Day 36’s assignment was “Take something old and make it look new.”
This was yet another assignment I was late on doing. :/
I decided that I wanted to take an old photo and spruce it up a bit.
This is a picture of my Great-Grandpa Wilson (born circa 1875*) I just love his curls in this picture and the attitude he is giving off.
But, the sepia tone makes it so drab looking. I decided to add some color to it using Pixlr express.
Day 34’s assignment: “Work with wire. Thin-gauge wire can easily be bent by hand, so no special tools are required. You don’t even have to buy wire if you have some paper clips handy.”
What I learned today was that bending paperclips is a little bit harder than I remembered/expected it to be. I had no idea what I was making today and so turned to google to solve my problems. Saw this really cute paperclip dragonfly on flickr and wondered if I could make it.
from Flickr by Annadriel
Definitely not. I think I would need a bigger paperclip for this, although the paper clip I was using was a lot bigger than average.
I ended up shaping the paperclip into a form of a man; totally random luck this worked out the way it did.
Shadows!
All because of the Dragonfly! Took this photo with my paperclip lying across my laptop screen.
Part 2 of project:
The next day I decided since Valentine’s day was fast approaching and I still needed to mail off cards to friends, that I should make a Paper Clip Girl and have her kiss my Paper clip man….Subsequent attempts to repeat my earlier stroke of genius did not pan out. :/
Instead, I mailed off my Valentine’s postcards all by themselves. I will attempt to make part two of this project work at a later date if I have time!
Day 33’s assignment: “Use pen your materials/inspiration today. Draw with them, use them as construction material… or? ”
I was at a friend’s apartment recently and saw this amazing tapestry they had hanging on their wall:
Colors are much more vivid in real life.
I found out you can get it at Amazon which means I am totally going to buy it one day.
I decided that I wanted to use this as my inspiration for today’s challenge. I started drawing with a black pen on a white sheet of paper and ended up with this.
I like the extreme contrast between the black and the white, but I am also tempted to color the skull in with crazy colors. If I did that I would probably also fill in the white space outside of the skull with crazy lines and colors too. We shall see…
Day 31’s assignment was “Make a path for people to follow and invite people to try it out”.
This to me translated into make a scavenger hunt! I decided to make it for my dad to cheer him up since he was sick with a cold.
I left the first clue on the kitchen table and let him go from there.
Clue #1: The most famous escape artist of his time. Can you find him in the collection Wikipedia has replaced?
The answer is Houdini and my dad needed to look for him in one of the books in our encyclopedia collection
Clue # 2: Laast uns trinken! Prost!
When translated from German: “Let’s us drink! Cheers!” This references an antique German beer stein we have on display in the living room.
Clue #3 Mama Sophia is everywhere in the house but there is only one photo of her in a short/hippie dress.
My Dad had to go downstairs to his office and look behind the photo of my mom during her hippie years.
Clue #4– Not quite a rubber ducky, but close enough.
Reference to an Orca Whale toy I have decorating my bathroom. (It was part of a Barbie set I got as a kid where Barbie was a Trainer at Sea World)
Clue #5: Lost Dog- 3 legged, blind in one eye, missing left ear, broken tail. Answers to Lucky. Find the swag you have for this!
In New Hampshire there is a bar/restaurant called the Lucky Dog Grill which my Dad has a hat from. He had to find the hat which had the clue was tucked inside.
Clue #6: The house is on fire and we are trapped inside! Or are we?
Reference to the second floor where we have an emergency escape ladder in the hallway just in case.
Clue #7: This fairy gives 25 cents for each one you lose. Where would Mama Sophia put hers?
Dad had to look under a pillow my Mom uses, which in this case would be under the pillows on the daybed in my mom’s office.
Clue #8: Not the same one I broke juggling it home from the store but very similar! Oink, Oink!
Reference to a piggy bank in my room. The clue was taped to the bottom of it. (The first piggy bank I ever had my Dad bought it for me. I broke its ears off carrying it home because I swinging the bag around. We had to go back to the store and have it replaced the same day.)
Clue #9: What mom likes to play at a deafening volume. “Lou, Lou ____ to my Lou”
My mom likes to play her player piano in the living room at extremely loud volumes. My dad had to look in the piano bench and find the music book that had the song “Skip to my Lou.”
Clue #10: “Bless her beautiful hide, wherever she may be!”
Reference to an old family favorite movie, “7 Brides for 7 brothers.” He had to find the movie located among many movies in a giant bookshelf.
Clue #11: It’s the youngest but the oldest out of 6. Look up high.
Reference to my mom’s “new” used car which makes car #6 for our family of five. He had to look in the visor for the next clue.
ghetto fabulous
Clue #12: The end of the game! Leading you to the most important treasure of all. What I was going to throw out in NH before you rescued it.
