Challenges have been discontinued, but I hope you will enjoy browsing through this wonderful archive of Alice-inspired art!

Sunday, January 30, 2011

CHAPTER 1 Challenge - Week 1: Changes in form and dress forms!

"Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.
It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes, and began talking to herself, as usual. `Come, there's half my plan done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another!"
       -- Chapter 5, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Well, just like Alice we have been through a change in location and changed form from weekly to monthly, but the challenge chapters remain familiar despite all these puzzling changes!

Here is how the new monthly challenge will work:
  • 1st Sunday of the month: The new challenge will be posted with the link tool, and a few of the design team samples will be posted.
  • 2nd Sunday: Additional design team samples will be posted.
  • 3rd Sunday: The last of the design team samples will be posted.
  • Last Sunday of the month: A winner will be announced and some of your projects may be given an "honorable mention".
We are starting a week early with the February challenge because we didn't want to leave you with a gap, so we will spread the design team samples over four weeks and the winner will be announced on February 27th. You have a whole month to submit your creations, so we are hoping that a lot more of you will decide to play along!

To reflect all these puzzling changes, the challenge is to make something that features a dress form, OR to make something that changes in form!  While it is not required that your project include Alice in Wonderland, we do encourage it. If your project does feature Wonderland you will get two chances in the prize drawing instead of one!
And now for the big news - STAMPOTIQUE ORIGINALS is sponsoring our first challenge with a $30 gift certificate for one lucky winner, and their design team is going to play along! Be sure to visit their Stampotique Designer's Challenge blog where you can play every week! They are famous for artist Daniel Torrente's quirky characters, but they actually have many artists and quite a few different styles. Jo Capper-Sandon is my favorite with her wonderful mushrooms, and other lines include Janet Klein's flower characters (click next a few times to see them) that remind me of the garden of living flowers! There is something to please everyone at Stampotique Originals!
 
Here is some inspiration for you:

Lynne Phelps of Savvy Sisters Studio decorated a papier mache dress form using Nikki Sivils papers from the "Something for Everyone" collection. For all the details and many more photos of this dress form, please visit her blog!
 
You will have to go to Lynne Phelps' blog to see what all these numbers mean!

 
One of our Stampotique Guest Designers, Kaz of Slightly Wonky Crafts, used the Karin stamp to create a wacky Alice butterfly! Love those irridescent wings! Butterflies are certainly a great representation of a changed form, and the blue caterpillar transformed into a blue butterfly at the end of the movie.



Our own Barbara Washington of Magic Delights created this fabulous shadowbox (it is about 2 inches deep) featuring Alice in Wonderland paper dolls!  By their very nature paper dolls change form as you put different clothing layers on them, so the dolls ARE the dress forms! Very clever! For all the details and more photos, and to leave her a comment about her wonderful piece, please visit her blog.



Another Stampotique Guest Designer, Willy Anderson, stretched the neck of the every popular Gibi stamp to create an Alice when she was too tall! I love the background which is made of layers of tissue tape and stamping, and the raffia bow is the perfect finishing touch.



Enter your links below before 8 p.m. EST (GMT - 5) on Friday, February 25th. A winner will be drawn and announced on Sunday, February 27th. Check back each Sunday between now and then for more inspiration!

Please leave a comment for the design team before you go off to brainstorm about what you are going to make for this challenge!

25 comments:

  1. These are all gorgeous projects!! Awesome challenge.. can't wait to see all the gorgeous entries too!
    Sammi
    xx

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  2. Fantastic pieces of art, it's lovely to have so many different samples. I am really looking forward to the journey and seeing everyones contributions this month and I can't wait to see the entries. Tracy Evans x x

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  3. Great jobs. They all look so good. The experience on this blog will be a true growing journey for me. LOL Hay Lynn your pictures really turned out great. HeeHee I like the way you cropped all the elements on the form. Terri Devine

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  4. Way to go! What a fun challenge and terrrific inkspiration here, I'll play soon! hugz...a friend of Barb W's

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  5. wow what amazing art... I have a little idea of something I could make ... will be back!!! xx

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  6. Wow! Amazing job by all of you! I am floored by everyone's talents! Great job :)
    hugs, margie

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  7. OOh sorry.
    I did not read your instructions properly and I have already linked up.
    I hope you don't mind, Lynne.
    I had an idea to do an altered Alice story line using a dress form as the starting point of my idea.
    So here it is.

