Every now and again, the Little Troubles team organizes a gift exchange for participating artists. It works just like a secret santa, and this time it was themed around Summer vacation. We each submitted our Summer experiences, past or current, which acted as the prompt for the art we'd get from our assigned artists. That art would then be made into cards to be printed as part of the game's set.

You can see more about the game over at littletroubles.com.

My assigned recipient was Plant Panda, whose prompt talked about the deserts near their parents house that they loved to explore, enjoying the plant life found there. I decided to play with the idea of a literal "Baby Saguaro," which poor little Plant fell afoul of just because of their curiosity.

As I later found out, they seem to have a knack for getting pricked by the cacti they care for, so the pieces were truer to life than I was expecting. 😊

It also turned out that some other artists had to drop out of the exchange, which left Melly Moona without anyone to make their gift art. Basil kindly offered a bounty for someone to fill the gap, and not wanting to leave her with nothing, I went for it.

Her Summer experience was a long road trip, where she got to stay in and see various places. Seemed to make sense to me that long stretches of road would cause anxiety for someone who might struggle with potty breaks, which led to this idea.

She said that this is how she looks during car rides, so I'll definitely chalk this one up as a win as well. 💝

And here's the set I got! BottleBear treated me and Garnet to an absolutely precious set of scenes that about perfectly summed up my experiences lately. I submitted Garnet's reference sheet along with my request because she was involved in many of my adventures this Summer, but I expected (and specified) that her inclusion was optional, and only nice-to-have.

Either way - and needless to say - I was extremely happy with what Bottle cooked up for us, and it gave us lots of cozy, sweet feelings to enjoy together. I especially enjoyed how he played with my bun-to-pup transition in both illustrations, and love how adorable I look snuggled up to her. 💝

These were posted with permission, and you can find BottleBear over on SubscribeStar as well as many other places besides. Please do check him out.