Day 103: Create something with a napkin (paper or cloth).

Hannah: I made a origami box with the napkin I used at lunch. I grabbed a few flowers and weeds to stick in it and voila!

Rachel: My matryoshka doll, which was a childhood gift from Hannah, straight from Russia, looks more Dutch than Russian now.

Day 102: Write a palindrome. Illustrate it!

Hannah: Having a name that is a palindrome I couldn't resist. The letters are made with weeds.

Rachel: Hannah took the easy road! Writing a palindrome is way harder than it seems! And hardly any of them make sense! Here is what I finally came up with after hours of studying this and this.

Peep Neve’s eye, Sara’s eyes even peep.

Now, I am not going to illustrate this because I do not have anymore time or creative juice! Someday, there may be a small drawing of eyes peeping... and I'll post that if it comes about.

Day 101: Flip to a random page in a book and make something inspired by the first sentence you read.

Hannah: I chose the book Mark Twain in Hawaii-By Mark Twain. I opened to what must be one of the longest setences ever written...a whopping page and a half. I was inspired by this part of the setencce "...I breathed the balmy fragrance of jessamine, oleander and the Pride of India.." There is something so amazing about the balmy fragrance of Hawaii. I took the 3 flowers Twain mentioned and worked on making a drawing/painting that I would turn into a textile. I was surprised to learn that Pride of India is the beautiful Plumeria.

Rachel: Well, this is not exactly my idea of art, but I've retouched a photo of Mussolini, as the sentence comes from a book called "The Italians" written by Luigi Barzini and published in 1964. The sentence (talking about Benito Mussolini when he was young) says: "He never washed, shaved seldom, wore his thinning hair long on his neck, and lived whereever he could."

Day 100: Make something new with an old T-shirt.

Hannah: I loved the butterfly so decided to use it twice. First I painted the butterfly on felt, then embroidered it onto an old tee. Added the flowers for more color.

Rachel: I have very few old tees because I hate them and they just collect dust. This one, from 1997 and way to huge to ever wear, was a good candidate, but not cute enough to transform into any other piece of clothing. So, I followed the instructions here: how to make a tote bag out of an old t-shirt. I had to bust out the sewing machine...

Day 99: Use the world of insects as your inspiration.

Hannah: I painted a butterfly on newspaper.

Rachel: I investigated the insect art of other artists out there... some very interesting stuff. Some people use the actual insects, brightly colored beetles, for example, to make beautiful stuff. I, on the other hand, am only slightly interested in insects, and it seems I can't find it within myself to extend my interest beyond butterflies, ladybugs, bees, and maybe ants. Inspired by something I found on the internet, I made this large butterfly for the window. I used a transparency, a permanent marker, and glued on bits of sparkling tissue paper.

Day 98: Work with long-exposure photography

Rachel: I have no idea what I'm doing here... but these are the photos I got by changing some settings on the camera!

Hannah: Instead of long-exposure, I moved my camera while taking the photo. This is a sunset from my back yard.

Day 97: Make an invitation to an everyday event you wouldn't normally invite people to.

Hannah: Ha! I should send these out!

Rachel:

Day 96: Work backward. Work in front of a mirror, looking at what you're creating only in the mirror until you're finished.

Hannah: I drew an oil pastel orchid. It really wasn't very hard to draw backwards, maybe a bit awkward.

Rachel: A quick pencil sketch that was supposed to be a self-portrait, but it looks more like Hillary Clinton, or someone who needs a shower. I found the hair very difficult when working backwards. I also found that it was harder to control my sketching when I had to go to the opposite side of the paper (opposite from my drawing hand).

Day 95: Ask a stranger for a suggestion of what to do today.

Hannah: So I didn't really ask a stranger, but this happened to fall on a day that I was supposed to make Patchen a superhero costume for his acting camp. In a way a stranger did sort of suggest what I do. Patchen came up with the idea...SUPER TOAST! So here it is. His power is shooting sticky jelly out of his hands. It can blind bad guys or it can feed hungry people. I made the knife with jelly on it, he didn't take it to camp because he thought it looked like Super Toast had just killed someone.

Rachel: Yeah, I didn't ask anyone either. Was not in the mood for that. I do think it would be a wonderful project, though, to create something someone else comes up with. I'll try to revisit this on a better day. So my contribution for the day is some photography of the creations of strangers. There was a religious festival in a small village here, and they made a lot of beautiful things on the ground, using flower petals (spanish broom, daisies, some type of red clover, etc.), coffee grounds, some rice or other grain, leaves, etc.

Day 94: Work with only orange materials today.

Hannah: Here in Montana it's the first nice day of summer! I call this my creamsicle necklace...yum!

Rachel: The insides are made of newspaper, flour glue and tissue paper, so it's not really orange all the way through... but I had this interesting orange fabric/paper stuff with embroidery on it. I decided to make an orange fish, inspired by the 3d art a good friend of mine has all over her lovely inspiring home. When it's dry all the way through, I'll lacquer it.

Day 93: Make something with nuts, bolts, screws or nails.

