Week 3, CHAPTER 15: Any Way You Go Will Get You Somewhere!

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'
-- Chapter 6, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Any way you go will get you somewhere, so this month's challenge at The Altered Alice is ANYTHING GOES! It's all up to you, and we can't wait to see what road you will take with YOUR project. Wonderland entries are encouraged; you will be rewarded with two chances at the draw instead of one.  Multiple entries are fine as long as each is on a separate post. Time is running out; you have until May 25 to enter!

ALICE ON SALE!!! 
ALL
Alice in Wonderland
on sale May 6-26, 2012 

Our sponsor this month is the amazing Alpha Stamps [Store | Blog], and Alice fans are in for a real treat when they shop in this magical store! Alpha Stamps features exclusive rubber stamps, collage sheets, paper dolls, kits and collage supplies of all kinds. Their Alice in Wonderland selection is HUGE! Other shopping themes include Steampunk, Birds, French Vintage, Circus, and many more. I love it that you can shop by theme or product type. Be sure to enroll in their newsletter, as the supplies used in the latest artwork from their talented design team are often on sale! They also have fun challenges that are hosted on their Facebook page. The winners are chosen by the number of "likes" each project receives!

The Prize - Anything Goes and Everyone Wins!
The Altered Alice design team will be working with this newly released exclusive "Alice's Adventures" stamp set from Alpha Stamps, plus some Alpha Stamps exclusive collage sheets and other collage supply goodies! 

ONE  randomly drawn winner will receive the same "Alice's Adventures" unmounted rubber sheet that the design team is using!
EVERYONE who participates in the challenge will win a brand new digital White Rabbit ATC Collage Sheet, emailed at the end of the challenge!  SO DON'T BE LATE - enter by May 25 (Eastern daylight time zone)!
And if you just can't play along, you can still enjoy ALL ALICE ON SALE at Alpha Stamps, now until May 26, 2012. So get going and let's see where you go with this fabulous Alpha Stamps challenge!

Your Weekly Inspiration!
Be sure to visit each design team member's blog, as they will have links to all these fabulous Alpha Stamps supplies. Remember you too can stock up on these items while the Alice section of Alpha Stamps is on sale!

Amy Bowerman Stucki of Plucking Daisies has done another upcycling makeover on this old table, which now looks like THIS!!!

What a fantastic makeover! Charms are glued around the edges of the table and the ring around the legs. Mini playing cards adorn the edges.

The top is a magnificent decoupaged collage. The characters from Alice's Adventures stamp set have been stamped on metal, and the center is a mix of elements from various Alpha Stamps collage sheets!

And here it is amidst the previous Wonderland garden art makeovers by Amy; isn't it charming? Be sure to stop by Plucking Daisies for MANY more photos and the links to all the Alpha Stamps products used.

Donna Mundinger of Popsicle Toes has created this charming scene using Alpha Stamps paper dolls! The Queen of Hearts has spotted that unpainted white rose and she is NOT happy! It looks like both Alice and the Duchess have been imprisoned in this birdcage.

The paper doll sheets have many layers. Look at the little hedge hog Donna created with a pompom, and tiny cards have formed a whicket!

I love all the elements Donna has added to decorate the top of the cage. I think the laughing cat is one of my favorite stamps in the new set. And look at the clever way she has used the flamingo stamp! Be sure to stop by Popsicle Toes to leave a comment and to see links to the Alpha Stamps supplies used.

Alpha Stamps Guest Designers:

Amy Mayfield of Amy's Blam decorated this fun house-shaped wooden shadowbox! It is full of Alpha Stamps goodies; take a close look!

I love the "clock" at the peak of the roof, and the embellished bottle cap is a neat crowning touch!

Every inch is decorated, eye candy everywhere! I love the way Alice is looking at it along with us, a really great touch!

Remember ALL entrants will receive a copy of the White Rabbit ATC digital collage sheet; it will be emailed at the end of the challenge. So enter here using the Linky Tool, and make sure your email address is correct! Please put your name as the TITLE when you submit your project:

Thanks so much for stopping by! Please leave a comment before you go, and be sure to check back next week for more inspiration.

