100 Days of Engineering Interactive Elements: Celebration and Reflection

on
Days 1-100 of Engineering Interactive Elements in My Fiber Art

It's time to celebrate and reflect upon finishing my 100 Days of Engineering Interactive Elements in my Fiber Art. When I first embarked on this creative journey back in February, I chose three primary goals:

  • Experiment with engineering a variety of interactive elements within my fiber art
  • Incorporate interactive elements into finished ATCs, cards, collage, and other fiber art creations
  • Document materials, process, and finishes via photos and video

I'm pleased to report that I achieved all 3 goals with many more happy outcomes over the course of this project:

Incorporate Interactive Elements into Finished ATCs, Cards, and other Fiber Art Creations

As you can see from the mosaic above, I produced lots of finishes featuring a fun variety of interactive elements. 

Dice Rolls:
1: Balance & Dangle - 13 days
2: Flip & Fold - 16 days
3: Pop Up - 15 days
4: Rotate & Spin -11 days
5: Repeat with a Twist - 10 days
6: Artist Choice -35 days* (I did not roll during my travels in Italy and treated them as Artist Choice)

This was the first time I added a Repeat with a Twist dice assignment and I really enjoyed the opportunity to revisit previous designs and/or techniques while adding a fun, new twist. Sometimes it was a chance to refine the technique, other times it was an opportunity to push the envelope and see what else could be done with the technique and there were times where I merged multiple techniques to create all new cards. I have a feeling this, along with Artist Choice, will be a standard assignment for future game plans involving dice rolling.

And like previous projects involving dice, I challenged myself to incorporate all the assignments on Day 100 with elements that balance & dangle, flip & fold, pop-up, and rotate & spin!

Total Finishes:
No Finish - 7 days (again mostly related to travel and/or multi-day projects which I will discuss more below)
1 Finish - 20 days
2 Finishes - 17 days
3-5 Finishes - 25 days
6-8 Finishes - 19 days
Day 100 yielded 10 finished projects and there was another day that yielded 12 finished pieces.

My grand total was 331 artworks created in 100 days!!

While there were a few days which involved nothing finished or only one finished piece, 80% of the days led to multiple happy finishes. Once I worked out a prototype or technique, it was hard to stop at making just one! 

Given the volume of finishes, thankfully most of my projects were fairly compact including lots of Artist Trading Cards (measuring 2.5" x 3.5") and greeting cards. While I started with a 2" binder, it was only a matter of time until I expanded to a 3" binder and then a second 3" binder. Of course, some of the projects were unable to fit within a binder including mobiles and sculptures. You can click here to view time-lapsed video tours of both binders as well as see the mobiles dance and dangle!

Grow & Learn

These daily experiments were not only lots of fun, but I learned so much from each and every session. To help keep up the momentum, I found lots of great ideas from several different sources:
Projects Started in a Class Led by Jennifer Wilkin Penick
  • Days 83-86 coincided with an online Stress-Free Cardmaking Summit: Fun Folds and Interactive Cards Edition featuring 22 teachers leading demos on how to make fun folds and interactive cards! What perfect timing and theme to provide a much-needed boost of creative play and new techniques to add to my toolbox! 
Cards Inspired by Stress-Free Card Making Summit
  • The real treasure trove of inspiration was found on Pinterest. Prior to my project, I started a 100 Days of Engineering Interactive Elements Pinterest board where I pinned lots of ideas for potential inspiration. Once Pinterest recognized this new interest, they made daily recommendations to add to my board. This board is now accessible and I've added stars to the designs that I used.
  • And many thanks to many of you who forwarded me additional ideas via email and Instagram. There were so many great ideas shared, many of which I tried and included in my project!
  • One of the biggest lessons I learned was the importance of making a prototype to work out the mechanics as well as design. There were one or two times that I jumped right in thinking I had all the details sorted and had to either do some serious re-engineering to make it work or start over again. Usually I used plain cardstock and/or some scrap paper for the prototypes as shown below. These prototypes were invaluable in creating templates as well as noting down key measurements to execute my plan.
Prototypes

Set Up/Supplies

When I first started, I gathered many tools into a caddy.
Caddy to Organize Tools

By Day 7, more tools were added to my caddy and I took over a utility cart to gather my binder, caddy, and books.
Utility Cart Organization

When I returned from my March trip to Italy, I expanded to a 3" binder. And around Day 50, I started a second 3" binder to hold all my ATC sand card creations! Despite my expansion, there were very few purchases related to this project. I purchased a few packs of brad fasteners at the start to use with rotate & spin projects where I quickly realized that I needed a single hole punch that could be punched anywhere within a project. I borrowed a friend's punch and after finding myself using it more and more, I decided to purchase a Bira Bira Anywhere Screw Punch with 3 different tip sizes. Otherwise, the only other purchases were plastic sleeve pockets/protectors to store my finished projects and some wallpaper samples while stocking up on other supplies from my local creative reuse center: Fabmo! Otherwise, I used supplies that I already had on hand. 

