Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft

April 'Take the Challenge' with Mou

Hi everyone, Mou here and welcome to the fourth 'Take the Challenge' of 2013!

I feel that creative challenges help us experiment and learn new things. Challenges can help us get unstuck from creative ruts. They can also inspire us to create in ways we would not have thought of otherwise. So, I decided to take a few creative challenges myself and thought you might like to play along.

Every month, on the first Monday (April turns out to be an exception as we had a blog hop starting on 4/1 and so, challenge starts today April 8th), I'll post a challenge and my take on it. You'll have 12 days to take this on. Leave a comment to the challenge post with a link to your creation based on that challenge. The following Monday, we will pick TWO winners randomly from among the readers who participated in that week's challenge. And the winners will get a prize from Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft®.

Today I have a challenge and an announcement for you. Let's start with the challenge.

Today's challenge is about making something new from something used or old. 

 April is Earth month and I feel that upcycling something creatively might show a little bit of our love for our beautiful planet.

So here's my take: a journal spread using an old book and some security envelopes we got in the mail, and of course, some of my favorite Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft products.

Jazz Up Your Coffee Sleeve Mixed Media Style (Guest Design Team)

Hi everyone, this is Erin here writing my last guest design team post! I'm really going to miss it!! Today I'm sharing with you this coffee sleeve I altered.

To create this coffee cozy, I took a piece of Sticky-Back-Canvas and traced a Starbuck's coffee sleeve onto the canvas' disposable liner.  I then cut out the canvas and then painted gesso over the canvas side and allowed it to dry.

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!  Jen Matott here to show you how I created this sculpture as a celebration of our Earth and how we can reuse materials already found in our homes! 

All the materials were items that I found in my house and upcycled. I took the shredded papers from junk mail, work papers, and personal files to create handmade paper! I used the recycled paper I made to create the leaves and banner for the artwork.  I also used book pages, an old sewing pattern (that I almost threw away!), and cardboard for the other leaves and to decorate the boring pot that I found.  So all of the materials used here were found around my house or in my yard!  I took some fallen branches and stuck them into some old styrofoam (from an old silk flower arrangement) for the base.  Below, I will show you my process and how I used the Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft products to enhance this project.