Winner & Honorable Mentions, CHAPTER 13: The Best Butter!

Today is the day we announce the winner of one sheet of Alice in Wonderland stamps from our sponsor, Red Eowyn, but first a couple more design team projects! 

Design Team Projects:

Amy Bowerman Stucki of Plucking Daisies is continuing with her Wonderland garden art projects! Isn't this flower bed going to be gorgeous when all the flowers come in? Today's additions include the Mad Hatter stake (to the left of the teapot), the flamingo and the hedgehog!

Front of garden stake

Back of garden stake

This wonderful stake has the Mad Hatter on the front and fanciful leaves with embossed texture on the back, and the "Twinkle, twinkle little bat" stamp from our sponsor, Red Eowyn, is stamped all over the back. Be sure to watch Amy's blog for her post about all the steps she used in creating this. But what would an Alice garden be without a flamingo?

Amy upcycled an old plastic garden flamingo by coating it with Glitterblast spray paint and other paints; love the texture that gives the plastic! Isn't that vintage-looking crowned heart the perfect embellishment for a royal croquet mallet flamingo?  But you can't play croquet without a ball!  Hmmm. . . I think I see a hedgehog!

Amy took a buttery yellow rock from her yard and added broken china spines to this darling hedgehog! I LOVE THE HEDGEHOG, don't you???

And they make a wonderful Wonderland pair! Be sure to visit Plucking Daisies and look around; its a pretty amazing place and you'll find plenty to comment on!

And here is my art journal project (Lynne Phelps of Savvy Sisters Studio), based on the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movie. I love the final battle scene where Alice is dodging the Jabberwocky and trying to gather her courage to slay this hideous monster. This does not follow the books, but I still love her six impossible things. This art journal spread took a detour from where I intended it to go, and I had some major difficulties with adding the text and line art; you can read about in the details on my blog.

I used the Jabberwocky and the champion Alice stamps. I LOVE these images and it is rare to find them in Alice stamp collections, but  Red Eowyn has them! Please stop by my blog to read all the details and leave a comment if you can!

Winner!

Random.org selected #7, so Blackdragon of Suffolk, UK, wins the Red Eowyn prize of one full Alice in Wonderland sheet of unmounted rubber! Contact me via the email link in the left column with your choice of Alice plate and mailing address!

She submitted this wonderful tag featuring an Alice in Wonderland paper doll! I just love all the detail, it's really lovely.

Honorable Mentions!

ALL of the entries were just fantastic this month. I hope you will cruise through the Linky list below and leave some comments for our fabulous entrants. EVERYONE who participated AND submitted a project featuring Alice in Wonderland is entitled to an honorable mention badge this month:

NOTE: I've noticed some of you have broken Alice badges on their blogs. If you load the picture from this URL, the image should work: http://i641.photobucket.com/albums/uu132/lynnephelps/AlteredAliceHonorableMentionBadge.png
If that does not work on your blog, I suggest saving the image to your computer and uploading it to your blog through your blogging software.

ALL of the entries are great, so I will just highlight a few that particularly caught my eye for some reason!

I am a huge science fiction and fantasy fan, so this "Time Rift" comic book (or graphic novel) style image from Ike's World  really wowed me!

LOVE this one from Artwolf2009 - look at all the layers of color and the fun quirky images. To top it all off, it has a wonderful verse: "Dreamers might not have a plan, but realists don´t have visions."

This offering from Izzwizz features a dapper March Hare and a great advertising jingle for butter! The tone on tone stamping over the background sponging is pretty special!

Ana Cristina Caldatto of Scrap da Ana features realistic looking melted butter made from gel medium and some yellow oil paint! Amazing texture, and photographed amid vintage china butter dishes.

I love all the energy and action on this tag - you will have to go to to Dragonsweb to see all the closeup photos to see the details.

