When the Challenge is Too Challenging

I’ve been a fan of Gail’s wonderful Mind Wide Open blog since it began, and haven’t missed a single monthly challenge.  Sure, some of the images have been a little more challenging than others, but I always managed to come up with at least one workable idea in the seven days we’re allotted.

Then came this one – the hardest yet.  I suspect my brain was less than fully engaged when I first saw this image, because for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it was.

My first thought was, okay, so Gail has finally gone off the deep end and given us a fuzzy duck with a striped neck.  (Why is he looking at me like that?  What does he want from me?!)

Eventually I did realize what this is supposed to be (I’d make a great Rorschach test subject, apparently), but it didn’t help matters any.  Inspiration was slow in coming, and as the deadline loomed, I began to panic a little.  What few ideas I mustered were complete duds.  I like working with, as Gail herself put it, “pretty” images, like vintage women and children and flowers and birds.

So, in the end, I kinda cheated.  On the last day of the challenge, I came across this hinged wooden box at the thrift store  and inspiration struck.  I did use the image, so technically I followed the rules of the challenge. Rendering it unrecognizable, however, is probably stretching the rules…maybe just a teeny, tiny bit?  But, by golly, I refuse to miss a challenge, no matter what it takes!

 (Sorry, Mr. Stripey-Necked Duck.)

Daughter

I don’t have any kids of my own, but I do love using pictures of them in my artwork.  This week the challenge over at Mind Wide Open provides this gorgeous image and the word prompt “daughter.”

Isn’t she lovely?  This is one of my top-three favorites so far. 

I decided to play around with the image in my photo editing program, tweaking the hue and saturation to brighten it up a little.  Once I did so, I realized the colors were a perfect match to some fat quarters I bought a few months ago to decorate my laptop bag.  I’d had a vague idea of making an artsy patchwork of some kind and wanted bright colors to play off the black bag.  Then I was struck with feline inspiration for the bag, and no longer had a use for those fabrics.  Until now!

I’m not a seamstress by any means, and most “traditional” fabric projects I attempt turn out really awful less than stellar.  But once I got myself into the mindset of treating the fabric as if it were paper, with stitching as the adhesive instead of glue, I was able to whip out this wall hanging in a couple of hours.  (Don’t look too closely at the amateurish stitching!  And if you do, tell yourself I meant for it to look like that.  It’s artistic, dang it!)  I made it like a quilt, adding batting and a backing and stitching all the layers together around the edge, which gives it a nice “weight” and sturdiness.

Check out the Mind Wide Open blog starting on the 9th, where you can see all the entries for this month’s challenge. It’s always intriguing to see how different artists create with the same image.  And don’t forget to vote for your favorite!

New Compositions

This time of year, school composition books are cheap and plentiful, and they’re so much fun to decorate.  I recently finished one for a Halloween challenge. 

My favorite contests are those in which the entrants are limited in some way, as to the materials, theme, etc.  In the Halloween challenge, we could make anything we wanted, but had to incorporate a Jack o’ Lantern, a page from a book, the date Oct. 31 and the shape of a star.  I had actually forgotten about the “star” requirement until my comp book was done.  After an initial, ”Awwww, man!” at the prospect of starting over, it occurred to me I could fix it simply by replacing the smallest of the layered flowers in the corner with a star.  Voila!

I didn’t make the second book for any particular reason except that I love the image of the lady, who actually very strongly resembles a former colleague who left work a few months ago to have a baby. 

The original image already had the wings, but I added a crown because I thought she needed it.  Of course, this might have something to do with the fact that I think everyone needs a crown lately.  I have lots of crown stamps, stickers and rub-ons and use them whenever humanly possible.  Or not humanly, given that I just put crowns on a couple of horses.  This was for a swap called “altered anything,” in which we send an object to our partner, who alters it and sends it on to her partner.  I sent my partner a cigar box; she will alter it and send it to someone else.  My partner sent me this horse-themed switchplate, which I will send to the person I sent the cigar box to.  Eventually, the person who sent me the switchplate will send me something she has altered that she got from someone else.  (It’s far less complicated than I’ve explained, I’m sure.)

