The Rising Sun Challenge

Nat and Lucy are so good about giving out interesting topics for Le Challenge each month.  If you've never heard of this, it's a blog that two friends started with the sole purpose being to challenge themselves and friends to think of and make something new each month based on a theme.  There's no competition, it's open to anyone who wants to participate, and one lucky participant is awarded a gift each month based on a random drawing.

This month, the girls chose "The Rising Sun" which I thought it was an interesting starting point because there were so many places to go with that topic.  I searched rising sun quilt patterns and there were plenty of really neat blocks that would make awesome quilts.  But I didn't leave myself enough time for that.

So I thought about the suggestions they and their guest bloggers had given--Japanese-influenced designs for garment sewing or quilting; Japanese fabric designers from traditional designs to Lecien and kawaii cuteness; Sashiko or even just sunny projects.

My ever growing "to-do before I die" list grew leaps and bounds.

But in the end, I googled Rising Sun images and I knew what I was going to make.

I found this image on zazzle's web site and loved the combination of the rising sun and the clamshells, a traditional quilting design.

But I didn't love the red.  It was WAYYY a little too Japanese for my style and wouldn't fit into my decor. So I changed it.

I have always loved the song You are my Sunshine and often sang it to my children when they were younger.  I thought the lyrics would fit well here, so I used my favorite colors, a great, fun font and here you go:

I created an aqua background and then put a somewhat-transparent layer of gray canvas over it to soften the aqua and bring the gray theme into play.

Then I added the lyrics to the song in yellow and worked on the graphic.  I deleted all of the white background and then changed the entire graphic to be yellow.  After duplicating the image, I changed it to gray and then erased the top layer (the gray) away from the "rising sun" portion of the image.

Do the pics look a little fuzzy to you?  They don't at all in my editing software but do a little in blogger...weird!

Then I printed it in a 5x7 size and popped it in this frame.  I will DEFINITELY be painting the frame, but it's what I had handy.  I'm working on building a gallery wall in my living room of pictures, inspirational quotes, and images that are important to our family or just make me smile.  The photos are all framed in black, but I'm hoping to bring color in through the other items.

I think this will be a perfect addition.  What do you think?

Thanks girls for the challenge!  It was fun.  :) Head over and see what everyone else created this time.  :)