Day 15:

"What can you do with just a dollar?  Use a dollar bill as your medium or inspiration today."

I am a day late but I did do something creative yesterday.  I carved pumpkins and finished Halloween costumes.  In Canada we don't have dollar bills we have a dollar coin so using it as a medium seemed limited.  What we do have plenty of is dollar stores.  I went into one and found a ball of fake grey mohair in a lovely grey colour.

I spent a couple of hours today knitting little rabbits using a pattern from Mochimochi Land . I am knitting them for a neighbourhood Easter Egg Hunt that happens every year.  I will also use some  for The Tiny Bunnies Movement which I joined on Ravelry .  I love idea of leaving little bunnies to make someone's day.

The Seven I made today barely put a dent in the ball of yarn.  That is the dollar coin in the background that inspired them. I will continue to knit them throughout the year and I will post a picture of them all when I have used up the yarn.  Lets see how many I can knit with my dollar ball of yarn.

Day 14:

"Make something microscopic.  How small can you work?  Can you make something that requires a magnifying glass or microscope to see?"

The answer is no, but I did work as small as I thought I could.  I made two Canadian penny sized pictures.  Both are based off photos I have take at or around my parents property.  One is a beautiful moth we saw on the side of the house, the other is some fungus growing on a tree.

I can hardly believe I have completed two weeks already.  This is fun.

Day 13:

"Use tea leaves or tea bags (used or unused) or even just liquid tea (in a cup or not) to create something today."

I love tea!  One look in my cupboard and you would know.  I have numerous cans of loose tea and even some boxes with tea bags all in different flavours.  Each of my three children even have a favourite tea.  I was excited today to use tea and decided to make 'paint'.  I set out 10 small cups with a different tea in each last night and let them steep overnight to get strong colours.

Looking at the colours brewing all browns and reds made me think desert.  Being a little homesick for Australia (where I lived for 6 years) I decided to paint Uluru.  I sketched it out and decided to test out my colours.  The interesting thing I learned about tea is that it can look one colour in the cup, a different colour when used as paint and sometimes even a third colour when it dries.

Final product is my interpretation of Uluru painted with tea. Happily my children all recognised it with out any prompting.

It was fun.  Only thing I would of changed was to use watercolour paper instead of my sketch book because the tea is really thin like a watercolour wash and the watercolour paper would have held up better.

Day 12

"Camouflage.  Create or alter something so it disappears into it's background."

I am a J.R. Tolkien fan.  I love the idea of Ents.  Have you ever looked a an old tree and seen a face?  There are some beautiful old trees in the park near my house with beautiful moss and lichen growing on them.  I used them as inspiration to draw my face in a tree trunk.  A face camouflaged in the bark.

I sketched it out using water colour pencils again and blended them with water.  Then I sponged on the moss and lichen with a sponge.  I would have preferred to use a natural sponge but I didn't have one on hand.  The kitchen sponge I used made the moss look a little to patterned I thought.

Day 11:

"Work with the other hand.  Pick a medium you're comfortable with, then with your nondominant hand - if you favour your right then only use your left and vice-versa."

Decided to draw a picture of this double day lily from my dad's garden.

First I sketched it out in pencil.

Then I added colour using watercolour pencils.  These were more forgiving as you colour with them and then blend with water.

I am pretty happy with the results given I used my left hand.  I found it hard not to use my right, every time I worked on the right side of the page my right hand wanted to take over. 

Day 10: (for real this time)

"Use only water as your medium/inspiration today."

Only water?  Interesting.  I decided on frozen water and composed this sunflower using ice from my freezer.  I planned to do it out in the garden and let it melt but it has been raining since I got home at 2:00 today so I had to work in the kitchen on a black wizard cape instead.

I was thinking it would have been cool to colour the ice, green and yellow are easy enough but how would I have done black for the seeds in the centre?  Maybe the white ice on the black background would have been enough to represent the black seeds?

Day 10:

"Use only water as your medium/inspiration today."

How's this for stretching it?  Fifteen years ago my water broke?  This ninja is made with real wool yarn?  Yes today is my son's birthday and this ninja is the handmade part of his gift.  Unfortunately, I have been so focussed on doing something out of my creative journal everyday my knitting has been put on the back burner.  I spent a good part of today finishing this off in time for the celebration.  The pattern came from Katie Boyette's book KnitWit 20 Fun Projects for Beginners and Seasoned Knitters.

Tomorrow I will give Day 10 another go.

Day 9:

"Make something with your breakfast before you eat it."

Well if this had landed on any day other than a Sunday I would have followed the instructions.  Most days my breakfast is yoghurt and muesli and I am sure I could have created some natural scene on a plate.  On Sundays however, I sleep in (until 8:30) and make myself a  more time intensive breakfast.  I just wanted to eat it not manipulate it into something else.  Since cooking is one of my true passions I felt that making the breakfast alone is a creative outlet and most of what is on my plate came from the farmer's market (some even organic) which is where I am stretching my theme of 'Inspired by Nature' to today.