    The designers work above is amazing as always and always an inspiration so thank you all.

    Best wishes
    Susan Allan xxx

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  8. Susan, your entry fits the challenge perfectly and I just adore it, so thanks for entering! You have the dress form, the story itself changes form into Cinderella, sort of, so all criteria of the challenge have been met! :-)
    -- Lynne, a.k.a. Mad Hatter of The Altered Alice!

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  9. I just discovered this wonderful blog...and I am assuming I don't have to do anything special in order to submit some art for the month's challenge, aside from abide by the rules? Lovely, lovely samples design team! Say, what does one do to be on the design team? I am a little confused, a lot like Alice when she first falls down the rabbit hole :D
    Beth P

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  10. Beth, you can create anything you like - tag, mini-book, art journal page, card, layout, jewelry, etc. that you feel meets the criteria of the challenge - in this case to incorporate a dress form or to make something that itself changes form or represents a changing form. The interpretation is up to you! Then you have until the deadline listed to first post the item on your own blog and then use the link tool here to enter it!

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  11. cool stuff here--glad I found the blog! (from someone's challenge entry)

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  12. I had to give this a try and did something with embroidery! I'm not sure if it qualifies, but I wanted to try anyway :)
    Thanks for the inspiration :)
    hugs, margie

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  13. Yes! You have an anonymous option so I can leave a comment.
    Well, right now I feel like the Mad Hatter, quite beside myself with finding this blog site...why haven't I found it before??? Maybe I was too big or to small to find the right entrance. Ahhh, by now you know I am a dyed in the wool, Alice fan.
    I do love the sheep in the book. I am a doll maker on a few doll ning sites: Cloth and Clay doll ning site with Jane Des Rosier (since fall of 2008) and the Odd-doll ning site with Pattee; and also: MAIDA doll ning site with Dixie Redmond in the Izannah Walker doll workshop blog. And yes, there are ladies (and guys) on those doll sites who have made many Alice related dolls. I have a Cheshire Cat I will probably post here as soon as I get my film developed (Instamatic camera). And I participate as a commenter in 'A Fanciful Twist' with Vanessa Valencia when she hosts her Mad Tea Party usually at the end of June of every year. With that as an introduction of who I am...thank you for the whimsy...you just made my evening more magical!
    Cheers!
    Teresa in California
    tscat@sbcglobal.net

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  14. Oi estou enlouquecida com esse topico!

    pretendo inserir um link.
    espero não estar errando na leitura que fiz do texto do desafio!

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  15. oooh, gorgeous creations and inspiration from the DT! Thank you for an awesome challenge xx

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  16. This is great. I look forward to doing some of your challenges. I love Alice In Wonderland and it's characters. I look forward to seeing more work as well.
    Thank you
    Hugs Ps your cards are all so inventive and beautiful

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  17. It was hard not create with all the inspiration found from the Design Team and Entries! Enjoyed this fun challenge, and looking forward to the next one! Tee

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  18. Fabulous, fabulous work from the DT and entries - thankyou for all the inspiration.
    xoxox

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  19. Thank you so much for continuing on with an Alice-y World (I never had time to participate at Oh Alice), and thanks to the design team for such fantastic inspiration!

    Hopefully next month I'll manage something a little less, ahm, crappy. :)

    Have a great week!

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  20. That's a wonderful challenge and I hope I'll be in the next months, too.
    The entries of the DT members are fantastic, I'll start a little blog hop ;)

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  21. Hello out there! First time throwing my hat in the ring, hopefully not the last. Lots of inspiration from the DT, everyone's projects are very clever.

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  22. I love this blog, because I love Alice
    I do one simple card to participate the challenge
    I hope that is all ok!
    xoxo
    Leila

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  23. had great fun making this page..found your site through Sandy one of your design team

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  24. All of the challenge members for this month had scrumptious Alice creations!

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THANKS so much for participating in the experience that is THE ALTERED ALICE!!! Your comments mean the world to me, so thanks in advance for taking the time!