Weekly Flash Contest #12: What would the world be like without color? What if there were a few select people who could see colors? Write about the effects of not being able to see color, or of there being no color, and how that affects people and society in a good or bad way . . . Anna Rowell, 15Redmond, WA The week commencing June 15th (Daily Creativity prompt #61) was our twelfth week of flash contests, with an intriguing challenge set by former contributor, Anna Rowell, 15. This is a prompt that got a lot of people’s juices flowing! Anna joined us on the judging panel, and with her help and thoughtful advice we managed to work our way through a wide and strong field of entries. Well done to everyone who sent an entry in: you did not make it easy for us to decide. In particular, thank you, Anna, for your help, and for a fantastic flash contest prompt–we look forward to doing it again sometime! Congratulations to our Winners and Honorable Mentions, listed below. Your work really stood out in an extra competitive field! You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) at the Stone Soup website. Winners “Seeing Through Gray” by Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA “It’s All Ridiculous” by Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH “Flowers for Mamma” by Sophia Do, 12, Lititz, PA “The Sky is Blue” by Nora Heiskell, 12, Philadelphia, PA “Project Achromatopsia” by Alice Xie, 12, West Windsor, NJ Honorable Mention “Miya’s Gift” by Savannah Black, 9, Yuba City, CA “Colorless” by Anna Haakenson, 12, Beach Park, IL “A World Without Color” by Aditi Kumar, 10, Ashland, VA “In a World Without Color…” by Charlotte McAninch, 12, Chicago, IL “Color” by Michela You, Lexington, MA Isabel Bashaw, 10Enumclaw, WA Seeing Through Gray Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA The new neighborhood with its new streets, sidewalks, houses, and noises were all varying shades of gray. Terrible. Dull. Hopeless. As terrible, dull and hopeless as I felt. I had just moved from my hometown to a different, smaller town hundreds of miles away from everything I loved. I hopped on my gray bike, strapped my gray helmet on my gray hair, and started riding across the gray sidewalks. I peddaled faster and faster, through a blur of gray. Everything was wrong. Why did my family have to move? Was a new job really more important than leaving the entire ten years of my life behind? The blur of gray became a whirl as I peddaled harder, barely looking upward. I glanced up and stared at the gray flowers as they whizzed by: colorless. I was beginning to hate the color gray. Then a sharp turn, and CRASH!, a big fall, and my cries into the gray world around me. The sidewalk was grayer than ever as I stared at it, almost as dark as the blood dripping down my leg. No wonder I crashed–it was hard to see where I was going when everything was the same series of non-colors. I looked up as a small gasp echoed through the block. A girl was walking toward me. I blushed with embarrassment–my cheeks turning from gray to grayer and back again. ¨Are you OK?¨ She asked, staring at my knee. ¨No¨ I said, my voice small. ¨Oh. . .¨ she said in response. I wiped away my tears. ¨I’ll get you a band-aid if you want.¨ I nodded gratefully, and she dashed back inside. I waited, and then she returned. As I put the band-aid over the scrape, she asked me: ¨So did you just move here?¨ ¨Yeah¨ I muttered. ¨Well I just moved here too!” she said, her face lighting up. ¨Maybe we can be each other’s first new friend? I saw a really fun park nearby!¨ Her name was Rosalie, and it turned out that she lived only a few blocks from my new house. ¨Time for dinner Rosalie!¨ ¨Well I gotta go,¨ said Rosalie, ¨but maybe if you’re not busy tomorrow morning you can ride your bike over and we can go to the park together?¨ Suddenly, as Rosalie smiled at me, the world brightened. The sky was bluish gray. The faint yellow sun shone down on Rosalie’s beautiful brown skin, the pinkish-white flowers moved in the breeze and my bike was a muted teal, no longer the horrible gray it used to be. I grinned and said ¨Sounds great! See you tomorrow, Rosalie!