Coffee (fair trade), Egg (free range), Roasted Tomatoes (organic) and Mushrooms (local) , Pumpkin seed and Cranberry Bread toasted (100% natural and made with green, zero emissions electrical power), Broiled Grapefruit with Honey, Vanilla and Cardamom (well the honey is local),  It was delicious!

Day 8:

"Transform an old book into something new by cutting, folding, gluing, and so on."

I love books and didn't have the heart to cut, glue or fold one.  I thought of covering a special book but in the end decided to use a phone book.  I drew a maple leaf on one of the pages and then used my exacto knife to cut through several pages.  The results are in the pictures below.

Day 7:

"One week down! See how fast it goes?  Today, make a stencil and use it in your work."

Well one week down and I am worried  I have taken on more than I can deal with.  It has been hard to find enough time in the day to work on each project as much as I would like.  Today for example; I cut two different stencils because I wasn't in love with the first one, then I started using them and wanted to start all over, but I didn't have time.  So it is what it is.  I would like to revisit this stencil making at some later date.

My plan was to do a mushroom (toadstool) stencil and use it on note cards I could send out.  These are the results.

The stencils are on the bottom and I did 3 copies with red paint and one with the side of a pencil.  There was a bit of bleeding under the stencil with the paint but the pencil one is kind of cool.

Day 6:

"Look in the kitchen and work with the first fruit or vegetable you spot.  It could be in the form of juice, jam or even canned."

Given the time of year my kitchen is filled with apples.  I pick up a peck on Saturdays at the farmers markets and everyone in the family loves them because they are so fresh and crisp.  Yum!  Now what to do with an apple.  Thinking back to my kindergarten days I came up with apple stamping.  So I cut two apples one each way and ate half (couldn't help it they are so tasty) then played around with some paint and paper trying different things.  Finally I decided on a simple little picture which I then added a little black felt tip pen to after the paint dried.

The results, pumpkins in a field under a starry sky.

Day 5:

"What do you collect? Work with a collection of objects you have in your home (or borrow a friend's if you like)."

Well I have a lot of things, books, kids toys etc. but I don't actually collect something specific.  I do however have a lot of yarn, some may call it a collection, others might consider it a hoard.  I decided to make a picture with the some yarn, inspired by the show Art Attack my son use to watch when he was young.  I was always amazed when the host would create a picture out of seemingly random objects.  Here is my mushroom:

Day 4:

"Take a five-minute walk, then make something using whatever materials are available where you've ended up.  Leave it there for someone else to discover, but be sure to document it first."

Well I may have cheated a wee bit on this one too as I just headed to the park (maybe 5 minutes if you go the long way round).  I intended on making something with all the beautiful fall leaves.  Unfortunately as I arrived the city had just finished mowing the grass.  No leaves to play with only mulch.  Instead I collected some sticks and outlined a rabbit with a leafy tail.

Now looking at the completed work and comparing it to an earlier doodle of a rabbit ... it would have turned out better if I pointed the ears out over the back of the rabbit.  Perhaps the doodle will inspire a later rabbit.

Day 3:

"Make something out of paper, but don't use scissors or glue or draw on it.  What now? (And no, you don't have to know origami to do this.)"

Well I had a brilliant idea today.  I would pull out the quilling kit I bought a few years back and attempt quilling.  No worries right?  Then as I made the first petal for my flower I realised I would have to use glue.  Oops!  Oh well I decided to continue with the quilling project today anyway, after all the book does state at the beginning that: 'The only rule is: There are no rules!'.  One of my most cherished Christmas tree decorations is a quilled poinsettia made by my mom.
 

I made flowers inspired by the autumn colours.  This project made me appreciate my poinsettia even more as it was not easy to make constant shapes. Patience is required and I would like to try my hand at this again.  Who knows maybe some day I can make a poinsettia too.

Day 2:

"What's your favourite animal?  Use it as your inspiration today."

FROGS!

I have lots of favourite animals but I decided to use frogs as my inspiration.  I had 3 tree frogs as pets when I was living in Australia and a collection of frogs when I was in high school.  I cut a silhouette of a frog out of paper and then composed these four pictures using different Japanese paper.  Might frame them individually and hang them as a group.

Day 1:

"The first step is the hardest, so start small today and make something that fits in the palm of your hand using only the materials in your immediate environment."

I decided to start off with what I know so I chose to knit.  I made a slug with a pattern from 75 Birds, Butterflies & little beasts to knit and crochet by Lesley Stanfield.  I used scraps of worsted weight yarn I had and size 3.25 and 3.75 mm needles.  The resulting slug fit in the palm of my hand and at least 2 of my children are trying to lay claim to it.

Getting Started

I came a cross a book by Noah Scalin titled  365: A daily Creative Journal: Make Something Everyday and Change Your Life.  Now that my youngest has started school full time, I have been hoping to do more creative things.  I haven't really done much since high school art classes, which were numerous years ago, but I have been knitting almost all my life.  I decided to jump right into it and see where this creative journey leads.

I have chosen to be inspired by nature for each daily project.  I will either use something from nature as my subject or use natural objects as my medium. 

Cheers