Here are some of my frequently used supplies (many of which I packed for my travel trips): watercolor paper, cardstock saved from fabmo swatches, previously made fodder, brad clasps, hole punch, wire, pliers, wire cutters, my collection of paper punch (aka my paper punch army), pens, Reptile glue adhesive, sewing machine/thread, carving blocks and tools, clear acrylic sentiment stamps, ink pads, painted papers (gel prints, ink dyed), wallpaper samples, bone folder, X-acto knife, rotary cutter, ruler, and mat.

Travel

When I began this project, I had several travel trips planned which included some shorter overnight trips for quilt judging, as well as a nearly 3 week trip to Rome and the Umbria region of Italy. For the two trips involving one overnight stay, I rolled in advanced and brought some related supplies to play along in the hotel. The Italy trip was an art retreat, so I was already bringing a variety of art supplies, but I made sure to pack a small tool kit. Of course I researched to make sure the supplies were safe for international travel and would not get confiscated. I am sure TSA and security were probably wondering why the heck I was bringing wire, pliers, wire cutters, and other random tools but thankfully they all got through customs!

Travel Studio Set Ups

While I was traveling in Italy, I was fairly flexible with regards to my project. I chose to focus on engaging in a daily creative practice but was not always able to start and finish a project while traveling. There were 7 days that did not yield a finished product, but may have involved experimenting with different folds, making progress towards a finished project, or simply gathering supplies to keep up the creative process. While I did bring my dice, I treated most days as Artist Choice where I was content to simply experiment with interactive elements. As this was an art retreat, I was still engaging in a daily art practice as I soaked up lots of art inspiration. But I gave myself grace and focused on the larger picture of doing something creative each day!

Artist Trading Cards and Swaps

It was only a matter of days before I started to receive requests to trade for many of the Artist Trading Cards. As most of these creative sessions were 1-3 hours in duration, I focused my energy and time on the engineering and making aspect for these 100 days and chose to postpone any trading until after the project was complete. To this effort, I let folks know that I would start trading after the 100 days was finished. I maintained a list of requests and reached out to them directly to initiate the first round of trades. Folks following me on social media and newsletter were also invited to trade with me and given a week or so priority access. 

On Day 88, I designed a special 2" square ATC label within Canva to affix and/or include with each of my ATCs. It took me a day or so to reorganize my binders designating one binder to store a sample project from each day along with any prototypes or templates for future reference. All duplicate ATCs were transferred to the second binder to keep organized for trading. And it took another day or so to attach the labels!

As many of these cards were a bit bulky, I brought the first batch of packaged ATCs to the post office to ensure proper postage. Alas, many of the envelopes did not bend or were a bit bulky with the brad fasteners and the post office treated them as packages, which were considerably pricier than a forever priority mail stamp.

I have since sorted the remaining cards into those that are able to be mailed with a priority stamp and posted them to an Artist Trading Card Facebook group. I've been pretty busy coordinating trades and packaging lots of happy mail. I will figure out how best to trade the bulkier cards at a later date through in-person swaps and I may also include as small gifts when sending out packages.


At time of posting, I have 100+ ATCs available to trade which are all listed in my available ATCs album within the ATC Facebook group (which should be public and viewable on desktops/laptops). I invite you to contact me if you would like to trade for any of the posted ATCs and we can coordinate a trade and exchange mailing information.

Final Thoughts and Reflections:

  • This was the first project where I included short videos in almost all my daily posts. This was helpful in showcasing the interactive elements, although it required a bit of practice to find the right camera angle/set up as well as keeping the video under 60 seconds! And don't even get me started on the retakes required because my pups started to get the Zoomies or bark for no good reason!
  • It's always bittersweet to wrap up a 100 Day Project as I have enjoyed these daily creative sessions and connections made during my daily posts. Thankfully this project will continue through ATC swaps for the next month or until they are all claimed. And I am excited to teach two FUN & Interactive ATCs sessions online via Zoom where I'll share my process and favorite techniques to inspire you to create interactive ATCs! Each session is 1 hour in duration, will be offered live with 1-week access to the recording, and will include handouts and several design/technique variations (you can click on the links below to learn more and register):
  • In addition to revisiting some of my favorite techniques, I enjoy celebrating themes emerge over each 100 day project.
    • Flowers & Plants (which is a recurring theme for most of my projects!)
    • Critters (including a few monsters and aliens)
    • Seasonal Fun especially as we transitioned from Spring to Summer here in Northern California.
  • In addition to seasonal change, several projects were in response to the change of federal administration here in the United States. Not surprisingly, two of these posts involved a profanity warning!

Many thanks to everyone who joined me along this journey including those who:
  • commented and engaged with my daily posts--your encouragement was a lovely boost of encouragement
  • forwarded along video tutorials to inspire future play--thank you! Thank you!
  • swapped art with me to add my artwork to your collection!
Until then next creative adventure...


Comments

Post a Comment

I am delighted you took the time and thought to leave me a comment. It may take a day or two for your comment to appear as I moderate them prior to posting to filter out spam and inappropriate content. Cheers!