#creative challenges

[sharpestasp]

The second full round of communal_creators is ready for signing up!

What is it? A chance to create works in a community of encouragement. We have Tiers you can pledge for time or type of creation, and there will be discussions through the period.

The actual creation period is September 15 to October 15. Anyone who has holidays in there can add up to 7 days before or after to make up for time away.

What can be created? ANYTHING. Crafts, podfics, vids, writing, or anything you deem as creative. Some people sign up for time only and use that to archive materials, organize crafting gear, etc. The big thing is YOU count it as creative.

And yes, the communal part is intentional. We have a discord, there will be posts to check in on, and we encourage folks to talk to and support each other!

[horrible-bingos]

Welcome to Horrible Bingos' Summer/Winter 2024 This or That Mini Challenge!

The purpose of this mini challenge is to offer some dark seasonal prompts to any creatives out there!

This prompt card will be running between the moment of its publication and until September 20th, with a new card coming up for the Fall/Spring season by then!

You can pick one column and stick to it, the one that fits your own season or not; you can also do both columns if you have the chance (please, don't overwork yourself!), or cherry pick prompts according to what you like. You can do Summer's column all the way down and then switch and do "Folk Horror" instead of "Survival" for all you want! You can also interpret the prompts in any way you want, even stray away from Horror or Speculative fiction, except of course for the final two prompts, which are much more straightforward.

All fandoms and original works are welcome, same with pairings, alternate universes, and other content. All I will ask of you is to tag and warn accordingly: you may keep general au/tone/trope tags as vague as you wish, but please add warnings either before the text or in tags, even if it's only in the name of courtesy.

All that matters is that you can find something to get you creating, whether that's a written work, a little sketch, or even a mood board or playlist! Do an essay if you want!

There are no official minimums or maximums, but I can give some recommendations: min. 100 words for writing; min. a clean pencil sketch for art; min. 3 songs for a playlist; min. 3 images for a mood board; min. 1 picture for edits. Also, prompts can be combined freely. If you wish to use all of Winter's prompts in a single short story, go on ahead!

Tag the blog in any of your creations if you want me to reblog your post!

Challenge card made with Canva. Background picture source: photography by Sasha Matic at Unsplash.

[authormarialberg]

Oct. 5 Prompts: Every Word a Treat

[familythings]

Katy Perry Faces Legal Issue regarding "Lifetime" Clip

Katy Perry’s most recent music video for “Lifetimes” has sparked unexpected controversy as it came to light that certain scenes were filmed on a protected beach in the Balearic islands. Despite Perry’s noble intention to showcase the beauty of nature through her artistic vision, the filming has inadvertently sparked concerns from the Spanish government regarding environmental preservation.…

[enchantingepics]

Story Prompt 39

In a small town where quirky happenings were a norm, something peculiar was unfolding at the local dance studio. The rhythmic beats of the latest pop tunes echoed through the mirrored walls as a group of people gathered for their weekly dance class. Little did they know that this seemingly innocent gathering would soon take an unexpected turn.

As the dance instructor pumped up the volume, the participants began to groove, blissfully unaware of the impending chaos. Suddenly, a mysterious figure in a dark hoodie joined the class, blending seamlessly with the group. The energy in the room intensified as the group engaged in what seemed like an ordinary twerking session.

Amid the laughter and enthusiastic twerking, the atmosphere turned tense. The hooded figure, driven by an unknown motive, started twerking with an unusual intensity. The movements became sharper, more erratic, and the onlookers couldn't help but exchange puzzled glances.

One brave soul, sensing that something was amiss, approached the hooded dancer. "Hey, you okay there?" they asked, their curiosity tinged with concern.

Without uttering a word, the mysterious twerker abruptly stopped and locked eyes with the inquirer. A chilling silence enveloped the room, broken only by the distant thumping of the music.

Suddenly, the lights flickered, plunging the dance studio into darkness. In the ensuing chaos, a blood-curdling scream pierced through the air. As emergency lights flickered to life, the participants discovered the unthinkable – a member of their dance class lay lifeless on the floor.

[laidbackmarco]

Creative Renewal in the New Year: The Hidden Potential

Fear of Beginning After starting the year off on a great note I’ve made it a part of my late New Year’s Resolution to start writing more. I’ve committed to the idea of Creative Renewal in the New Year. Some of this motivation comes from conversations with friends and comments online. My good friend Dave said that my writing carries a level of self-awareness that is hard to find. He then went on…

[modifieduchiha]

Show, don't tell : Part 1

Directory Writing Masterlist Blog Etiquette Buy me a Ko-Fi?