Bonnie McLain's art journal spread from Love Light and Peace is loaded with layers of stencils and textures; I love the way the various styles of harlequin diamonds unite the two pages!

Sue the Iron made me laugh with the psychologist asking us if we are dreaming of rabbits?  Well, yes, hares too, LOL! The black ink spot border is a great finishing touch; what great stamps!

Last, I could not ignore an Alice in Wonderland TREE among the entrants! Bravo, Leintje!

For those of you not specifically called out, it is only because I am out of time. You can see all the fabulous entries here:
Thanks again to  Red Eowyn for supplying us with these fabulous stamps and prize! Please be sure to visit our wonderful sponsor, and please leave a comment before you go!

CHAPTER 2 Winner & Honorable Mentions!

Winner: Sylvia (Barnie)
Blog Post: BarniesBaustelle
Location: Germany
Prize: $30 Gift Certificate to The Octopode Factory Etsy Shop

Thanks for waiting! The HUGE $30 gift certificate to the Octopode Factory Etsy shop was won by this project by Sylvia, who entered from Germany:

I love all the little details: the Alice in Wonderland words with their dashed curved underlines, the watch dangling from the mushroom, the words around Alice's doorway, the black and white border to frame it all! It looks like she used the same Octopode door that I used for the shape of her door, with the woodgrain texture embossed on it!  Lively and fun!

It looks like Sylvia already owns a few Octopode images such as this Teapot Alice (which also comes in a digi set) and Cheshire Cat (set), and I am sure she will find a few more she'd like to purchase with this wonderful prize from Lily:

Sylvia, please send me an email through the link near the top of the left column. I will forward your contact info to Lily so you can collect your prize and start picking out your digi images or collage sheets!

Since the challenge started, even more Octopode images are now available in rubber stamps! You can email Lily to place your order, see the details on her blog Rubber Stamps page!  Lily just emailed this update:

I've had the rest of the Alice images made into rubberstamps.... see attached.  flamingo available in atc and large size now and lots of elements too. as well as the mad hatter, the white rabbit and the tweedles available in 12.5 cm!

if you'd like any or even the whole set (i can send you image of the full page) contact me please.
thanks for your continue support of the octopode factory.

Lily Chilvers,
The Octopode Factory

See The Octopode Factory Rubber Stamps page for more info!

Prize Drawing Process

I thought I would tell you a little about how I award the prizes. We had twelve eligible entries - I took out the three from the Octopode design team as they had just used the Linky to get me their info, and we showcased their projects during Week 2 of the challenge. I took out one other entry that was an accidental duplicate because she had made an error with the link on the first one and had to submit again.  That left twelve FANTASTIC entries, and ALL of them featured Wonderland this month! Every entry had two chances, so link number one had chances 1 and 13, link number 2 had chances 2 and 14, and so on to link number 12 which had chances 12 and 24.  Random.org was used to generate a random number between 1-24, and 20 was the winning number. Sylvia had chances 8 and 20, so she won!

Honorable Mentions

Let's hear a huge round of applause for our wonderful participants! Thank goodness for random number generators, as I would not have been able to choose, as every entry was a winner. This month I would have liked to comment on each and every entry. Instead I am showcasing a few that I thought were a bit different in a unique way!

First, I have to mention this AMAZING altered pop-up book by a Brazilian  participant Ana Cristina Caldatto of Scrap Da Ana Cristina Caldatto. I have admired many altered books, and have clumsily constructed some of my own pop-up designs, but I never thought of starting with a pop-up book and altering from there! Genius! Take a look:



 I love the use of the back of the playing card as a rug! And when you pull the tab to open the doors, the Queen of Hearts is bellowing in the ballroom!

There are many pages in what I believe started as a Cinderella pop-up book. I wonder if there are any more Wonderland scenes in its future? Please be sure to visit Ana's blog to leave her a comment and to see many additional photos of this lovely creation.

