A Creative Challenge---The Final Project

If you've been reading the last few posts, you know that my friend Marian and I have an ongoing creative challenge.  Each year at Christmas we exchange a 'kit' of five random craft supplies and challenge each other to come up with a project using those supplies and up to three more.  You can see the full rules in this post.

Yesterday Marian showed you her project using the kit I put together.  Today it is my turn.

To recap, my kit contained these supplies:

1. a block of black Premo polymer clay
2. a few black and a few off-white chenille stems
3. two types of black and off-white ribbon
4. a collection of black and off-white printed papers
5. coordinating cardboard buttons

 

I didn't have a predetermined idea as to what I planned to make with my kit.  My first thought was to do some sort of handmade book, but as I mulled it over, my 'day job' kept creeping in to my brain, and I decided I was going to make some sort of doll.

 

Instead of making it exactly how I normally do, I thought I would use some alternative materials to construct the body.  So I started with an oval-shaped paper mache box to use for the body.  I covered the box with the paper.  I planned to use the chenille stems for the arms and legs, but realized quickly that the doll would never stand on those legs, so I made legs with wire and covered them with the black clay.  Then I attached them to the box with more wire.  I was able to use the off white chenille for arms.

 

 

We are allowed to add more of any given supply, so I was able to make a head using flesh-toned clay.  It is also attached with wire.  I used curly wool roving for her hair, made a hat using the cardboard button and some coiled up chenille.  I made a little purse using more of the buttons and a little flower that is off a vintage earring.

 

When I attached the head I left a loop to hang a group of three little charms.  I tied one of the ribbons around her neck and added more chenille to trim her arms and legs.

 



One of the papers, as you can see, is a sheet of text.  I searched through the text to find words that would make a new sentence.  I glued these onto the base (which is the lid to the box.  It also has clay inside it to help keep the piece stable.)

 

 

 

The buttons on the shoes are actually the holes that punched out of the centers of the buttons!  I don't like to let anything go to waste!

 

I had a lot of fun with this project.  It was my regular work, but with a twist.  Perhaps I didn't work too far outside my comfort zone, but I'm really happy with the result nonetheless.

 

Have you been inspired by our kit projects?  They really are fun!  You should try it with one of your friends!

 

We'd love to hear from you!  Please leave your comments below!

 

Lisa

 

PS--I've got a big show coming up this weekend, so I'm not going to be posting a Friday Favorite this week!  So, have a great weekend everyone!

 

Oh, if you happen to live in the Omaha area, my show is in Council Bluffs at the Mid-America Center.  I'd love it if you stopped by!

 



 







A Creative Challenge--Lisa's Kit

Hi everyone!  Last week Marian and I shared our kit challenge projects with you.  This week, as promised, we are sharing the second half of the challenge...the projects made with the kit I assembled.

To recap the rules:  we each put together a kit of five random craft supplies.  We can add up to three more supplies (with a few freebies) to create our project.  To read more about the rules and our projects from Marian's kit, click here for my project and here for Marian's.

So now, here is Marian.....

Marian Making Lisa's Kit

Good Morning A Piece of Lisa fans! Lisa has given me the keys to her blog once again. I promise she'll be back tomorrow.

Today I'm sharing with you what I made from the kit Lisa assembled. It contained:
1. a package of black Premo polymer clay
2. a few black and off-white chenille stems
3. some black and off-white cardboard buttons
4. two black and off-white ribbons
5. a few small sized decorative papers in the same colors



Okay Lisa fans....and all you clay artists...I AM NOT ONE!  On one of her visits Lisa and I made dolls and we used polymer clay to make the heads.  That is the only experience I've ever had with polymer clay. To be fair, she mentioned that she added it to her kit to challenge me. I do LOVE a challenge. I'm not promising results.

I had no clue what to make. I had the flu twice in January. During the end of the second bout I spent a fair amount of time online looking for a pair of shoes to wear to Lisa's niece's wedding next summer. I had shoes on my feverish brain, which led to the inspiration for the kit. That shouldn't be too hard, right? WRONG! Clay is so difficult to manipulate. It was obvious fairly quickly that I am NOT gifted at the craft!

