via suttonhoo

If you’ve been with us for a while (thank you!) then you probably remember our Creative Challenges. Each week I presented a challenge, and posted the responses the next week on the front page here.

I love the weekly challenge and really want to keep it going, but I would like for them to be meaningful and helpful, instead of just one more thing. If you have ideas or a timeframe, please let me know what works for you. This is a communal undertaking, not just my own writings, so any input is more than welcome. I’m considering at the moment doing a challenge every two weeks, or once a month with reminders and little encouragements along the way.

So tell me my loves, is this something you would be excited about and interested in? Or is life too busy for one more challenge?

Hey lovely ladies and gents.

I have been asked, and shall oblige, to extend the Reconstruction Challenge for another week.

If you’re done, you’re marvelous and please email me your submission!

via found gallery

When I used to craft more often than I do now, most of what I made were reconstructions of dresses, shirts, and toys. I love taking something old and out of use and making it relevant again. So for these two weeks, I want you to reconstruct something. Maybe it’s those old shoes you never painted polka dots on, that poem you wrote years ago but never finished, or that junk drawer with all those things you might, maybe, someday need. Make them useful now. Especially in an economic crunch, to be able to utilize what we have is essential, and more than that, it gives us a sense of accomplishment and meaning in ourselves, because we have reinvented something. We have given an old, dead, thing life again.

There’s loads of craft suggestions on Instructables and Craftster, including painting and DIY interior decorating. Trashion Nation on Flickr is also great inspiration. If you’ve got other great revivify-ers, leave them in the comments.

Submissions will be due midnight on Sunday, March 15th. You can submit by posting a video on YouTube, photos on Flickr, or simply email me your goods.

As a side quest, I’d love to hear any ideas you have for future challenges. I’ve tried to make them vague enough that any creative mold you’d want to apply you can, but I’m more than willing to try a writing challenge or a photography, or whatever it is you’d like to work on!

via headexplodie

It is March loves! Can you believe it? I can’t. It seems like it was New Year’s just a week ago. But I’m excited about a new month and the prospect of warmer weather to come.

Well, for the past two weeks I asked you to keep a dream journal and send me one of your dreams or an amalgam of a few. Here is what you sent:

Keith:

Awaking from a extremely strange and surreal dream, I set to your task half-awake. I started typing in an already opened notepad file with my eyes closed:

Is and was and were and shall be again crayon makeup crazed

mall pancake sausage biscuit gravy in a dancing robot but isn’t a robot is only a boy wearing a helmet that spews it out chicken helmet he’s jig dancing everyone live as in the same house

sells pancakes a mirror in front of the hallway she just wants to love me they just want to love me but the crazed crayon makeup which will not let them shoes size 10 saddle weren’t black and white rhinestones bird masks wasn’t wearing socks so he brought footies”

Kris:

I was hosting a conference out west some where, I was speaking to a group of faceless men and women about f-stops and the importance of eating roast beef before you shoot large animals. Using the visual aid to my left I showed them my research and the chance of getting a great shot of a large animal went up 42% after eating a roast beef sandwich. The graph was made up of one large piece of plastic and the pie pieces where little bugs* that were behaving very well and staying in formation pretty well, for little bugs**.

So after the lecture, I simply tell everyone that there is something really special outside and to grab their cameras. In a poof we are no longer in the log cabin, but outside on the edge of a large cliff. One wind blown Joshua tree stands in front of us. Across the ravine more of the same desolate terrain. In a blink there are two huge black robots on the edges of each side of the ravine***. These robots are the last step along a huge conveyor belt that stretched beyond the horizon. As we stand and look at these robots as two huge blocks of black salt† come sliding down the conveyor belt and as the reach the robots they punch them into the canyon below. As these 30 foot tall blocks of salt fall, they melt into a black and blue and green waterfalls† and then evaporate into a brilliant luminescent burst of color††.

I turn and say, well start shooting!!††† So this crowd of people that now stretch as far as I can see‡ all start clicking away at the huge robots and the melting and evaporating salt‡‡.

When I turn to raise my camera, I am looking at my back door and see Holland come running down the hall telling me he wants to go to school. Quinn is crying and I hear the door slam. Then I wake up to Quinn crying and Lynn has just knocked a hardcover off the side table‡‡‡. Funny how dreams work out.

* itty-bitty bugs, really, really little
** Each bug was hand painted yellow, blue, red, and green by the large man in a purple suit that sat on the second row.
*** They resemble the “old rock ‘em sock ‘em” robots from the 80’s, just 80 feet tall and matte black, a sharp contrast against the ice blue desert sky.
† If not salt, perhaps it was a fine grain sand, it just seemed to smell like salt – you know that smell?
†† There were other colors, but I’m not sure that we have the language to describe them – like a reflection of that golden yellow you see when a child smiles – colors like that.
††† Like a rainbow of a thousand colors and just one color, all at once.
‡ Bunch of dummies, how often do you see 80 foot tall robots?
‡‡ a sea of humanity
‡‡‡ I think it’s my turn to get up with the baby anyway.”

And my contribution:

I lay down on the thin mat, covering the old wooden floor so that no ink might spill into the cracks but slight enough for my naked body to feel every curve and warp of the fifty-year-old oak.

The overhead fan blew silently, forbearing as an old man bereft of power. It tickled my sides and kissed my skin. The conductor moved slowly around me, mapping every curve of my hips, the gentle arch of my back between my bum and where my breasts caused my shoulders to curve, the shape of my thighs. He was a master topographer.

