(Please Vote For Me!) My Entry in the Mochimochi Land Annual Photo Contest

If I've only got your attention for a quick second, just skip the rest of the post and CLICK HERE TO VOTE! lol Mine is The Tragic Tale of Piggie Antoinette. Thank you so much if you do vote!

If you're here to read the post (and then vote after ... please ... lol), then please read on :)

I've long watched the annual Mochimochi Land photo contest and wished I could join in. I love Anna Hrachovec's patterns, but I never felt like I had made enough of her patterns to make a proper entry in the contest. This year, though, I was struck with inspiration. It all started with Arthur, the big pencil:) As soon as I finished him I remembered that the deadline for entries this year had been extended and I would have just over a week to some up with something, and the ideas flowed from there. So this is what came from my original inspiration: Letters To Santa.

It's amazing what having a large knitted pencil does for your creativity with photos, lol. I had a heck of a time making the nickels by their hands noticeable, and it's very hard to focus on both large animals and small ones in a convincing way. In the end, it didn't really come out as well in real life as in my head, but I still think it's cute :) I ended up getting an honorable mention for this entry! Not bad for my first time entering the contest :)

Once I had the Letters To Santa finished, I decided to keep on shooting. I made the Pig With Wigs pattern years ago (because it's awesome) and I branched an idea out from the Marie Antoinette style bouffant wig the pig pattern includes. At first I thought I would just do a series of photos, sort of like a comic book, but then I got the idea to turn it into a gif and it just took off from there. So here is The Tragic Tale of Piggie Antoinette:

via GIPHY
Again I'll confess it didn't turn out as well in real life as I had hope, but I still think the idea is pretty silly and fun. I used a Carolyn Burnett oil painting I got at a thrift store years ago as the back ground (it's one of my favorites), and I had to create a sort of platform for the animals to be level with the street in the painting. I clothed my pig with a scrap of stretch lace from my wrap top I made last year so she could look more like Marie Antoinette, and I made little torches for all of "the angry mob"  using toothpicks and drawn flames, lol. It's silly, but I think that adds to the overall ridiculousness. The animals I used are mostly from Anna's patterns with a few added friends. I love the Confused Moose with the torches, lol. I had to make one for each bird. I do wish I knew more about making videos though. Photos I can do, but I've never got into video, so I don't know the software and whatnot. I used Giphy to make this a gif, but I wish I could've had more control over the timing of each shot and that I could've added music (I had picked out this song, but I couldn't get it to attach to the gif no matter what website I used - I like to just open it up in a new tab and let it play as I watch, lol). This is my first ever gif though, so I'm pleased it just exists.

And that brings me to by shameless plea - Could you vote for my video? The prize packs are pretty awesome, and there are 5 other videos competing. CLICK HERE TO VOTE If you love another video more, please feel free to vote for it as well (you can pick more than one), I just figured since this is my blog it couldn't hurt to ask, lol.

This whole experience has really got my creative juices flowing, and my husband and I are already dreaming up ideas for next year's contest :) This time I will have longer than a week to make it all happen, lol, so that's something. Thanks so much for voting, and I'll let you know how it turns out!