I have a damaged wrist, so conditioning the clay was difficult.  I used a hairdryer to soften the clay a bit, conditioned it as best as I could, and fashioned a high heel. I filled the cavities with rumpled foil to prevent it from caving in.  (Lisa had taught me that when making doll heads.) I used a nail in the heel to insure it wouldn't sag. Oh boy, if I were younger I would be too embarrassed to show you my result! Simply horrid workmanship.



I used the paper as an insole. I embellished the shoe with the cardboard buttons and ribbon. I intended to wrap the pipe cleaner around the shoe's sole but that was bulky and ugly. I tried to use it with the embellishment, but again it didn't work. It had to be used so I grabbed a small white box, put the shoe in some silver tissue paper and latched the pipe cleaners around it as a 'ribbon' for the box.  Necessity is the mother of invention! Then I took a jumbo Xanex....TEASING....and called it finished.

All you clay artists are surely shaking your heads, and I don't blame you one bit! On the other hand I did it and that always makes me happy. I liked my intention, which counts for something, right??! It was hard and frustrating and fun. My oldest son did a fired clay project in grade school and we're still all fighting over whether it's an anteater or an elephant...so I called this good. At least you know it's a shoe. :)

Oh, and one more thing. I've admired Lisa's work since the day we met and became instant BFFs, but NEVER more than now!! I take my hat off to her and her extraordinary talent and all of you who work with polymer clay. You are all artists I admire to the max! It's so much harder than it looks and your talents are amazing!

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Thanks, Marian, for sharing your project!  You are a really great sport, and take the challenge for what it is....a way to work with things you might not work with normally.  Well done! 

 

Tomorrow I will share my project using the same kit.  We would really love to hear your feedback on our kits!  We have so much fun with them, and we think EVERYONE should do something like this with a creative friend!

 

Until tomorrow,

Lisa

A Creative Challenge--Part II

As promised, here is Marian to show us her kit project and tell us about it.  If you missed Part I, my project with Marian's kit, click here.

 

Marian Making Making Marian's Kit

 

Hello!  I'm happy to join you as Lisa's guest.

 

As Lisa mentioned, we are always excited about our kits.  This is such fun, so grab a friend and do the same!  Actually, I believe every year I've had a harder time with the kit I've put together.  We use materials we have on hand, so they are obviously things we are used to working with.  I think it's harder for me to get outside my box when I'm using such comfortable items.  This year was no exception.

 

Lisa showed you the materials I put in my kit.  There was a portion of a fabric jelly roll, some small squares of felt, buttons, sequins, and some thin cardboard 'squares'.

 

I failed to get very creative with this kit.  My first thought was to make zippered cosmetic bags.  Not very original.  I was going to quilt the fabric, embellish it with the sequins and buttons and sew the cardboard squares together to make a box to put them in.  I actually sewed the strips together to make a piece of fabric large enough to cut the first bag.  While lying in bed thinking about it, I decided I wanted to go in another direction.  My next idea also wasn't all the unique, but one I'd never done and thought it would be fun to attempt.  So I got up, grabbed my piece of fabric and took the stitch ripper to all the seamed strips and disassembled it.  I had decided to make a fabric basket.  The only basket I had ever made was one with reeds in a crafts class in junior high school, which was a very long time ago.....

 

 

 

I ended up making a fabric coiled basket.  I stitched the fabric strips together along the narrow end and wrapped it around some cord I had on hand.  Then I wound the coil round and round forming the basket, hand-stitching it as I went along.  I added a handle that I made with cord that I braided.  I sewed a few additional strips together to make ribbons, and I used the felt for little flowers and the buttons and sequins for embellishments.

 



 

I wasn't sure what to do with the cardboard.  I considered cutting a circle and stitching or gluing it to the bottom like is sometimes done to help items stand straight, but decided that was a bad idea.  In the end, I covered a couple pieces with fabric, made another fabric ribbon to latch the cardboard together and made a card.  They turned out cute enough.  I filled Lisa's basket with some Hershey's Kisses and miniature Snickers for a Valentine's treat and called it good.