Slowly, moving as an old metronome, he began to mark, the pen scratching as a quill on parchment. First, a line above my shoulder, a phrase on my foot. He moved quicker and his pace steadied to the beat of the fan far above us. He circled and swooped, an eagle teasing his prey. The words and lines were important, but they were just building to the crescendo. I barely breathed, but found myself matching his pace, soon expecting the next score. I was his instrument, a cello to play his suite, a part of the symphony.

I noticed as my skin turned into eyes, my arms and legs told stories of philosophers and great men who failed. He left my back blank, a hole in the myriad library. His pace slowed, stopped. I heard the pen drop to the floor, bouncing once, twice, before settling in a groove and his fingers followed suite, his breathing heavy.

After sixty beats of the fan, sixty caresses of wind, he lifted a hand and began to form lines, with only his fingers, stroking his outline. His other hand reached for the pen and, uncapped, he started anew. The scratching was not soft this time, and I grimaced when the nib dug under my skin like a tattoo. My body never moved, only my face, hidden facing the floor, betrayed my surprise.

I felt feathers forming, long strokes that seemed to last forever, from the top of my scapular to somewhere below my buttocks, the tops of my thighs. The primary flight feathers. Then moving to the secondary, working up and inward, to the tertiary, smaller and faster, the beating of wings. I felt something drip down my side, blood or ink. He didn’t stop.

I felt, as the outline formed, that even with the immensity of the scape, the wings were somehow shorter than should’ve been. I used touch to concentrate as he again pulled across my skin down my sides. Yes, they ended short, the wing not arching at the end, sharp, stunted and angular. He seemed to sense my awareness because his hands now concentrated on fleshing out the lesser coverts and scapulars on my upper back.

My wings were clipped, why? The orchestra master, my conductor and artiste, walked away from me, spent. I turned my head to see hands stained in black and long white hair mussed from exertion. He caught my eye, I looked for an answer. He silently turned and closed the door, leaving me alone.”

Thanks for participating! The current challenge will be up in a jiffy.

Have you been keeping track of the stories your subconscious is telling you?

If you’re having a rough go of it, don’t give up! Make a hasty sketch of a scene or a character and work from there. The more vague it seems, the more dreamlike it probably is.

The deadline is fast approaching, so get yourself some sleep, and submit you work by Sunday, March 1st, by midnight.

via artyfishal44

Hallo Monday!

How is your Dreams Challenge going?

Are you remembering your dreams more vividly with more clarity? I find that when I actively tap into my dreamspace in my conscious, I can more easily remember my dreams in their entirety and the colors and experiences can stay with me most of the day.

If it’s not going so well and you’ve tried keeping a dream journal, waking yourself up early to have one last dream and it’s just not doing it for you, maybe a shift on the other end is necessary. Try focusing your mind before you go to sleep on a subject or image. Don’t fuss over it, but mull it over in the back of your mind as you drift off, and your subconscious will recognize it as an issue to be dreamt about.

One last piece of advice is to not stress. If you’re not getting anywhere, start creating dreams in your creative work. Write a dream story of a character, or paint dreamy landscapes. Focusing on the idea of dreams and what they mean to you can be just as or more important than the actual thing.

Ready to submit your response? Lay it on me!

If you have any other special means of remembering or translating your dreams in your creative work, leave them in the comments!

Mwah my dears! I had a lovely time in Canada. Thank you for all the birthday well wishes. Our last challenge was simply Love, what and who it means to you. Here are the responses!

Kevin:
The name of this photo really says it all, “my cat’s making out with my boyfriend.” Win.

Birdiee:
I got chills reading this. Ah so good!

all misfits –
transplants.
here because a wind blew,
and our tiny seed-bodies landed;
we took root,
so together we grow.

here, i will lift you up
on my shoulders,
and carry you through high waters;
mumbling under my breath,
how i adore you.

though sometimes, i hardly know you,
and at other times, i’ve known you forever –
hey you, there, girl,
and you, friend, and you, boy…
i’ll take you with me;
hand in hand,
on adventures
we both feel like fighting for.

i am enamored
of your beauty,
of your resolve,
of your likeness to myself,
and your simple reflection
of all i ever wanted myself to be.”

Jayms:

Kris:

You may ask yourself what does an fried egg on a Mickey Mouse Plate have to do with love? Well, it’s 4:45am, the baby has just gone back to sleep and Holland, a few months shy of his 3rd birthday, wanders in to bed room. More asleep than awake he gently touches my face and says, “Daddy, I’m way hungry.” So, naturally I bolt up my first reaction being, “who’s touching my face!” Then to the kitchen we go and munch some animal crackers and drink a little milk. On our way back to bed the baby wakes up and starts to fuss. Now they are both up and it’s doubtful that either will go back to sleep. We try and snuggle on the couch for a bit but one thing leads to another and it’s now 6:30. I make the baby a bottle and Holland is hungry again. “Daddy, please, white egg? Please? Love you.” Now how can you say no to that, even on 4 hours of sleep, so baby slung in my left arm I fired up the stove and started a “white egg” for my boy. You may say big deal, right? He’s doing what has to be done for his kid to eat. But I think that is the “it.” Love is taking care of someone like you are supposed to, love is trying really hard to take care of someone like they want to be taken care of. Anyway, that’s just my 2¢.”

Once again, thank you so much to everyone for participating. I made a video of my lover and I at the Ice Hotel and in Quebec, but I have yet to edit it (eep) so I’ll post that a little later lovers. The new challenge will be up in a tick!