Hannah: I made a birthday cake out of nuts and it's on a washer plate. Happy Birthday to my dear friend and blog partner Rachel! Love you, have your best year ever!

Rachel: This is a lot harder to set up than it looks! My hands aren't super steady... anyway, it's very self-explanatory, and it could actually be used as the cover for another greeting card!

Day 92: Write a letter to yourself at another time in your life (past or future).

Hannah: Encouragement!

Rachel:
June 19, 2001
Dear Rachel,
Tomorrow you'll be 26 years old. Ten years from now, you'll wish that you had spent more time with friends and family. You'll wish that you had figured out a creative way to earn money. You'll also wish that you had spent more time listening to music and laughing. Make these things priorities.
Love,
yourself

Day 91: Use dry coffee beans, dry or wet coffee grounds, or liquid coffee.

Hannah: Coffee ground art. Van Gogh's Starry Night.

Rachel: Thinking about coffee brought kukui nuts to mind... and so here is my coffee hula girl. She is made out of glue, coffee grounds and coffee beans. A very lengthy project, to say the least.

Edit: Where would we be without our children? My daughter just pointed out today that my "ballerina" was missing a belly button. Ha ha! So here is my updated coffee girl!

Day 90: Make a piñata and destroy it!

Hannah: Step one of my caterpillar piñata.

Rachel: Hopefully this will soon become a piñata... it's a more-than-one-day project. And no, I don't know what animal it's supposed to be. It's just taking on it's own form as I go along.

Update: My mother informed me on Skype that I was doing the piñata the slow way. I was using a paintbrush to spread the glue on each strip of paper, and I was using strips that were too small. So, I got busy with my hands and some long strips, and was able to slap on several more layers in no time. It has now been filled with candy, closed with more glue and layers, and donated to the preschool so they can decorate it and use it for their summer party in a couple of weeks.

Day 89: Work only with bubble wrap

Rachel: A bubble wrap flower garden. BORING. Again... I do not enjoy working with plastic.

Hannah: It's not just plastic...it's bubble wrap! Bubble wrap has always brought out the child in me. I used the bubble wrap as a tool. I didn't ONLY use bubble wrap, I also used a piece of paper and paint. Here is my bubble wrap still life, wine and cheese anyone?

Day 88: Make something using stuff from your office.

Hannah: A necklace using only paper clips, a catalog and tape. The funky shaped paper clips added some fun shapes.

Rachel: If you could see the office, and the spillover from the office which is now all over the living room... anyway, I managed to find something in there: a transparency! I looked into some very creative ideas on youtube (image transfer, some special glittery techniques, and some scrapbooking crafts using transparencies) but I don't have all this special equipment in the office, so I came up with a mandala sort-of stained-glass look sun-catcher thing made with sharpies, glue, white-out (didn't work), and kleenex colored with regular markers. The back of the piece is photographed to show what a messy ordeal it was... and two views of the other side with different light angles.

Day 87: What can you do with a candle?

Hannah: I didn't create as much as take photographs. This is a white candle and when you burn it there are hidden pockets of colored wax. The finished product reminds me of a volcano. I wanted to try batik, I think I will revisit this project.

Rachel: Well. I took a tealight candle and lit it. When it started to melt, I dripped it onto this shirt in the shape of a heart (I put cardboard in between the layers of the shirt). Then I put it in the freezer. When it was hardened, I used fabric pens to color over and around the wax shape. Then I scraped most of the wax off and ironed it on the wrong side to fix the pen color and to melt out the rest of the wax. Now I'll wash it and see how it turns out. Weird idea. Weird outcome.

Day 86: Decorate a cake, pie or cookie.

Hannah: I made a flourless chocolate cake and inspired by Rachel's mascarpone idea, made a stencil and decorated it with a powdered sugar octopus! It tasted great too!

Rachel: Cake decorating is an art that I would love to learn. I have done nicer cakes than this in my life, but this time I had a tired 3-yr-old who couldn't wait to eat the cake, and apparently using whipped cream in the middle of the summer is just a bad idea. So, the cake is far less than creative and beautiful. But it tasted good. I made a simple recipe called a caramel cake from Joy of Cooking, but I didn't use any caramel to decorate with (for lack of time).

Day 85: Work with words. Make an image out of just words or letters.

Rachel: Warped letters, which form the word "woman" in the shape of a woman. This had to be cut out because my painting skills late at night seem to be sloppy... eventually I'll decide what type of background this would look best on, and it will be glued down.

Hannah: Today I made a a container to hold my paintbrushes. I put words and phrases to keep myself positive through this creative journey. Sometimes it is hard to put yourself out there in a creative way. We are almost a quarter of the way through and that is quite an acomplishment!

Day 84: Use a bar of soap to make something new.

Hannah: I attempted to carve my visage onto a bar of soap.

Rachel: Soap carving turned out to be fun, although the smell of the soap didn't quite agree with me, and I exhaled carelessly once and blew soap flakes everywhere. Anyway, the shape of the bar lent itself to becoming a bow. I like the sparkly flakes leftover, so I attempted to make them part of the artwork as well.