Sketching a Start to the New Year-- Fun-A-Day 2017, Day 1

This January I will be embarking on a month long project for the Fun-A-Day Providence challenge! I participated in Fun-A-Day last year, learning a new craft every day, and it was a really great way to get me pumped for a year of crafting.

This year I've decided to work on one major project throughout the month. I'm hoping to document my daily progress so I've started this blog! 

My project is going to be a 5 scene diorama (1 diorama a week). I will be creating mostly needle felted characters, though I might throw in some crochet or knitted characters because it's been a while since I've knitted a tiny creature and would love to get more practice crocheting. The props and landscape elements will be made using recycled materials, found objects... basically anything goes materials wise!

This project is very much inspired by a project I did at the Providence Children's Museum last year while I was serving as an Americorps. A super cool lady (Rachel ;D) and I worked together to make 17 window box dioramas for the ramp at the museum. I needle felted around 50 different mythical creatures to live in the beautiful habitats that Rachel and I crafted out of whatever materials we found in the museum basement (which to be honest is a magical place full of crafting materials, so saying that we found everything in the basement is a bit like saying we found everything at a craft store...). I'll post some pictures of those ramp boxes sometime this week to show what my vision sort of is (and also to show off <3).

However, while I will be using some of the same techniques and materials as I did in the ramp boxes project, this project is going to be taking a much more personal tone. I make mythical creatures not just because they're super cute and I love them (which I do, I love them) but because they reconnect me to my childhood love of myths and fairy tales. I grew up surrounded by books of all kinds and I must have started reading pretty early because I don't remember ever not being able to read. My favourites books in elementary school were a series of beautifully illustrated fairy tale books. The fairy tales were from various cultures, there were plenty of Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen stories but there were also stories from 1001 Arabian Nights and if I remember correctly I also had some Portuguese and Chinese tales though I think those were their own collections... Anyway, to bring that tangent back to my point, fairy tales and the creatures that come from those magical stories live very close to my heart and for this project I'm going to make young Filipa's dream come true and put myself into the fairy tale worlds that I adore. 

The 5 diorama scenes will be 5 scenes of one story. The story will follow a tiny needle felted Filipa proxy as she embarks on an adventure to reunite a baby mandrake with its family. In classic fairy tale fashion, she'll make friends, gain helpful quest items, face perilous obstacles, and in the end find herself changed by the adventure itself. 

Below are rough sketches for each of the scenes:

It's a challenge to tell a story without words and with a limited number of scenes but I love taking on a challenge. Besides, I love making comics and this project will essentially be a 3-dimensional silent 5 panel comic, easy peasy ;D.

Well, that's all I've got to ramble on today.

Till tomorrow, 

Cheers!

Filipa