 



 

It was a fun project and the result was just fine.  It would take many more attempts to make them very even and to perfect them, but I was happy enough with my first attempts.  I'm considering making a couple more for my two youngest granddaughters for Easter, so it was a skill learned that may be useful again.  Not my most creative attempt by miles, but one that was fun and cute enough to not be assigned to the trash...my way of handling failure.

 

First attempt on the left.  Second on the right.   

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Thanks, Marian, for sharing your creative journey with us!  I love your project! 

 

This is such a fun activity for anyone who is creative.  You might want to grab a friend and try it yourself!  Next week we will be posting the projects we made with the kit I assembled.  From time to time we will 'catch up' with all the projects we have done in the past.

 

We would love to hear your comments about our kits and the finished projects.  We are NOT competive at all when it comes to these kits.  We never declare a 'winner'.  We truly enjoy seeing what we each come up with.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

Have a great day!

Lisa 



A Creative Challenge

Each Christmas for the past few years my friend Marian and I exchange 'kits'.  (We give each other real presents, too, but this is one of our most anticipated parts of our holiday gift boxes!).  It started a few years ago when I was having a creative struggle and I was wanting to challenge myself to try new things.  I had the idea that we should each put together a collection of five random supplies and we would each come up with a project using those supplies.  We put together a few 'rules', giving us plenty of creative freedom, but also adding some structure to the project.

Here are the rules:

1.  We each put together a kit of five random supplies.  We are not allowed to purchase anything for the kits, since we each have an over-abundance of supplies on hand. 

2.  There should be enough supplies in each kit to execute two projects--one to keep, one to give.

3.  We are allowed to add up to three additional supplies to the kit. 

4. Certain basic supplies are 'free'.  Paint, adhesives, any fasteners, ink, etc.  We can also add more of a given supply.  For example, if buttons are in the kit, we can use as many more buttons as we want

5.  Projects must be completed by Valentine's Day.  (This rule is flexible, but we generally shoot for some time in February.)

So, today I am going to share my experience with the kit Marian put together.  Tomorrow Marian will be guest blogging about her own project.  Here goes:



Marian's Kit

Three wool felt squares

A pile of thin cardboard pieces, 4-7/8" x 5-3/8"

An assortment of buttons

A small bag with about a jillion sequins

A jelly roll (which is a roll of fabric strips 1-1/2" x 22")

I don't sew.  Well, I can sew, but not well.  Marian sews.  Well.  Her kits almost always include fabric, so I'm always trying to find a creative way to use it without having to sew anything. 

I tossed around several ideas for this kit.  Most of them were lame and I can't even really remember what they were.  I could do a mixed media collage, which seemed a little predictable.  Then I had what I thought was a great idea....paper dolls!  I could cut the dolls from the cardboard, make some little clothes from the fabrics, trim them with the embellishments, add some fiber for hair and maybe even a polymer clay face.  Sounds great, right?  Well, here is what I came up with:

Oh, wait!!  Those aren't paper dolls!!  Yeah, well, when I sat down to start that project I discovered that it was going to be far too much work for the timeframe of the project.  So I changed courses midstream and came up with this mobile instead. 

Here is what I did:

I used my Cricut machine to die-cut three different shaped flowers from the cardboard.  Then I covered each flower, front and back, with fabric.  My jelly roll had prints in pink, turquoise, red, yellow, and white.  I chose to use a red, turquoise, and pink color scheme for one mobile, and a pink, yellow, and turquoise for the other. 

I used the felt squares to cut centers for the flowers.  Marian had included turquoise, red and olive green.  I have wool felt in my stash of supplies, so I added pink to match some of the fabrics. 

I accented the flower centers with buttons.  I used all of the ones Marian included and had to dig through my button boxes to have enough.  At first I only put the centers on one side of the flowers, but as I was assembling the mobile, I realized that they needed to be on both sides. 

The sequins were my real 'challenge' in this kit.  In the end I sorted out the flower shaped ones and strung them on to the fishing line.  That seemed a little bit like a cop-out, so I also glued them on to the centers of the buttons.  I didn't even come close to using them all, but I had used enough to satisfy the challenge.