¨ Maybe this new place wasn’t so bad after all. Lucy Berberich, 11Oxford, OH It’s All Ridiculous Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH My name is Eva Wilson. I’m your all-around average teenage girl. I walk the three blocks to my middle school wearing the required outdoor gas mask every morning. My favorite subject is survival skills and my least favorite is bomb diffusion (it’s too stressful). I have a small group of close friends and we always sit in the back table of the cafeteria, watching people and making theories about who’s an alien and who is possessed by a demon or whatever. We’re kind of that one group no one notices, so it’s really easy to watch people. Sometimes we all walk home together, but most of my friends’ parents don’t want them being outside too much, because of the pollution and such, gas mask or not. My parents don’t mind me being out and about. They figured that if I hadn’t gotten poisoned by the air pollution at this point, I never would. Our world is kind of deteriorating at the moment. Everyone’s trying to save it all the time, but I don’t think we ever actually will. The damage humans did to this Earth is pretty much there forever. There’s no fixing it. I guess we’re all kind of waiting until we have the technology to send humans to another planet. Apparently there used to be this thing called color, but humans evolved and there was no longer a need to see it anymore. I’m not so sure I believe that, though. My mom says that the few people who
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Flash Contest #11: “Blind Contour” Self-Portraits. Our Winners and Their Work
Weekly Flash Contest #11: Draw a Blind Self Portrait The week commencing June 8th (Daily Creativity prompt #56) was our eleventh week of flash contests, and our second art contest. We set the fun challenge of making a blind self portrait, where you put pencil to paper and draw your portrait in a single line without lifting it again, and without looking at the paper. It is an even harder task than it sounds! We had so much fun looking at your entries, even though there were slightly fewer than usual: perhaps our artists are shyer than we thought, and didn’t want to share their results… (I know the Stone Soup team wasn’t keen on sharing theirs!) We congratulate all the brave souls that put pencils to paper and sent us their portraits. We think they are great, and that everyone will enjoy comparing the beautiful lines of the portraits with the photos of the winners below. Well done to all of them, and to our two very Honorable Mentions. Winners Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Zoe Campbell, 10, San Francisco, CA Story Kummer, 13, St. Louis, MO Olivia Titus, 11, Houston, TX Sophie Yu, 12, Houston, TX Honorable Mentions Michelle Dollar, 11, Monticello, FL Ruby Xu, 10, Annandale, VA Isabel Bashaw, 10Enumclaw, WA My Mind’s Eyesabel Isabel Bashaw, 10 Blind Contour Self Portrait Zoe Campbell, 10 Story Kummer, 13St. Louis, MO Self-portrait Blind Contour Drawing Story Kummer, 13 Portrait of Sadness Olivia Titus, 11 Olivia Titus, 11Houston, TX Blind Contour Self Portrait Sophie Yu, 12
Flash Contest #10: Impossible Characters. Our Winners and Their Work!
Weekly Flash Contest #10: Write down 5 ideas for some impossible characters – space frogs, singing clocks, walking cactuses – the more unlikely the better. Pick 2 of them. What would happen if they met? Write a story about it. The week commencing June 1st (Daily Creativity prompt #51) was our tenth week of flash contests, and our entrants rose to the double challenge of inventing some crazily impossible characters, and putting them together in bizarre situations. Well done everyone for your wildly creative stories and ideas! This was such a strange and fascinating group to choose from, that we found it just too hard to narrow down the number to share with you. So, this week we have 6 winners, whose work is published below, and 4 very honorable Honorable Mentions. Congratulations to them all! Winners Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH Federico Lynch Ferraris, 11, New York, NY Lila Laton, 10, New York, NY Tilly Marlow, 10, Bristol, United Kingdom Alice Xie, 12, West Windsor, NJ Honorable Mentions “Enchanted Woods” (story and drawing) by Amelia Barth, 10, Elgin, IL “The Mathematician and the Songstress (A Story Told from 2 Points of View)” by Anna Haakenson, 12, Beach Park, IL “Polka Dots” by Samantha Lee, 10, Thomaston, CT “The Eerie Cat-Man Thief and the Gucci Bunny” by Daniel Wei, 13, Weddington, NC Isabel Bashaw, 10Enumclaw, WA Zombie Unicorn vs. Tap-Dancing Carrot Cake Isabel Bashaw, 10 It was Independence Day in the magical land