Reference to a little chalkboard I was going to throw out while cleaning the kid’s game room at my grandma’s house. My Dad decided he could use it and saved it. It was currently sitting in the living room, leading him back to the same room where the hunt began.
I love you padre! ps. I owe you a reeses.
Day 30: “Play time. Work with toys: If you don’t have any, borrow some from a friend with kids, and maybe even work with the kids!”
For this assignment I was inspired by Colleen and her Visualassignment97: Using a Barbie, take a picture of a scene with 1 or more Barbies demonstrating one of the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Greed, Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, and Envy.
I have no idea where my barbies are, but I do have some trolls that I bought for some projects last year.
Troll Invasion
I decided that for this project I wanted to focus on Greed.
Day 29’s assignment: “Make a disguise for yourself, a friend, a pet, or an object. See if you can fool anyone with it.”
I was going to do a whole video montage of scaring people, but I will have to save that for another project.
Basically I put on a John McCain mask, lay in wait in my friend’s little sister’s bed, and when she came home from school I popped up suddenly.
httpv://youtu.be/1qRho5-5EJY
Full quote by Army; “I swear to God I am going to have a heart attack one of these days because of you people!”
Day 40: “What can you do with yarn? You don’t have to know how to knit or crochet; you can try yarn painting or just experiment.”
What can I do with yarn? Nothing! Ahh!!
These were my thought yesterday as I lay in a creative slump. I was behind on a few of my Creativity Journal projects which was not good. Luckily Megan Mc is a totally awesome person! She suggested I make a “God’s eye” or “Ojo de Dios” out of yarn. I had no idea what that was so I googled it.
Turns out “Ojo de Dios” is made out of brightly colored yarn on a frame of crossed sticks. They are made by the Huichol Indians of Mexico and the Aymara Indians of Bolivia. These are placed on an altar so that the gods can watch over their people and protect them.
It seemed like it would be easy and fun to make, so using the directions from the website above I got to work.
Luckily my family is a craft family so I had all the necessary materials at hand.
The result:
I definitely want to make more of these when I have the time. Also, the instructions suggest adding little bells on to each end, so that it something I will add to this one next time I make it to a craft store.
Day 27’s assignment was: “Dreamland. Use a recent dream as inspiration for what you do today.”
The night before, I went to bed wondering what crazy dreams I was going to have this night. The past few weeks I’d been having ridiculously vivid dreams and thus assumed that this night would be no different.
I was wrong. I woke up in the morning and couldn’t remember having a single dream. :/
So for today I decided that I would paint a recurring nightmare I’ve been having lately where I am trapped forever in the hell that is retail work. To me, there is nothing worse that dreaming about work because generally when I dream about work I sleep very fitfully and wake up more tired than I was before I went to bed.
In this recurring nightmare I am trapped at working at Macy’s for the rest of my life in endless servitude to all the ungrateful customers. I never able to leave the store and the pile of clothes that the customers try on and throw on the floor always grows larger and larger and larger.
For this I used acrylic paint on a canvas and also an image of Macy’s that I got from online.
I was tempted to throw it in the fire and let it burn, but decided it probably wouldn't be that good for the enviroment
Actually since I made this painting I haven’t had a nightmare about Macy’s…
Now Day 12 of 366 Creativity Journal has come and passed a looooong time ago, but I wanted to take a moment and highlight the art of Marieke. Marieke is one of my friends who is doing this project with me and she happens to live in Germany. This means that for the most part I only hear about what she’s creating after she makes it.
Day 12 assignment was: ” Camouflage. Create or alter something so that it disappears into its background.”
For this assignment I ended up taking the easy way out and photoshopping an image of pedobear lurking in the forest waiting to snatch unsuspecting children.
In contrast, Marieke took a much more creative approach to the assignment. Using photos she took with her Diana Mini film camera on our #ChasingSummer trip she painted in the background of the photo. I love the contrast between the print and the paint and yet how they blend in really well together. Definitely more amazing than my take on this assignment! : )
Miami SoBe
New York Subway
Times Square
Day 22’s assignment was: “Create a bridge. Connect two things in a creative way. It could be small enough for an amoeba or big enough for an elephant to cross.”
Thinking of what to do for this assignment was really tricky for me. It wasn’t until late at night when I was talking with my friend Aitak that inspiration struck.
I wish that there was such a thing as bridges across all the continents (actually rather have instant teleportation, but that doesn’t help with today assignment).Since this isn’t going to happen, I thought I might as well represent my friendships with people across the globe by using a giant world map and then building bridges out of yarn between where I live and where they live.
I used three colors to signify how long I’ve been friends with them
White- Many years
Blue- 2 years
Light Purple- one year or less
This is one of those assignments you’d be better off seeing in person since the scale isn’t quite captured in a photo.
If I had more time I would have made the bridges/connections between my friends, i.e. which friends know my other friends, but I will save that for another project.