To assemble the mobile, I added these three supplies:

Not a good picture, sorry.  I used a 4" wooden embroidery hoop, a piece of nylon mesh that came wrapped around a turkey (I save all sorts of 'junk'--you just never know!), and a piece of ribbon.

I stretched the nylon mesh between the hoop so I would have something to dangle the flowers from.  I trimmed the hoop with the ribbon.  Then I tied the flowers on using varying lengths of fishing line. 

The biggest challenge of this project became how to hang the mobile so the hoop would stay relatively level.  In comes my husband, David, who is very good at engineering things like this.  We developed a plan to tie more fishing line in four places and then string it up through a four-holed button.  Then I tied the ends to a ring so it could hang from a cup hook.

As per the rules, I made two.  One to keep.  One to give to Marian. 

I gave Marian the pink one, because she has little accents of pink in her studio.  The red and turquoise one worked best in my studio.

I am really pleased with how this project turned out.  I'm excited to have Marian here tomorrow, to show and tell her project.

Happy Wednesday!

Lisa

PS...Sorry about the quality of the photos.  It was back to the point and shoot for this project.













Mixed Media Collage

I've been slow to get back to my blog since my trip to New Mexico.  I'm sorry about that!  I sort of crashed when I got home last week and this week I've been madly working on a custom order that has proven to be a bit of a challenge.

I had a great time in New Mexico with my friend, Marian.  We have the sort of friendship that we can do nothing and it's still a load of fun!  When we get together for our annual visit it generally includes watching lots of movies, eating lots of yummy food that is NOT good for you, talking, talking, talking, and some sort of creative project.

This year we were not very inspired.  I don't know why, but I think partly because we didn't have a plan beforehand.  Generally before I arrive we come up with an idea or a medium we would like to try so we can hit the ground running.  Well, this year we didn't do that.  We learned our lesson there.  We will plan ahead better next time.  We didn't even get started on anything creative until several days into my week's stay.  (Possibly we were too distracted by her new Endless Wave swimming pool??)  So, we finally decided we would just try to do some mixed media collages using things she had stashed in her studio. 

Here is what we came up with:

This was my first attempt.  I did some color washes with acrylic paints, added some scrunched up tissue paper and this interesting material that is actually used to make casts.  I attempted to make some textural patterns using glue, but that didn't work out so well.  I added a little bling with glitter.  All in all, not bad, but certainly not a masterpiece.  Here is a little close up view:

 

You can see a little bit of the texture and the sparkle of the glitter.

 

I would like to show you Marian's first attempt, but it's somewhere in a dumpster in New Mexico.  She got frustrated and threw it away!  I admire that sort of courage!  I will often make myself miserable in an attempt to get it 'right'.  Not Marian!  If she knows a project is headed on a course that she can't correct, she is perfectly willing to toss it and begin again.

 

This is her second attempt:

 

 

She also used the casting material, tissue, paints and glitter.  She added letters cut from the newspaper to add the sentiment LISTEN. 

 

I wanted one more try at this project, so I started with a long skinny canvas and covered it with newspaper.  I liked the graphic quality of the type.

 

 

I did some colorwashing over most of the sections of newspaper.  I used some very thin chipboard and drew patterns on it with a good ol' black Crayola crayon, then I washed over it with watered down paint.  The wax of the crayon caused the paint to resist.  I was able to pull out the right letters from a headline to put together my phrase.  Everything was looking a wee bit too linear, so I found two different sized plastic caps, brushed paint on them, and stamped on the circles.  I coated the entire piece with a gloss finish Mod Podge.  Again, not the greatest piece of art I have ever made, but I like it nonetheless.

 

Marian and I are both creative people.  We met when our booths were next to each other at a craft show a LOOONG time ago and hit it off immediately.  We enjoy working on projects and trying things that are outside our comfort zone.  Stay tuned next week, when we talk about our 'kits'. 

 

OK, I have to get back to the custom order that is giving me fits. 

Have a great day!

Lisa