10-word Butterfly Love Story

by Denise M. SessousAugust 28, 2017August 28, 2017

Week Eight (Day 21) Write a ten-word love story. Bonus: Illustrate it.

Thankfully, I went on a six-word story bender not too long ago, so I had a few ideas to tweak for this challenge. I also wanted to play with fire and ice for this one so I chose:

Her burning heart made no apologies,
his frozen heart melted

**note**
(Day 21) is the prompt designation in Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! I am using this book as the catalyst and inspiration for these weekly posts.

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Clay Butterfly

by Denise M. SessousAugust 21, 2017August 13, 2017

Week Seven (Day 20) Buy or make some clay and then use it like you never have before.

At first, I wasn’t sure what I wanted with this one. I had mental images of a gooey clay blob-berfly, or a bulbous bisque statue like the kind you find ready for paint at the craft store. But, when I searched for clay images on Pixabay, many images of dry, cracked clay fields came up and I knew that was where I wanted to go. So, I have a dried out butterfly finding an oasis and transforming from dry/dead to restored to life and color.

**note**
(Day 20) is the prompt designation in Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! I am using this book as the catalyst and inspiration for these weekly posts.

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Auto-motor-putter-fly

by Denise M. SessousAugust 14, 2017August 14, 2017

Week Six (Day 18) Work with the things you find in your car (or a friend’s car if you don’t have one).

The engine’s in the car, right? My Mazda6 never looked so cute!

This prompt had me spiraling down the vortex of my detail-oriented, down-in-the-weeds self. I had all kinds of mental images of a “metal” effect on a gathering of flowers and adding a bit of “rust” for depth, not to mention using hubcaps for the center of the flowers and the headlights the petals. After hours of puttering around on Photoshop, spinning my wheels, I finally took a step back. I realized continuing down this road would cost me more hours and miles of research on technique. So, I took a brain detour and tried to think of where a car butterfly would go for “flowers.” My first thought was a junkyard, but that seemed kind of cannibalistic, especially if there were a lot of junked cars. In a flash of inspiration, I thought of using a shot of the engine block. A quick snap and color adjustment later and I was pulling into the garage…

Thanks for tolerating all my car puns!

**note**
(Day 18) is the prompt designation in Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! I am using this book as the catalyst and inspiration for these weekly posts.

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Eye-spy Butterfly

by Denise M. SessousJuly 31, 2017July 26, 2017

Week Five (Day 17) Make something inspired by and/or that goes over an eye (yours or someone else’s).

I had high hopes for this one, as I love all butterflies, but I’m especially fascinated by those with eyespots. The fact that over hundreds of thousands of years these delicate creatures developed coloring that mimics the eyes of predators like owls and hawks is truly remarkable.

So, I took a selfie hoping to superimpose a butterfly, lining up the eyespot with my eye and blending the rest of the photo into the background. But, that was a bit too advanced for me. Instead, I managed to create a butterfly-shaped tattoo mask.

**note**
(Day 17) is the prompt designation in Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! I am using this book as the catalyst and inspiration for these weekly posts.

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Butterfly on the Water

by Denise M. SessousJuly 25, 2017July 25, 2017

Week Four: (Day 19) Create something that floats on water. (It doesn’t have to be a boat.)

My attempt at a reflection of a butterfly on the water…

**note**
(Day 19) is the prompt designation in Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! I am using this book as the catalyst and inspiration for these weekly posts.

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Tater-fly

by Denise M. SessousJuly 17, 2017July 17, 2017

Week Three: (Day 16) Make a unique print by cutting up a potato or sponge, and use it to stamp on a material of your choice.

Here’s my potato stamp butterfly. I took a photo of a potato and created the carved-out stamp part in Photoshop. Below is my take on applying it to a material of my choice… patterned on a field of sour cream, of course!

Make’s me want a baked potato real bad…

**note**
(Day 16) is the prompt designation in Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! I am using this book as the catalyst and inspiration for these weekly posts.

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A thousand tiny butterflies

by Denise M. SessousJuly 10, 2017July 17, 2017

Week Two: (Day 14) Make something microscopic. How small can you work? Can you make something that requires a magnifying glass or microscope to see?

I could have created a super small butterfly shape on a white background, but it felt like the old polar-bear-in-a-blizzard shtick. So, instead of just one minute butterfly, I decided on thousands (probably, I didn’t count them). Here’s a detail shot of the finished image. Each individual butterfly is only 15 pixels.

The butterfly pic came from Pixabay, my favorite go-to source for free, hi-res, open source images. And, the Photoshop tutorial came from Blue Lightning TV on YouTube, a treasure trove of great Photoshop videos.

**note**
(Day 14) is the prompt designation in Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! I am using this book as the catalyst and inspiration for these weekly posts.

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Splash of tea butterfly

by Denise M. SessousJuly 3, 2017July 17, 2017

Week One: (Day 13) Use tea bags (used or unused) or even just liquid tea (in a cup or not) to create something today.

The arrangement of: tea-pot, cup (with tea), saucer, spoon with loose tea and the place-mat were all photographed by me and have not been altered. I added the splash-of-tea butterfly with Photoshop.

Pinkie up, elbow down, sip and enjoy!

**note**
(Day 13) is the prompt designation in Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life! I am using this book as the catalyst and inspiration for these weekly posts.

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Hidden Butterfly

by Denise M. SessousAugust 15, 2016February 10, 2017

Week Five: (Day 12) Camouflage…Create or alter something so that it disappears into its background.

First of all, so sorry about the HUGE time gap between posts. My life got a bit chaotic (as life sometimes does) and I’m returning to a sense of normalcy now.

That being said, I decided to approach this challenge in a more abstract way as opposed to photo-realistic. Butterflies have great camouflage, but they only mimic the texture of bark and leaves.

So, I took lots of pictures: a few with my wood blank in front of the background to get a sense of scale and a ton of the tree with the vines. I cut the photos apart and the decoupaged them to the blank.

Unfortunately, so much time had passed between when I started this project and when I finished that the lighting had changed. And in hindsight, I should have used the photos that’s came out more “yellow” than the ones that came out more “blue.” But, she seems to blend pretty well.