Create This Book 2: Episode 5

This one was one of my favorites because I loved creating Eve and Eric! I do the following prompts in this video: Create Seasonal Decor, Create Whatever, Create Bleed, and Create A Border

Create Seasonal Decor

For the Create Seasonal Decor prompt in my Create This Book, I leaned into spring and Easter-inspired artwork with a soft pastel color palette. Instead of focusing on St. Patrick’s Day, I created cheerful seasonal decorations like Easter eggs, a bunny, tulips, a duck, and a basket. I kept the designs simple but tried to give each one a different texture, like felt, wood, ceramic, and wicker. After coloring and cutting out each decoration, I added colorful background patches to make the page feel more lively and playful. This prompt turned into a bright spring sketchbook page full of Easter craft inspiration, pastel marker art, and cozy seasonal nostalgia.

Create Whatever

For the Create Whatever prompt, I used the freedom of the page to make a custom spin-the-wheel character creator. I repurposed an old Chick-fil-A kids’ meal spinner toy, covered it with gesso, painted it in bright pink and blue, and filled each spinning section with random character design options. The smallest wheel included animal types like mammal, water, cold-blooded, and mythical. The next wheel focused on color palettes like rainbow, warm, cool, analogous, opposites, and black and white. The largest wheel included themes such as fruit, elements, patterns, baby, food, space, and anything. This was such a fun interactive sketchbook idea because it turned the prompt into a reusable character generator that can inspire future art challenges, original characters, and creative drawing prompts.

Eve the Moss Beaver

The first character I created with the spin-the-wheel generator was Eve the Beaver, based on the prompt combination of mammal, analogous colors, and an elemental theme. I designed Eve with earthy green, lime, yellow, and brown tones to match her forest-inspired personality. She is a special moss-covered beaver who lives on the cool, shady side of the river where moss grows best. When she sleeps, moss grows around her like a warm blanket, helping her and her friends stay cozy during winter. When Eve is happy, little yellow flowers bloom from the moss on her body, and she loves giving them away to make others smile. This character design was a cute original animal illustration and a great example of how a random art prompt can turn into a full character with a backstory.

Eric the Space Gecko

The second character from the spin-the-wheel generator was Eric the Gecko, inspired by the combination of cold-blooded, opposites, and anything. Since the theme was open-ended, I turned him into a shy little space gecko with purple and yellow complementary colors. Eric lives in outer space, where his species has developed small wings to help them move through zero gravity. Because he is cold-blooded, he likes to stay close to stars for warmth. Even though Eric does not meet other creatures often, he is very sweet and quickly makes friends whenever he does. This prompt became a whimsical space character design with fantasy creature elements, colorful marker blending, and a fun original story.

Create Bleed

For the Create Bleed prompt, I used thin printer paper and markers to intentionally let the colors bleed through the page. I started with a trendy wavy checkerboard pattern, using a limited color palette to keep the design from feeling too overwhelming. Instead of hiding the marker bleed, I used the back side as part of the artwork by turning it into a cozy quilt-inspired design. I outlined random patchwork shapes, left some spaces open to show the bleed-through pattern, and added stitch-like details to make the page feel handmade. This was a fun mixed media art journal idea that transformed a usually frustrating marker problem into part of the finished design.

Create A Border

For the Create a Border prompt, I created a bold painted border instead of cutting shapes directly into the page. Inspired by thick sketchbook borders by Mira Byler, I used a limited palette of yellow, pink, and red to frame the artwork with bright, playful color. Inside the border, I painted juicy strawberries on one side and lemons on the other, keeping the same color palette throughout the entire spread. Since I avoided green, I had to get creative with the strawberry leaves and outline colors, which made the page feel more stylized and fun. The final result looked like a sweet strawberry lemonade-inspired sketchbook page, full of warm colors, fruit illustration, white highlights, and summer art journal energy.