Thursday, January 7, 2010

Monthly design challenge.........

Inspired by the competition Curlypops had last year of inviting peeps to design her alter ego superpops, I'd like to present a monthly design challenge for all the crafty peeps out there.

What inspired me about Cams competition was how you could have 30 amazingly crafty individuals work on the same brief and come up with entirely different things. All of them so unique to the style of the maker.
Sort of reminded me of being back in my art class at school. When the teacher would lay 3 white pieces of crockery on a white podium and have a class of 30 draw it.
Each and every one was so different.


Another motivating factor for this challenge is the common interests a lot of us have. Which is wonderful....but due to our loyalty to each other we tend to drop our idea of doing a flying duck thing because we saw that Jan did it, or we drop our idea for a caravan thing because we saw that Mary did it. Even when we know our duck or caravan may well be entirely different to our friends....they are our friends and we don't want to A: steal there thunder or B: seem as though we are copying them.

So I'd like to crush all pre misconceptions of whose idea it was to paint the tree first...... take away the fear of being labeled a copy cat for crafting an owl.......... and invite you all to join in on a monthly design challenge, invite you all to do the same thing.

In effect this will display how we are all so different, even if when given the same brief. How we can all celebrate a love of the same topics with such a unique angle.

You can interpret the chosen theme any way you like. Into a bag, a book, a cushion, a painting, a t-shirt, a necklace......you can sell it, gift it or display it on a shelf.

You can do January themes and skip February's if you like, or you can do them all. The rules are pretty loose on this one.

Email a pic of your finished work and at the end of each month I'll have an online bloggy exhibition to display the works of that months participants.

Your all invited!

Edited to say you can view this months selected theme by clicking 'Here'
and you can add a badge to your blog to let others know you are joining in, by clicking here...

21 comments:

  1. I absolutely LOVE this idea - what a great project! I'm totally in.

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  2. Ooh looks exciting Jay! I think you should add 'food' and a shape to the list, maybe 'squares' or 'circles'?

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  3. This sounds great, with a fab ethos behing the idea, I will try it if something of the topic pops into my head!

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  4. Oh Jay! I love it! What a great idea! I'm in and can't wait!

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  5. Hmm, I thought I posted .. definately some technology or steam punk based challenge. I love your idea and have twitted about it!

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  6. Great idea! what about having a colour as a theme one month?

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  7. Sounds great I look forward to finding out more.

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  8. I love it too! I hope I can find the time to participate every month.

    My theme suggestion: European Vacation

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  9. Great idea! And yay for mentioning the whole 'copy cat' thing. There's so many things I think to make then see that someone else has done something similar, worry about being labelled a copy cat and don't make them at all. Time for that to change!

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  10. WOW, I'm excited that I could be involved in something like this.

    My husband's family does Kris Kringle at Christmas and we've been trying to have a theme to each year to keep it fun. They could work for this too!

    This Christmas' theme was "more than meets the eye", it had to either transform in some way, or had to serve two purposes.

    For next Christmas we're toying with the ideas "Size matters" or "Fun matters" (but of course they can be interpretted any way you like).

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  11. Woohoo! I have no ideas as my brain is still in holiday mode, but I can't wait to play along.

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  12. Wow - a great idea. I am desperately needing some motivation to get creative this year. I think I found it here. Looking forward to hearing what the January theme is?

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  13. Awesome idea, love to be involved :)

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  14. What a fabulous idea ... I'd really like to take part too!

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  15. This is such a great idea! I'm off to find out what this month's theme is.

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  16. WOW... with such an open canvas of ideas I would be silly not to join in!!! Thanks for encouraging our creativity... MWAH!!

    xo Steph

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  17. This sounds like a fun challenge; I hope it's not too late to join in!

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