Congratulations to the winners of whedon_elite Challenge 127 "Close Crop" marishna, everythingshiny, sweet_lyri and sandy_s!  WE has gone from strength to strength in terms of themes and this was no exception; artists responded to the challenge with a remarkable batch of entries.  I love close-cropped icons so this was a little bit of heaven getting to work with them for the banners. Many thanks to my remarkable Muse-Goddess velvetwhip for her feedback:

Click on the images above to see the banner full-size.

I awarded Banner Maker's Choice to sandy_s. I had a really tough time choosing among the entries for BMC but went with the FFL icon because of it's emotional intensity and focus, and the physicality of Buffy's tear and her skin.

For this banner I went back to the original photo of my landlord's yellow rose, cropped and altered it in ipiccy; added a reproduction antique wallpaper in the background because I liked the contrast between the genuine rose and the ones in the background (although even the real one looks astonishingly fake thanks to the softening and sepia filters.) I chose the color scheme in part because I thought it would compliment but not compete with the skin tones in the icons.

My entries - all icons snaggable, please credit:

1 - 3

Alts:

4 - 9

Because everyone else focused on faces I decided to close-crop hands instead. Hand symbolism in the Buffyverse is one of my favorite subjects, but instead of the handfastings in Hush and Chosen I chose less famous or at least less frequently iconned images: Buffy and Parker in Harsh Light of Day, Willow and Tara's Grave in Help and Tara/Willow in The Yoko Factor.

Of alts my favorite is #9 and I wanted to use that one but decided it wasn't a close enough crop. It's a great, understated moment, aside from the creepily voyeuristic "Spike's POV when he realizes the girls are lovers and figures out a way to get under their skin and upset them to help Adam" of it. Or maybe that's part of the point, because it parallels a similar moment in This Year's Girl where Faith watches Buffy play with Riley's hands and comes to a similar conclusion. Those two moments also make the arguement that W/T is every bit as "legitimate" a relationship as B/R. (Which was important to establish in the hetereosexual landscape of American television at the time.)

#9 is my favorite alt but I decided it wasn't a close enough crop for the theme. I like the contrast between Tara's strong looking hand and delicate embroidery on her blouse, and the softness of Willow's hair and sweater.  I also think that of the Buffy/Parker icons I might prefer alt #4 to my first entry, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz.

A Vague Disclaimer is No One's Friend:

~ DO NOT RE-POST TO OTHER SITES (INCL. FANPOP) OR LJ COMMUNITIES WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!

~ Take what  icons you like for personal use but please credit if used :)

~ No hotlinking!

~ Comments however are appreciated :)

~ All artwork by yours truly except where otherwise indicated.

Tomorrow my sweetie and I are going to NYC - she wants to see the 100th Armory Show on the Westside; stay two nights at the Pod 39 Hotel; then we'll hopefully go to Chinatown, and then Friday spend the day at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. including the Elizabeth Sackler Gallery of Feminist Art on the 4th floor featuring Judy Chicago's installation The Dinner Party (1982) which I've always wanted to see. (Never mind the concept of a separate gallery for "feminist" art as opposed to the presumably "regular" art. Baby steps, baby steps, bitty blah.)  I wll have many things to report, hopefully.

Then when I come back we are packing and (supposedly) moving back into the old apartment; the renovation is nearly done!  We saw it the other day - my sweetie's bedroom has been totally redone, new walls, flooring, windows, new moldings everywhere, paint and light fixtures, etc. they even took up two layers of ugly old linoleum and black glue in the kitchen to expose the original wood flooring. Beautiful job.

Which also means we'll finally be getting away from the people below us in the apartment we're in now and its worth anything just for that because SWEET MOTHER OF MOSES THESE PEOPLE DO NOT SHUT UP EVER. *ugh*

Ergo, if I don't get back to you anytime immediately or post a lot the next couple of weeks, you know why. I'll try to keep up with the macros, icons and suchlike - that shouldn't be hard, I've got 600 or so buffyverse icons sitting in my Photobucket. No lie.

In the meantime, eilowyn said not long ago that she loved "fluffy stories" about my sweetie and I; which of course meant I stopped telling them. ("But - we're not fluffy people, we argue a lot!" my brain protested.) Just like when someone paid for me to have a free account and velvetwhip said she looked forward to a "tsunami of polls" and I said "Me too!"  And then have done maybe two since then. Or when my mom asked "What do you want for Christmas?" and I said "I don't know." EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I absolutely shut down. (My sweetie gets the same damn answer to the same question btw. My brain hasn't changed in 40-plus years.)



But last week we were in one of those big-box retail stores, the kind we drag ourselves into because we really need something and even then only upon pain of death, and I told her I felt a little light-headed. I think y'all know I have epilepsy and it's pretty well controlled on medication but those sorts of stores are not good for me: too brightly light, buzzing light fixtures, too much noise, too much sensory overload, etc.

So I said to my sweetie "Keep talking."

"Oh NO, don't you go letting your mind wander off!" (Having a seizure feels at first like you're going into a spell or trance, like a daydream.)

"That's why I need you to keep talking, because it helps ground me and keep focused on where I am. We talk, you annoy the hell out of me, I want to strangle you, it keeps me grounded. See how that works?"

She laughed.

And all I could think right was how much I love this woman, and how lucky was (am) to have her in my life after all these years.

Which is a good thing, because an hour or so later we wanted to strangle each other again.

Love isn't ribbons and bows, kids.