It would have been convenient to just cover the entire switchplate and start from scratch, but I think my partner would have sent a plain one if she expected it to be as easy as that!  So I did what any reasonable person would do when faced with the task of altering a picture of horses: gave them wings and crowns.

Also, they are now standing in a field of glittery poppies.

(Wicked Witch of the West: “Poppies.  Poppies will make you sleep…”)

I think we could all use a rest after seeing those “fairy princess” horses, don’t you?

Grin and Bear It

I don’t normally have helpers in my studio (barring the elves that move stuff while I’m asleep – please, has anyone seen my chipboard?), but I just knew my entry for the monthly challenge over at Mind Wide Open would be all the better for having some furry friends pitch in.

This week I’m hosting two “traveling bears” here in Florida.  It was a coincidence that both are here at the same time, but really interesting!  The bears spend a week with each host, having as much fun as they can bear (okay, I promise not to do that again) and then they move on to a new adventure.

Saffron arrived from Chicago wearing an adorable sweater, which she promptly removed once she realized it was going to be in the 90s the entire time she was here.  She had not done any artwork before, but caught on pretty quickly.   We decided to decorate a composition book for the challenge, since they are plentiful at this time of year.

Saffron was so into the painting!  She reached a kind of meditative zen state, becoming “one with the paintbrush” (at least that’s how she described it).  Then it was time to give Koda a chance.  He was a little wilder with the paint than the contemplative  Saffron; it was touch and go for awhile on whether we’d run out of paper towels.  Still, he did a nice job, despite his mild complaints about the “girly” design.

Once the bears had cleaned up and were safely out of harm’s way, I finished the book with flowers, gems and a gold border sticker.  Koda insisted that I give the girl a crown, and Saffron liked the idea of adding some Lumiere pink/gold halo paint.  I’m glad I took their advice!

Voting begins on the Mind Wide Open blog on August 9th.  Come check out the other entries - there are always some dazzlers! – and vote for your favorite by August 15th.

Happy Birthday, Mind Wide Open!

So one of my favorite blogs is a year old now.   Hard to believe Gail has been challenging us every month for a full year already.  I don’t remember doing 12 of these, but it must be so!  Congrats, Gail, on a fabulous blog, and thank you for challenging us to push our artistic limits.

I say this every month (practically), but this image is the best yet.  I love fairies, love the color scheme and love the word prompt, which is “contentment.”

When pondering what to make, I had the idea that the fairy would look cute on a “real” flower, since she is sitting on a dandelion in the picture.  So I made a little bouquet, decorated the leaves with the background from the image and added sparkly fibers and little gems and a crown to the fairy.  You can’t see it in the photo, but the fairy’s wings and the leaves are enhanced with an awesome gel pen called “clear star,” which adds a colorless, glittery sparkle.  (I love this pen more than ice cream!)

I was originally going to “plant” the bouquet in a small glass jar that had held paper flowers, but I couldn’t think of a way to get it to stand upright.  Then it occurred to me that the wrapped stems would fit perfectly in the hole of a thread spool.  I chose a vintage spool of pale yellow (how do I know it’s vintage? It has an 18-cent price tag on it!) and then glued a few white maribou feathers around the stem as an homage to the original dandelion “pouf.”

Does she look content to you?

Wish

That’s the word prompt for this month’s challenge over at Mind Wide Open.  The image is that of a wistful little girl and the colors are quite lovely.  Dude and I went out of town on the last day this was due and I almost forgot to make something!  (Perish the thought!)  I haven’t missed a Mind Wide Open challenge yet, and don’t ever hope to.  It’s my favorite challenge site, which is quite something considering how many there are!

Anyway, I finally got into my studio only three hours before the deadline, so I decided to make a fairly simple collage.  I got the flowers in a kit from a monthly club (which I’ve since dropped) and they’ve been sitting on my table because they were too big to fit in my flower drawer.  The colors happened to go really well with the image, especially after I rubbed some ink on the stem (Ranger color “raisin.”  Don’t you love colors that are also foods?)

