February 2012 – Page 3 – I'm Like So Blonde

Day 29: “I swear to God I am going to have a heart attack”

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Cali4beach

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: Ojo de Dios

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Cali4beach

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: The Inferno

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Cali4beach

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…

Day 12: Creative Differences

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Cali4beach

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: Building a bridge across the continents!

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Cali4beach

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.

365 Days Worth of Photos

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Cali4beach

Last Monday I finished my yearlong Dailyshoot challenge! For my final dailyshoot I took Sibling1 along and headed out west. I took photos in two different locations (abandoned house & empty field) before deciding how I want my final shoot to end. The result:

Victory!

Let me tell you, it was really hard taking a (good) photo everyday! Some days, especially when I was traveling, I would take so many good photos it was hard to decide which photo to choose as my dailyshoot. Other days, I had to scramble around just to find something to photograph.

It also was a lot easier to take photos when Dailyshoot.com was running. Once it became defunct in the beginning of October 2011, it took a lot more motivation to go out there and photograph something each day. It also was a lot harder to keep track of which dailyshoot assignment number I was on since I generally didn’t post the photos the day I took them. This lead to double posting assignments for one day and also not having my dailyshoot assignment #’s in the correct sequence.

Still, I had an absolute blast with the project!

Out of all the photos I posted for my dailyshoots, about 2/3 of them are pictures of inanimate objects, landscapes, & plants. The remaining 1/3 is mostly pictures of friends/family, animals and random strangers.

My thanks go out to all my lovely amigos who helped me with my project including: Megan Mc, Elena, Laura, Gina, Karen, Colleen, Marieke, KKY, Rose, Kayla, Army, Aitak, James, Dan G, Quacclynn, Raven, Sabine, Mario Lopez, Tito, Steph, Ashley, Natalie, Aliyah, Jess C, Z. Efron, Clare, Isaac, Charlotte, Meghan, Jackson & Nikki, George, & last but not least, Jim Groom. (If I forgot anyone, let me know!)

Also, I am extremely indebted to DS106 as whole because it inspired me to start this project and to continue on with it for an entire year.

I used over 10 cameras to take these photos. During the course of the year I managed to kill two cameras (my 1st camera died of old age (4 years old) :/ and its replacement later fell victim to accidental drowning >.< )

My favorite photos from the year are as follows:

Favorite Photo Shoot: The final Rainbow Brite Shoot where I managed to get 7 friends plus Jim Groom to dress up in crazy outfits and take silly pictures.

Favorite Model(s): All my models were truly fabulous! But definitely big kudos to Megan Mc, Elena, & Karen because they were the ones who volunteered to model in a lot of my photos.

Megan, Elena, Karen

Favorite Photo of a person: I like how this photo is really focused on the dandelion and yet, it’s also all about the person in the background (Elena).

Favorite inanimate object photo: Love the image of the flame leaping into the balloon.

Favorite altered photo: I like the extreme color contrast here.

Favorite Animal Photo: Bentley jumping into the lake. Great frozen motion shot.

Favorite photo of me: I ended up using a few photos of me for my dailyshoots and this by far is my favorite because it captured such a unique experience.

I was going to start year 2 of 365 photo a day project, but decided that with all the effort I am putting into “366 Creativity Journal project” I don’t really have time to do both properly. So year 2 of photos is going to have to wait a little while, but I definitely plan on coming back to it one day.