of Mystic Topia, and a parade celebrating the town’s freedom from Wicked Humans was underway in the town square. Horns blared and drums banged throughout the crowded streets. A variety of animals, things, and creatures stood packed together under the sun, straining to see Mayor Cactus, the leader of this year’s parade. The Mayor (a famous opera singer in her youth) belted out “God Bless Mystic Topia” as she shuffled unsteadily down the street, forcing the crowd to shift forward and back to avoid the movement of her spines. She was followed by the amazing Tap-Dancing Carrot Cakes. This tap-dancing trio rat-a-tap-tapped along to the bouncy beat of the drums in the marching band. After the marching band scurried a group of vampire, candy-throwing hamsters. Finally the parade ended in a finale of zombie unicorns performing acrobatic tricks for the crowd’s enjoyment. After the crowd had thinned and all the baby creatures slept in their parents’ arms, a lone zombie unicorn, hungry from her performance, snuffled along the streets in search of a bite to eat. She wasn’t having much luck because the street-sweeping cockroaches had already passed through. Just then, she heard a noise! One of the tap-dancing carrot cakes shimmied up the road, his headphones blaring music so loud that the unicorn (and probably the whole town) could hear it. The zombie unicorn lifted her head slightly and, flaring her enormous nostrils, sniffed the smell of her favorite food: CARROTS! Better yet, SUGARY CARROTS! Groaning loudly, the unicorn galloped over to the carrot cake. He had his eyes closed, humming and tapping along to the music, oblivious to his impending doom. The unicorn took a sizable bite of the carrot cake’s frosted arm as it waved around to the music’s beat. The tap-dancing carrot cake’s head shot up, its eyes staring directly into the eyes of the zombie unicorn, who was happily enjoying his gooey frosting. The carrot cake couldn’t feel the strike, but he knew that a piece of his body was not where it was supposed to be. His arm was being digested inside the belly of the undead! The carrot cake immediately spewed out cuss words like “buttermilk!” and “powdered-sugar!” Then, collecting himself, turned off his music and said in a low, threatening voice: “I. Will. Get. You. Zombie. Unicorn.” Now the zombie unicorn was quite confused. Weren’t carrots and sugar meant for eating? This little pastry was freaking her out with its angry, orange eyes and spiteful threats! “Woah, woah, woah!” she said. “Hold up! This is all just a big misunderstanding! I thought you were food! Can’t we just settle this in a peaceful manner??” The carrot cake kept on glaring, and tapped its feet angrily. “How about a dance fight?” asked the zombie unicorn. “If I win, you let this go. And if you win, I’ll give you free zombie unicorn rides for a week!” Still glaring, the carrot cake stopped his angry tapping and slowly nodded his head. Just then, a lone street-sweeping cockroach scuttled by, its jaws chomping on scavenged parade candy. “Hey!” said the zombie unicorn. “Will you be the judge of our awesome dance fight?” The cockroach, constantly glancing left to right, paused to nod its head up and down. “Alright, then, Tasty-Cakes, you’re up!” said the unicorn. The carrot cake tugged his headphones out of his device, scrolled through his music and started dancing to “I Like To Move It.” He crazily tapped across the road, only pausing every so often to catch his breath. He went on and on… and on, until finally the unicorn couldn’t stand watching anymore. “OK, OK. My turn,” she said, swiping his device with her hoof and clicking on her favorite jam. She swung her back legs and flipped onto her front two, doing a handstand, her horn touching the dirt. Then she clopped around and around, in a kind of shuffle dance move. Finally the carrot cake stopped her. “Let’s see the results,” he said with a smug look on his face. Both creatures turned to the cockroach. “What did you think?” the tap dancing carrot cake asked the insect. The insect shook its head and pointed to the unicorn. “I WON!!” shouted the zombie unicorn, prancing around gruesomely. The cockroach looked confused. They didn’t understand that he was pointing to the unicorn to tell her she had lost. Her dance was terrible! The carrot cake hung his frosted head, disappointed at having lost a piece of his arm and a week of free unicorn zombie rides.