The tags were made by using a square punch first, then punching the tag out around it.  I cut up another of the images to put in the tag openings so they’d be certain to match without my having to search through my stash of papers.

The background is a sheet of scrapbook paper that I’m pretty sure I bought in the mid 90s, back when Hot Off the Press was one of the few companies that made it, the only size you could get was 8-1/2 x 11 and nobody had yet even dreamed of putting flowers and bling on a page, much less poke in a brad or set an eyelet.  Those were the Dark Ages of paper crafting, my friends.  Some day I’ll tell you more about those bad old days, but in the meantime let’s revel in the fact that it only took ten years for the crafting industry to come up with self-stick gems (my current favorite embellishment).

It Must Have Been the Sprinkles

I won a cupcake ATC contest over on Swap-Bot!

How cute are those prize ribbons, anyway? Many thanks to the hostess, “HelloZombie” (whose avatar, a clearly undead Hello Kitty, is one of my favorites on the site) and congrats to the two runners-up!

Paris in Spring

That’s the prompt for this month’s challenge over at Mind Wide Open, along with an image that’s all brown and pink and gold and very French and, for some reason, reminds me of a box of chocolates. (Truffles, of course.)

When I sat down to start creating (mere hours before the deadline, as usual), I had in mind the old-fashioned, fancy-schmancy candy boxes with all the ruffles and flowers and ribbons and such. I seem to remember at least one of those from my childhood; though I don’t know if it belonged to my mother or grandmother. Or perhaps I imagined the whole thing.

I just knew I’d find a use for that cream-colored crepe paper I found at the thrift store!  (PS: Pleating crepe paper takes rather more time than you’d expect.)

Keepin’ it Flat

This month at Mind Wide Open, the challenge image is absolutely lovely.  (I probably say this every month.  But they always are!)  This time the word prompt is “moments.”

I decided to decorate a small wire-bound notebook to keep in my purse.  I’m always looking for something to write on, so this will come in handy.  Because it will get bumped around a lot, I neeeded to keep everything relatively flat, non-breakable and not likely to make a mess.  So out the window went flowers, gems, glitter, ribbon – y’know, all that stuff I normally can’t create without!  Instead I did a lot of painting, inking, stenciling and stamping and finished with many layers of decoupage medium and matte finish spray.  I used a black marker to write the quote: “If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.”

Once in a Blue Moon

That’s about how often I “scrapbook.”  I don’t have that many photos and I’m just not that good at it.  (BTW, it kills me that “scrapbook” has become a verb.  It just seems rather silly, like a pilot explaining that he “airplanes” or a baker saying that he “cakes.”)

Speaking of cakes (nice segueway, huh?), I just discovered what is probably the most hilarious blog in existence.  Which, since it recently won an award for being so, isn’t just me blowin’ smoke.  For a change.  If you have a few hours to kill (you will need them, because once you start you won’t be able to stop unless and until large burly men remove you from in front of your computer and/or you actually fall asleep), check out Cakewrecks.  It has been years since I laughed so hard I spilled tears and actually stopped breathing a few times, but once you reach November, 2008 and see the turkey cake which looks like “an odd smiley face with its hair on fire,” you may have the same reaction.

Anyway!  Moving on.  The whole point of this was to mention that I actually made a scrapbook page.  Over at Bad Girls Kits, they started up a monthly challenge to make something using only the kit’s contents.  I do love a challenge, so why not?  “Scrapbook” I did.  Everything on this page came from the monthly kit, with the exception of the dots of copper glitter along the edge of the circle.  This is my niece, Ashley, at age eight, a picture I’ve used in a few other projects because it’s one of my favorites.  My brother’s nickname for Ashley is “Muffin.”

Her face looks odd because there’s a transparency frame on top of it.  That was me being “creative” with the transparency frame.  (Did I mention I don’t scrapbook much?)