Winter in May

This week's theme was "Elegant Holiday", and the description clarified that it was to be for patterns you could imagine decorating a winter party. Say, on napkins or a throw pillow. Also, we were given a set of colors to use - two shades of burgundy and a grey (plus we were allowed to use black and white). There was quite a bit of complaining about these colors - it's a hard set to use. There's not a lot of contrast between the two burgundies, nor between the darker one and black.

I latched on to the "winter" part of things and made a design based on the "Three Friends of Winter" - pine, plum, and bamboo, so named because they don't wither in cold.



I'm really proud of how this came out - didn't have much effect on the contest though, as I still came in my usual 2/3 of the way down the list. My favorite was this floral.

Two designs

First up - the "cycling" challenge. Inspired by my older son recently getting his first bike, I did a design based on taking your first bike ride, with wobbly lines in the background.



Then, the theme was "Marrakesh." I mashed together a few different things - the Majorelle Gardens, the famous picturesque cones of spices, and the way Marrakesh is written in Tifinagh script.



Both of these did quite poorly in their contests. Oh well! My favorites were the bicycle chain chevron and the tile-inspired stars.

(No longer) endangered species

For this week's challenge theme of "endangered species," I didn't want to depress myself too much, so I chose a species that WAS endangered but has since been removed from the list: the American crocodile.



This came in the bottom 25% of entries, with 25 votes. My favorite was the jungle design by Christine Witte, but I love all of her stuff.