Creative Challenge completion

A while back, I chose to participate in a pay-it-forward 'Creative Challenge'. The idea was to make something creative for 3 people, who in turn each make something for 3 more people, and so on. There were very few rules or guidelines. I originally had all sorts of crazy ideas of what to do, but with my looming retirement and the end of the school year, I got something started and then put it off, and then put it off some more. Then my gift from the person that the challenge had come from arrived in the mail, and finally, I said to myself "this must get done NOW."

As you can see, I mostly went with a dragonfly theme, and my creations were totally NOT done in my usual style/medium. I used the challenge to experiment, so I hope the recipients weren't disappointed. They are collages that begin with fabric, mesh, beads, and texture mediums, and were completed with acrylic paint, including some metallic samples, and a few little jewels for the eyes.

You are probably thinking "wait, she said THREE but there are four images in this post" and you would be right. Four people responded to my challenge when I posted it, and I said "why not?" and went ahead with them all. The fourth one, the turtle, is for my blogger-friend (and probably yours, too) Mr. E, who I was pretty sure had a thing for turtles, so it seemed appropriate (though he did also get a dragonfly). I knew a bit less about my other recipients, so I went with something personal to me instead for their gifts. They were all going to have dragon/dragonfly quotes on them but it finally just got too time-consuming so that didn't happen. Since it took me so long to get them done, I also included a piece of jewelry (earrings or necklace) with each one. The 2 male recipients got jewelry for their wives, not for themselves.

By the way, I don't know whether you can really see what they look like from these pics, since the metallics and the textural effects didn't photograph well at all.