[ Angry + Frustrated ]

Red face

Tensing up jaw/body

Clenching fists

Gritting teeth

Stomped feet

Rolling eyes

Crossing arms

Kick/Hit something

Eyebrows furl

Face crunches up

Tight lips

Narrow eyes

[ Happy + Excited ]

Laugh/Giggle

Smile from ear to ear

High tone in voice

Smiling/Grinning while talking

Heart Pounding

Clapping

Breathing deeply

Squeal/Scream

Talking fast

Contentedly Sigh

Tilted head

Hand clasped over mouth

[Bored + Tired ]

Pace back and forth

Sigh loudly

Blank face

Play with fingers

Staring off into space

Yawning

Fidgeting around

Leaning head on hands

Rubbing eyes

Droopy eyes

Dark circles under eyes

Complaining

[Sad + Scared]

Trembling lips/body

Tears in eyes

Bite Nails

Curl up/tuck knees to chest

Bite nails

Eyes burn/turn red

Stop breathing OR breathe fast

Lose appetite

Frowning

Darting eyes

Blinking quick or not at all

Pounding heart

© ModifiedUchiha 2023 ★ Feel free to use them for inspiration , but give credit if adding to a list ★

[my-darling-boy]

But where have we come? And where shall we end?

[newsfromtherooftop]

Royal Opera House celebrates winners of Design Challenge competition 

The Royal Opera House has celebrated the 2023 winners of its prestigious Design Challenge at a special prizegiving event. The Design Challenge is a nation-wide competition that opens the door to the arts, providing an opportunity for young people across the country to get invaluable insight into vocational careers.  This year participants were tasked with creating designs for Mozart’s The Magic…

[angstober]

Welcome to another year of Angstober! We're delighted to unveil the prompts for this year of angsty, spooky fun.

What is Angstober?

Angstober is a yearly October challenge with 31 angst-themed prompts to inspire you to create. The challenge is open to all sorts of creative work - writing, art, edits, whatever you want - in whatever medium you want. Original work or fanworks? Whatever you feel inspired for!

How do I take part?

Tag your works with #angstober2024 and the day of the prompt (e.g., #day 01) to share on tumblr. Feel free to @ us directly in the post as well! To share your work on AO3, add it to the Angstober 2024 collection.

You can post your works whenever - early or late - and use as many or as few prompts as you feel inspired for! We'll do our best to reblog as many works to the @angstober blog as we can.

Is there a banner to post my work with?

Absolutely!

Anything else?

Nope. Happy Angsting!

2024 Prompt List

Again

2. Countdown

3. Self-Destruction

4. Blood

5. Do Better

6. Medication

7. “You Still Don’t Get It.”

8. Growing Pains

9. Promise

10. Humiliation

11. Wake Up

12. Rotten Touch

13. Shaking

14. Only Around You

15. False Hope

16. No One Else To Turn To

17. “Shhh…”

18. Falling Stars

19. Tear-Stained Cheek

20. Spare Me

21. Abandoned

22. Crocodile Tears

23. Safe/Unsafe

24. Dark Sunrise

25. You’re No Better

26. Persuasion

27. Curled Up

28. Perfect

29. Get Out

30. Nothing Else To Tell You

31. It Ends Here

[somanywhatifs]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

With the end of season two comes a second redraw!

[Nov 2022] [June 2023] [June 2024]

[authormarialberg]

Oct. 31 Prompts: Show Off Your Costumes

[nasa]

NASA Inspires Your Crafty Creations for World Embroidery Day

It’s amazing what you can do with a little needle and thread! For #WorldEmbroideryDay, we asked what NASA imagery inspired you. You responded with a variety of embroidered creations, highlighting our different areas of study.

Here’s what we found:

Webb’s Carina Nebula

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, created this embroidered piece inspired by Webb’s Carina Nebula image. Captured in infrared light, this image revealed for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth. Credit: Wendy Edwards, NASA. Pattern credit: Clare Bray, Climbing Goat Designs

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, first learned cross stitch in middle school where she had to pick rotating electives and cross stitch/embroidery was one of the options.  “When I look up to the stars and think about how incredibly, incomprehensibly big it is out there in the universe, I’m reminded that the universe isn’t ‘out there’ at all. We’re in it,” she said. Her latest piece focused on Webb’s image release of the Carina Nebula. The image showcased the telescope’s ability to peer through cosmic dust, shedding new light on how stars form.

Ocean Color Imagery: Exploring the North Caspian Sea

Danielle Currie of Satellite Stitches created a piece inspired by the Caspian Sea, taken by NASA’s ocean color satellites. Credit: Danielle Currie/Satellite Stitches

Danielle Currie is an environmental professional who resides in New Brunswick, Canada. She began embroidering at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as a hobby to take her mind off the stress of the unknown. Danielle’s piece is titled “46.69, 50.43,” named after the coordinates of the area of the northern Caspian Sea captured by LandSat8 in 2019.

An image of the Caspian Sea captured by Landsat 8 in 2019. Credit: NASA

Two Hubble Images of the Pillars of Creation, 1995 and 2015

Melissa Cole of Star Stuff Stitching created an embroidery piece based on the Hubble image Pillars of Creation released in 1995. Credit: Melissa Cole, Star Stuff Stitching

Melissa Cole is an award-winning fiber artist from Philadelphia, PA, USA, inspired by the beauty and vastness of the universe. They began creating their own cross stitch patterns at 14, while living with their grandparents in rural Michigan, using colored pencils and graph paper.  The Pillars of Creation (Eagle Nebula, M16), released by the Hubble Telescope in 1995 when Melissa was just 11 years old, captured the imagination of a young person in a rural, religious setting, with limited access to science education.

