Misplaced Creativity

I entered my name into a challenge at the lovely Treasured Memories, my favourite local scrapbooking joint, and they drew my name to participate in a challenge. 

I was super excited. The prize was great, I like a challenge, and I was at just the right level of sleep deprivation to be creative when they let me know I'd been chosen. 

Unfortunately, things were heading downhill. This was in the middle of the great mouse invasion, I was ridiculously busy, Gracie and I were both sick, Brad was out of town, Emma hit a growth spurt and was up all night.... I was dipping past the creative point of sleep deprivation and into the crazy.

We had two weeks to pick up the bottle and create our masterpieces. I was the last to pick it up... it took me over a week. A little pressure to add to the mix. 

No worries, I got my bottle and I went right to it. I started pulling out everything in my stash that I'd collected, hung on to and stored for years thinking, one day, this will be useful. 

 I saw this dreamcatcher on a scrapbooking blog and thought it was beautiful and it got my imagination working. I would bottle dreams. What a beautiful concept! Perfect.

I immediately went to work that night once the girls were in bed.

This is what my cache looked like. It is also my kitchen table, but you can't really tell, can you?

I started tying, taping, modpodg-ing, glueing, doodling, filling, and ultimately, having a messy good time.

I learned to make a dreamcatcher (sort of... not sure if I would actually catch anything with mine, but it looked authentic to my untrained eye).

I filled it with beads, gems, plastic crowns, and baubles that represented dreams to me. I hung things that resembled my dreams suspended in the bottle. 

I topped it with tulle and burlap, wrapped the bottle neck in layers of twine, rafia, feathers, acorns, film strip, and whatever else I could think of. 

The back is book paper, and a doily backing an inspirational quote, "She made her dreams into plans."

I thought it was so fun and so creatively stimulating. 

Then, I reread the contest rules....

They had mentioned in the write up that the contest was inspired by Alice in Wonderland's Drink Me bottle....

I should have read it more closely, or had a coffee before I read it. 

You were actually, supposed to make a bottle to look like what the Drink Me bottle may have looked like in Alice in Wonderland.

My Native American, dreamcatcher bottle really had nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland, aside from the dream connection. It certainly didn't look conducive to drink out of, seeing how the top was covered with almost everything known to man, including a dream catcher.

Oh dear. 

Sorry Treasured Memories. 

You succeeded in inspiring me, but I did not quite fit in with your theme... at all.

And here are the other bottles, and the winning creation. Congrats Wendy Koebel, a well-deserved win.  Lovely work, ladies. 

Thank you for not snickering.