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.