I have loved each and every back and forth project but I must say this one deserves an extreme bowing of awe and appreciation. Blair Stocker and Daria Penta created Eight by Eight to showcase their year long exchange of materials and inspiration to create art, that if available, I would buy each and every piece. The good news is Blair and Daria have great blogs to put on your weekly read and etsy stores to shop! (listed at the end of this post) Thanks for sharing with us ladies!

A bit about the beginning project, "Eight by Eight is our year-long art challenge. Each month we’ll send each other an 8″ x 8″ box of materials; each month we’ll use those materials to make an 8″ x 8″ piece based on that month’s theme.

Over coffee one day we discovered that we were both restlessly wishing for a new project that would push us to rethink our creative comfort zones a little bit. We liked the idea of working small, within a specific theme, & with materials that we would not necessarily have chosen ourselves."

I have decided to split this project into two posts. Read below what Blair has to say about her favorite project so far and stay tuned to read Daria's comments next Friday!







Blair:

"The favorite of the projects I have completed for eight by eight so far was the one I did for March's theme of surprise color pairing (pictured above). Daria sent me the incredibly vibrant color pair of teal and orange to work with and I immediately knew that I wanted to visually "weave" them together, which is how I settled on the paper bag piecing method I tried, described here . That was one incredible satisfying project! As a matter of fact, I have it framed on my studio wall. It was complex, small (and because of that, doable), inspired, everything I'd hoped to get out of eight by eight.





FYI- My favorite piece of Daria's completed projects is actually April's, when square was the theme- . It felt like we'd developed some sort of rhythm after several months of back and forth packages. She'd really thought about how the pieces I sent to her fit together, used their commonalities to really feature the feedsack, vintage-y feel I was going for in the grouping. (Did you catch her mentioning how the red button was like a cherry pie? Perfect!!!)

Now that we are 5 months into eight by eight, I can reflect on how completely manageable this project has been for me. My husband and I have our own consulting business, so I don't have huge amounts of time to work on my personal creative projects these days. But these monthly projects can easily be completed in an afternoon. I turn on some music, look at the little sketches I've made throughout the month, and start in! We have very straightforward parameters and themes established, we seem to have different takes on similar aesthetics (does that make sense), so its a doable collaboration in many ways. It continues to inspire me to try something new each month."

eight by eight
Blair's blog
Blair's etsy shop
Daria's blog
Daria's etsy shop