Lauren Wright Vartanian of the shop Neurons and Nebulas created this piece inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2015 25th anniversary re-capture of the Pillars of Creation. Credit:  Lauren Wright Vartanian, Neurons and Nebulas

Lauren Wright Vartanian of Guelph, Ontario Canada considers herself a huge space nerd. She’s a multidisciplinary artist who took up hand sewing after the birth of her daughter. She’s currently working on the illustrations for a science themed alphabet book, made entirely out of textile art. It is being published by Firefly Books and comes out in the fall of 2024. Lauren said she was enamored by the original Pillars image released by Hubble in 1995. When Hubble released a higher resolution capture in 2015, she fell in love even further! This is her tribute to those well-known images.

James Webb Telescope Captures Pillars of Creation

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art, created a rectangular version of Webb’s Pillars of Creation. Credit:  Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art

Darci Lenker of Norman, Oklahoma started embroidery in college more than 20 years ago, but mainly only used it as an embellishment for her other fiber works. In 2015, she started a daily embroidery project where she planned to do one one-inch circle of embroidery every day for a year.  She did a collection of miniature thread painted galaxies and nebulas for Science Museum Oklahoma in 2019. Lenker said she had previously embroidered the Hubble Telescope’s image of Pillars of Creation and was excited to see the new Webb Telescope image of the same thing. Lenker could not wait to stitch the same piece with bolder, more vivid colors.

Milky Way

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art was inspired by NASA’s imaging of the Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: Darci Lenker

In this piece, Lenker became inspired by the Milky Way Galaxy, which is organized into spiral arms of giant stars that illuminate interstellar gas and dust. The Sun is in a finger called the Orion Spur.

The Cosmic Microwave Background

This image shows an embroidery design based on the cosmic microwave background, created by Jessica Campbell, who runs Astrostitches. Inside a tan wooden frame, a colorful oval is stitched onto a black background in shades of blue, green, yellow, and a little bit of red. Credit: Jessica Campbell/ Astrostitches

Jessica Campbell obtained her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Toronto studying interstellar dust and magnetic fields in the Milky Way Galaxy. Jessica promptly taught herself how to cross-stitch in March 2020 and has since enjoyed turning astronomical observations into realistic cross-stitches. Her piece was inspired by the cosmic microwave background, which displays the oldest light in the universe.

The full-sky image of the temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) in the cosmic microwave background, made from nine years of WMAP observations. These are the seeds of galaxies, from a time when the universe was under 400,000 years old. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team

GISSTEMP: NASA’s Yearly Temperature Release

Katy Mersmann, a NASA social media specialist, created this embroidered piece based on NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global annual temperature record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. Credit: Katy Mersmann, NASA

Katy Mersmann is a social media specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She started embroidering when she was in graduate school. Many of her pieces are inspired by her work as a communicator. With climate data in particular, she was inspired by the researchers who are doing the work to understand how the planet is changing. The GISTEMP piece above is based on a data visualization of 2020 global temperature anomalies, still currently tied for the warmest year on record.

In addition to embroidery, NASA continues to inspire art in all forms. Check out other creative takes with Landsat Crafts and the James Webb Space telescope public art gallery.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[enchantingepics]

Story Prompt 38

In a small town where the sunsets painted the sky in hues of orange and pink, there lived an ambitious soul ready to face a formidable opponent - math homework. Our protagonist, armed with determination and a pencil, stared down the menacing equations on the crumpled sheets.

The room was silent except for the occasional tap of the pencil on the desk. It was a battlefield, and our hero, with a furrowed brow, was ready for the fight. The numbers on the paper seemed to mock, but our protagonist had a steely resolve.

As the night progressed, frustration turned into whispered negotiations with the stubborn math problems. "Come on, you can't be that difficult," muttered our hero, as if trying to reason with the elusive solutions.

Suddenly, the window creaked open, letting in a gentle breeze. A mysterious figure, clad in the shadows, appeared. "Need a hand with those tricky numbers?" the enigmatic stranger offered, a mischievous glint in their eye.

Our protagonist, cautious yet curious, nodded. The stranger took a seat, and with a flair for the dramatic, began explaining math concepts in a way that made them sound like the plot twists of a gripping novel.

[jesncin]

I love ur Lois so much!!! Lois has always reminded me of my mom and so seeing your version of Lois, one that faces similar uphill battle when it comes to work and how you can start sanding yourself down to try and get further, is amazing and touching. Can't wait to see more of this Lois, especially as she works up the ranks!

Thank you! I think that part of Lois (becoming less of yourself in order to move ahead in an industry, especially as a woman [of color]) is so underappreciated and should be explored way more.