A sneak peak...

at the altered chinese chess set challenge...
For those who've just stumbled upon my blog for the first time, or those who don't commit every brilliant post I write to memory, I issued a challenge back in November, to the first ten readers who wished to participate. Including myself, the challenge began with ten participants, and nine were able to complete it within (give or take a week) our allotted time frame...

It has been a wonderful month at my mailbox (or more accurately, my front porch), where every few days, I was treated to another amazing work of art that began as a $2 Chinese wooden chess set and evolved into a unique work of art.

Here I have cropped photos to offer just a peak at a fragment of each of the amazing pieces I received. All of them are fabulously creative and entirely different, but I've made a few initial observations...

2 chose to retain the set's original Asian theme;
3 chose to keep theirs as a type of game;
3 went with themes evoking nature or used natural elements;
2 highlighted girls/women in their pieces;
2 are designed to be wall hangings

(obviously some pieces fit into more than one category here)

I want to publicly thank all of the participants for taking on the challenge. I issued it at an absolutely crazy time of year -- the winter holidays -- and everyone jumped in as though they didn't have a thousand other things to do. As I mentioned in my original post about the challenge, my plan now is to write an article about our experience (with the help of all of the contributing artists), as well as to create an art piece for each of the participants that also serves as documentation of everyone's creations.