The next entry that really jumped out at me was this Portal #2 in a series of portals by Sarah Cooper of Scrapbooking is Cheaper than Therapy! Sarah has constructed a wooden frame for a reclaimed cabinet door, added an antique doorknob and created this Portal to Wonderland! So the exterior is a completely literal interpretation of the challenge. . .

But the interior is a true Wonderland fantasy assemblage of elements!

I love the Cheshire grinning in the tree! Look at the Duchess' pig below, with a rolling pin for the cook with the pepper! Almost every character is represented in this mad collage!

Another favorite bit is the living flowers, and circuit board grass! Notice the White Rabbit running, late just as in our story, and the chess pieces tucked in at the base!

Hurry over to Sarah's blog to leave her a comment on this entry that was almost too late (perfect for our theme, hah!) and to see all the other pictures showing more of the details of this intricately crafted entry! They are fascinating, you won't want to miss them!

When we open the door of CuddlyBunny's project on Not a Moment to Spare, we find ourselves transported to a bit of Wonderland inside an Altoid's sized tin! You can visit her blog to see more pictures and leave her some love!

Of course the first thing I asked was "Where did you get that rocking Rabbit on a bicycle?!!!" and she was kind enough to point me to this wonderful freebie which you can get HERE! Be sure to say thanks to CuddlyBunny for sharing when you leave a comment on her blog about this wonderful Wonderland tin!

And now we'll "lower the tone" with Nigel's corrugated cardboard housing from his Freebird Flights of Fancy, LOL!!! Never let it be said that a project has to be fancy or drawn out to receive some Altered Alice love; Nigel said he was lowering the tone by the way, that was a quote from his blog post! The projects are simple but effective!

What made me give it a mention here is the torn away bits on the right house which features Octopode's  Edgar Allen Poe of The Raven fame, which seems totally suitable given the Mad Hatter's riddle! (And Edgar also comes in an Ocopode digi set with a cool female Raven that is on my wishlist, and he is living next door to the Teapot Alice!) I have used corrugated cardboard before and often peel away the smooth facing. However, it takes on a whole new, almost sculptural look when it is painted! What a different look, and thanks to Nigel I'll be thinking about how to apply that to future projects!

Susan Allen of Little Imperfections painted the most charming White Rabbit and wrote a fascinating prequel to Alice in Wonderland which tumbles out from behind the door of a baby wipe box!!!

You will have to visit her blog post to read the whole story of the White Rabbit before he met Alice!

When we open Lola Azul's trifold card, it forms a colorful hall of doors - check out all the pictures on Apunte des Colores!

And when we open three of the doors, bit by bit we reveal the complete Alice!

Celina of ScrapVamp made the cover of her new art journal into a door, which is fantastic and you can see it on her blog post, but what really grabbed me was the tremendous sense of depth she created by framing the background illustration from Through the Looking Glass And What Alice Found There with foreground elements coming ever closer with the tree, then the flowers, and finally the White Rabbit! Take a look at the inside front cover:

I could feature EVERY project here but I am out of time!  Here is what I loved about the rest:

• I love the way the the door in the middle of Cath's altered book opens out of a page covered with script, it is lovely! Cath blog is A Divided Island and she joined our challenge from Cyprus, a Greek island!
• A dollar bin wooden key box formed the canvas for this wonderful project from Foxy's Weblog!
• Pat Moore of Still Challenged made a fantastic Wonderland scene using original Tenniel illustrations! LOVE the arm, LOL! You'll have to visit Pat to see what I mean!
• Charlene created a lovely card, and she used an Alice book cover image which is a little door opening to reveal a cupcake!

The Altered Alice design team would like to give Lily Chilvers a HUGE thank you for sponsoring the March challenge. We had a good time playing along with the ladies in The Octopode Factory design team, and appreciate Lily providing us with digital images to use for our inspiration pieces! Sue and Tracy chose to use their Octopode rubber stamps instead, which was so appropriate as we celebrate Octopode's entry into RUBBER!

Please leave a comment for me, the participants, a thank you to Octopode, and the fabulous design team!