I love the idea of a new monthly challenge, this is great. It's great that SVS is doing something new to encourage us to post and get involved in the social media side of things...I'll try to find the time to enter this.
Love the idea that the winner of each month's contest gets to illustrate the next one too! (wondering whether you'd need to stagger it, so that each winner gets enough time to do a decent illustration...I'm sure you'll figure it out though