Happy October 1st!

If you've visited here for a while you all know how much I love fall, especially Halloween. Well today is October 1st...the start of lots of fun challenges, two of which I enjoy participating in if I have time.

The first is 31 Days of Halloween!!  Ahhh yes, could it get any better? Probably not but  I didn't have time to work ahead so I'm pretty sure I won't be able to hit every day but I'm going to post as much as possible.  Lost Coast Design Team is also participating in this challenge so if you'd like to follow along there to see what everyone created you're more than welcome :)

The second is a challenge which I started participating in 2 years ago. InkTober... a challenge to draw something every single day of October in ink. The first year I dabbled here and there, last year I made a drawing every single day of the month and really enjoyed it and this year I am planning on drawing every day as well.   

Honest Review here....(I bought this out of my own pocket...nobody paid me to do this).

Art Snacks puts out a special "InkTober" limited edition collection which I hadn't purchased in the past. I did order it this year though and I'm on the fence about it. You know I'm pretty frugal (a.k.a. - Cheap!) which is why I'm not sure it's such a great deal. They say it's over $100.00 worth of products and a 25.00 class from Jake Parker - 125.00 total - for 79.00 + 8.20 shipping (87.20).

You know me - I went through and calculated it up and took the median cost of the items if purchased individually (mostly from DickBlick, Jerry's or WalMart - didn't even look at Amazon) and it came up to $60.00 + the 25.00 for the class so a total of $85.00...$40.00 short of the 100.00 mark. That's not too bad until you consider they are buying it wholesale so they probably paid about 30.00 for the product plus the class so about 55.00 total...hmmmm.  

For me I'm not sure it was worth it because I have all of the pen/ink items they sent - I didn't have the markers but I don't use markers much so the jury is out on those. The paper and sketchbook are nice - actually really nice - so much so that I'm afraid to use them. I'm afraid I'm going to mess them up so I am going to continue to draw in the sketchbook I bought last year - LOL!!

 Below are photos of what was included...

List of Prompts plus a note from Jake Parker (the guy who started InkTober).

KingArt Dual Tip Brush Pens
Plumchester 8x8 sketch book

Arnhem Paper
White Gelly Roll Pens, Copic Pen, Speedball Dip Pen & Ink

and an InkTober Sticker which is cool.

So there you go...you can judge for yourself.

I'll be back later today with an InkTober post as well as

a card for the 31 Days of Halloween :)  See you then!