Day 84:

"Keep it Clean.  Use a bar of soap to make something new."

Today I tried my hand at carving.  I remember once carving a bar of Ivory Soap in Girl Guides or elementary school.  The bar of soap I was using today was a little harder (more brittle) than Ivory but as long as I shaved off layers more than trying to carve it worked well.
 
Before and after:

A close up of my little parrot:

Day 83:

"Make a visual pun."

Today (which is yesterday now, I am a day late posting) I had a lot of ideas for this prompt. Strawberry, Dragonfly, Tiger Lily and Gum Tree were a few of the ones I came up with while brainstorming, but I decided on Fairy Penguin. The Fairy Penguin is the often used name for the Little Penguin in Australia.

I used a black felt tip marker and crayons.  This is one of the projects that I am very happy with.

Day 82:

"Create a new kind of utensil."

This one truly stumped me.  For a couple of days I brainstormed and nothing came.  Then I got a little frustrated and just left it.  Today I decided to get back on the horse and when nothing came again I decided to just throw in the towel on this prompt and do something freestyle.  This is a little watercolour of some fall leaves floating in a pond.

Hopefully I will find inspiration for tomorrows prompt.

Day 81:

"Make something out of erasers."

Sorry for the pause in posts again.  I had misplaced my book.  I really should never tidy up my studio.

My daughter received  a kit to make your own erasers from this eraser clay as a gift.  You shape it and then bake it.  I asked her if I could use it for this project and she agreed as long as I made a bear eraser for her.

I found it a little hard to do.  The clay was easy to use but I was tired so modelling something small seamed difficult.  In the end I just made a big eraser.  I would like to try and make it smaller, more eraser sized. 

Day 80:

"Try dyeing!"

Well this project took a good part of the day.  I didn't quite get the results I wanted.  I started with four almost new white pillow cases.  I wanted to dye them using dyes I made with edible products.  I went for coffee for brown, green tea for yellow, onion skins for orange and beetroot for red.  First I made the dyes by boiling the ingredients, then straining them.  Then based on information I read on natural dyes I prepared the material by simmering it in vinegar water for an hour. Then there was rinsing and finally adding the material to each pot to simmer.

I drained them after simmering for an hour then I rung them out and dried them in the dryer to try and set the colour.  I liked the orange from the onion skins best.  I may re-dye this one to make it darker.  I may even consider doing the yellow one over in this same orange.  The brown coffee turned out a little muddy.  The yellow green tea was very light and subtle, maybe I should have simmered longer or added more tea for a stronger colour.  I was really disappointed in the red beet.  Usually I am staining everything with beet juice when I cook them but it didn't seem to work on the cotton.  I may do a little more research and try beet again. 

They really need an iron but here they are from left to right orange onion skins, red beet, yellow green tea and brown coffee.

Day 79:

"Walk through an alley or along a small road and pick up discarded materials to work with."

Well the weather is not co-operating for this one today.  I have marked it to return to in the spring.  I like this idea. Please stand by.  I will go ahead to Day 80 today.

Cheers

Day 78:

"Make up a name and write a back story for a stranger you see today."

Well writing is not my strong suit and I find it a little difficult to stay in my 'inspired by nature' theme for this but here we go.

Sally Jenkins is a stay at home mum.  She has a wonderful husband and two beautiful kids.  A toddler and a five year old.  She stands waiting at the bus stop for their son to return from school.  The other mothers are talking but Sally is not joining into the conversation today.  Her toddler is napping in the stroller and she is daydreaming.  Thinking of her dreams.  The ones she keeps close to her heart.  The ones that put a faint smile on her lips. The ones she put on hold while she raises the children.

She feels selfish when she thinks about them sometimes.  Feels like maybe she should just let them go and appreciate all that she has, but then she remembers that it is okay to have dreams.  It is more than okay it is essential.  Dreams are different than goals.  Dreams can be wild and crazy.  Dreams don't have to come true to make you feel fulfilled.  Dreams can just stay close to your heart until you are ready to make them happen or let them go.  She has a far off look in her eyes and still a faint smile on her lips.

The bus pulls up, the children climb off laughing and excited.  This brings back Sally to the here and now.  The faint smile turns big when her son approaches wide eyed, "Mum guess what we did in school today?" he asks.  He begins to recite all the exciting things that happened in Kindergarten today.  The enthusiasms he shows brightens Sally's heart.  

As they walk home together Sally is smiling.  One last thought to the dreams, the ones she holds close to her heart, it is okay, they will wait, today I have bigger dreams to live. 

Day 77:

"Work with shredded paper."

So far we have had a mild winter with little snow this year.  That was until this past weekend when we got about 15 cm.  It gave me the inspiration for the giant shredded paper snowflake.  Enjoy.

Day 76:

"Make something inspired by and/or that fits on or around an ear (yours or someone else's)"

I am helping out at my children's school with an origami club once a week.  It is great fun to see the kids fold paper into creations and they take such pride in their work.  I used this as my inspiration today and folded an iris flower. I then rolled a piece of paper as the stem and had one of my daughters model it behind her ear.  It was quite the challenge because unlike origami club, I don't actually have origami paper.  The paper I used was a little thick for this application.

Day 75:

"Get some chalk and work on the sidewalk near your home."

Well it is February in Southern Ontario but it was a beautiful sunny day today.  I braved the outdoors because the temperature was hovering around 1C and we have no snow.  I decided to draw a sign of spring on the footpath by my house.  I am hoping it gets a few smiles while we are still in winter. It is suppose to get cold with snow again this coming week.  Seems spring is a little way off yet.

Enjoy! 

Day 74:

"Be Bold."

I am not bold.  I don't think I will ever be bold.  I should probably really take one of the suggestions for today to try to work on becoming bold.  BUT ... it is so far out of my comfort zone I just couldn't.  So it was a free day for me.  I decided to draw and colour with my water colour pencils some snow drops.  Even though it has been a mild winter this year I am longing for the first flowers of spring in my garden.  Enjoy.

Day 73:

"Work with the gravel, sand, or rocks available near your home."

February in Southern Ontario.  This is not a good project for today.  I have marked it to re-visit when the weather is better.

Day 72:

"Use all of the shoes in your household to make something, or work with a single pair of shoes that were destined for the thrift store."

I didn't use all the shoes in the house but I used a lot.  My inspiration was the shoe tree that is along the road on the way to where my parents live.  The kids have always loved driving by this one on  South Lake Road and I was sad to here that the ones I recently discovered by Kinmount have since been cut down.  I don't really know any of the history behind them.

This is my take on a shoe tree using only shoes.  I "build" the tree out of brown and black shoes and boots and then hung or "nailed" on the more colourful shoes.  Just don't tell my daughter about the yellow high tops or she will be trying to "borrow" them.

Day 71:

"Make something that seems like it came from another era in history."

Welcome back me!  Sometimes things get so crazy in my life that all things seem to start spinning out of control.  I have just got off two weeks of crazy and I am trying really hard to get it all back together again.  Starting with my creativity and blog.

Today my painting was done on paper I aged with tea in the oven.  I then painted my male Fairy Wren (found in Australia) using water colour pencils (I finally bought a nice set for myself).  Finally I washed over the whole picture with a yellow/brown water colour wash.  That smudged the painting and ran some of the colours.  I wanted to give it a look that it was painted long ago and maybe damaged while sitting around in an old attic.

Cheers!