Introducing Speckled Canary: Creative Art Projects for Everyone!

Today, I’m real­ly excit­ed to announce a new endeav­or I’ve start­ed: Speck­led Canary! It’s focused on cre­at­ing art projects for every­one to enjoy. They’re fun and some­times-col­lab­o­ra­tive, launched on a glob­al scale. Par­tic­i­pants sign up for dif­fer­ent cre­ative explo­rations that will push them to make new and excit­ing work in ways that they nev­er expected.

If you’re a long-time read­er of this blog, you’ll prob­a­bly remem­ber the Col­lage Scrap Exchange. Plan­ning that project, with its near­ly 1,000 par­tic­i­pants, was so reward­ing. I loved see­ing what dif­fer­ent artists came up, all unit­ed under one theme.

I decid­ed that I want­ed to make this a reg­u­lar thing. I have a lot of ideas for projects that include a wide range of media, so I’m excit­ed to see how they take off!

Introducing Speckled Canary’s first project: Mapping Memories (in washi tape)!

Mem­o­ries are a pow­er­ful thing. Some­times, they’re so clear that we can recall how some­thing looked, smelled, or even tast­ed. Speck­led Canary’s inau­gur­al project cel­e­brates this phe­nom­e­na and invites you to rec­ol­lect mem­o­ries with washi tape!

How it works: Using washi tape, you’ll recre­ate a mem­o­ry — it can be any­thing — using washi tape. It should be near­ly (if not all) made with washi tape. If you want to draw accents on top of the tape, that’s okay – but remem­ber the point is to build a com­po­si­tion with it.

Washi tape comes in all sorts of col­ors and pat­terns. For this endeav­or, Speck­led Canary has teamed up with a great shop called Omiyage who hand-select­ed beau­ti­ful, high qual­i­ty tapes. Be sure to check out this online store. Marisa stocks it with so many won­der­ful things (washi and beyond)!

My exam­ple: While I love using washi tape in my day-to-day life, I had nev­er tried mak­ing art­work out of it. One after­noon I sat down to give it a try and had a lot of fun! You can lay­er and com­bine col­ors and pat­terns to cre­ate mul­ti-lay­ered, com­plex com­po­si­tions. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less. Here’s what I made:

This project has two parts: your mem­o­ry (made with washi tape), and your mem­o­ry that appears on a cus­tomized world map (see what that looks like). Once your art­work is done, sub­mit it to Speck­led Canary with a short descrip­tion. The more peo­ple that par­tic­i­pate, the more we’ll see spe­cial mem­o­ries from around the world! Read more about the project here. 

So, what are you wait­ing for? Sign ups begin now! And don’t wor­ry if you don’t have any washi tape. I’m sell­ing spe­cial washi tape starter kits that’ll have what you need. All par­tic­i­pants will also have access to a spe­cial Omyi­age pro­mo code and oth­er fun extras.