A Very Exciting Invitation...

Art by Sunny Koch It's Sunday night, lots going on. Emails going back and forth between new art friends and old. New ideas, new layouts posted, lots of creative fun. My guest designer for the week spot is now posted over at Pencil Lines. Check me out:) The work that the other designers did with my sketch is truly amazing! Also, my new blog friend Bonnie posted an interview with me over on her blog.

Bonnie and I are also up to something very exciting. In the spirit of Rhonna Farrer's 21 day challenges that she used to post when she blogged, we've decided to co-host a brand new art challenge! The theme of the challenge will be

A Cabinet of Natural Curiosity. Doesn't that just get your mind swimming with creative ideas?!! Curiosity is the food of life. Fill your heart and go! This challenge will be about delving into yourself. Pushing your limits of creativity, exploring, discovering, nature, wonder, and inspiration. Each day you will be given either a picture, a word, a sentence or even a link to check something out we found. How you interrupt what we give you is up to you. This challenge is about inspiring each other, learning, growing, stepping out of your box and being creative.

Art work above and below by Sunny Koch

Bonnie and I will take turns to host the challenge, so you will be posting your links either on my blog or hers depending on who's turn it is to host the challenge for the day.

You can do this if you are a digital scrapper, paper scrapper, if you paint, draw, doodle, whatever! There are no specifications or qualifications. First timers and those without blogs are more than welcome to play along. Bonnie and I will be doing the traditional version: paper, paint, glue...down and dirty real art supplies. We will be taking the challenge along with you. There are no rules, except to have fun and enjoy the process!

What will you need:

1. A book to alter or blank book or 12 x 12 pages

Your book will be your "cabinet." What kind of book you use will affect what kind of book you make. If you want to add lots of lumpy natural stuff, make sure your book can handle it. Here is one example of Pam Garrison's that is oh so awe inspiring! Here is a post on choosing a book that I wrote when I hosted my Book of Dreams project.

2. You need to commit to this, so you have to sign up here in the comments section or on Bonnie's blog before the 18th January 2007, that is when we will get started. The challenge will be hosted on both blogs. Here and at Bonnie's. She will begin the first post, I will do the second and so on.

We are not 100% sure if we should host it for 8 days consecutively or if we should do it three times a week. So we are putting the question/option out to you. When you sign up, please state your preference, whether everyday for 8 days or fewer times a week over a longer period of time. Since Bonnie lives in South Africa, if we post a challenge each day, you will actually be getting a challenge about every 12 hours, because of the time difference. **edit: We will post challenges on Thursday's and Sunday's on our respective blogs. Hope that will space them out nicely.

The details will follow closer to the time, all you need to do is sign up for it, get your gear ready and be ready to start the 18th.

If you have the time, read this post by the **amazing** Nina Bagley. The pictures are absolutely stunning and the prose gets to the heart of it all. Here is part of it..."bottom line is that i am what i know, and i need to remind myself of that fact day in, day out. and i don't know much, which is why i am so drawn to the sweetness and innocence of nature that surrounds me: the woods don't nag me if i stray a bit too far off the beaten path, or linger too long at the window in the sun, or stare at the leaves at my feet for an inordinate amount of time. nature knows i'll put those moments to use, somehow, someday, some way, and i need to remember to listen to the natural world around me when it whispers in my ear to breathe. rather than worrying about whether or not you all will get or understand what it is i'm trying to say, or even whether i'll understand what point it is that i'm trying to make on this slow, quiet, steady afternoon, i should stop right now, turn off this computer, and go outside. take a breath. look up. look down. turn around. somewhere in there is a bit of inspiration, and a bit of enlightenment, and even a bit of encouragement. and whether or not we all make the same pieces of art from the same pieces of nature is not the point. the point is what we all choose to say with what we make..."

Wewh, that's a lot of stuff that's been swirling around in my head. Now for some fluff, I uploaded a bunch of random pics from around my house on my flickr page. Have a great night!