 new characters created by the end of the year!
  2. There are enough animals that even within the limits of a single letter, there are a lot of options for most of the weeks (we’ll tackle Q and X when we get to those!)
  3. The 2 week time frame gives plenty of time to create without feeling pressured or rushed!

Note, this is not a DRAWING challenge.  You can absolutely draw your characters by hand if you want.  But if you prefer creating digitally go for it!  Painting?  Of course!  You could even do collage animals if you’d like.  I wanted as little restrictions as possible.  So feel free to create your animals in whatever medium you most prefer (or multiple mediums if you want to try new techniques throughout the year.)

Here is the structure of how things will work.  Since 2017 starts on a Sunday, that will be the day I will be posting a reminder on Instagram that a new 2-week period has begun.  I’ll share the letter and some animal ideas to get you started.  You can share the animal you create anytime during the two week period. I hope to post mine near the end of the time period.  I am assigning 2 hashtags to put with your posts:  #alphabetanimalart2017 and #alphabetanimals  So be sure to use those when you post.

This is not a contest or giveaway.  There aren’t any prizes.  This is merely a fun way to motivate yourself to create some new art and connect with others that are doing the same. I would like to do a blog post quarterly to share what has been created so far, so there is a chance I might ask to share one of your animals here on my blog!  (But I can only find you if you use the right hashtags!)

Thanks in advance for following along!  And I really hope some others join in the creating fun!

Brenda

PS.  If you aren’t already following me on Instagram you can find me here.