Tea Party (Challenge 2: Mood Boards)

More Tea Parties | Content Warnings

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Hi, hello, and welcome back to another tea party! This month we’re focusing on visuals with another challenge! We chose a story by each of the other authors and then made mood boards for them. Below the images, we’ve also described why we decided to go with what we did.

Some descriptions may include spoilers for the finished stories.

All images and assets used were free for use on Canva.

Pineapple

First I did Cat and the Cryptid Summer by Raspberry! I didn’t originally mean to make it a green-y orange-y color scheme, but it somehow turned out that way. My friend actually was just into making collages recently, so that really inspired me with the layout! I was originally gonna go for a polaroid-frame photo template thing, but then I fell in love with how the collages looked.

Anyway, I used some key story elements here. I have tea, a full moon, and an “it was all a dream” quote. I coincidentally used a similar, or maybe the same, photo that Raspberry used before to represent the gate, ha ha. The image really is perfect for this story. There’s an image of an open road and a pretty sky, since the story opens with Cat on a summer road trip and honestly? Nothing beats the Texas sky, in my humble opinion. She ends up at the farmhouse, which is Gran’s house out in the boonies. There’s a dead-end sign to round out the colors and also… it just seemed fitting for me. I really wanted a picture to represent Cat and her headband–this is not the original one that I picked! But this one ended up fitting much better with the color scheme and overall vibe of the board. Below, we also glimpse her knife. There are wistful photos of a silhouetted family representing Gran’s backstory and a wildfire for her mural. There’s handholding because, well… First of all, Gran and Jules. But also Cat WISHES. And last, but not least, the phone photo with the quote, “Be somebody nobody thought you could be.” It’s a really perfect quote for Cat and her transformation!

This one is for Counterclockwise by Apple!

A romanceeeeeee!! This one was so fun and cute to make! I actually had a much easier time with this one than I did Cat’s ha ha.

So of COURSE we have the watch. We have a girl smiling in the scarf. We have someone crocheting a heart. Probably much better than Terrell did in the actual story, ha ha. I put a few really cute couple pics in there. The coffee cup, the snow heart, and the park bench are all just atmospheric things from the story that really helped balance the colors in this. Hands with the snowball alluding to the snowball fight. I did really want to have a hand-holding picture but there were already WAY too many hands in this collage mood board, so I had to sacrifice the hand-holding pictures I was looking at. I chose the “All we have is now” quote for them because, well… the PINING. The LONGING that we as readers had to suffer through. I love mutual pining, it’s so good. And then they REALIZED and now they have each other. I actually wanted a destiny-love-type quote somewhere in there to play off Destiny’s name, but they were all behind a paywall. So I made the one we see here without much trouble to help balance the colors and give our couple a bit more of a… soul-mates-and-fated feeling.

Apple

I went with the Stream of Consciousness short story “Charlie Shrubbery Part 1” for Pineapple. Pineapple did such an amazing job with the imagery and symbolism in this one that the mood board practically made itself! Charlie is born into a crime family and has always considered himself to be an observer, not a participant, of everything that goes down. That’s where the eye on the mood board comes from. There are also these moments where Charlie passes by a reflective surface and turns his all-seeing eyes on himself. At one point, he looks into a mirror and describes himself as a younger version of his father, whom I thought might resemble the man in the suit on the mood board. There are a ton of expectations placed on Charlie, both at home and at school, rushing him to choose whether he’s going to live like his father or not. The watch in the picture made me think of the way everyone is pushing Charlie to decide who he’s going to be right now, even though he’s just a kid.

I added the finger gun because Charlie refers to what he sees as a game. Unfortunately, the consequences of him becoming a “player” are not a game at all—a man ends up dying. The shattered glass reminds me of Charlie witnessing the death through his bedroom window. He isn’t the one to pull the trigger, his dad is, but the voices in his head still blame him. Seeing the italicized “This is your fault” hit me in the feels so hard as I was reading.

For Raspberry’s mood board, I chose to focus on Lily from Ways to Stay Warm When Christmas is Ruined. I realized that there’s this cool contrast between Lily and Charlie in that, even though they’re both kids that feel like a horrible situation is their fault, the tones of their stories are so different. One is dark and heartbreaking while the other is warm and lighthearted. I thought it would be really fun to show this contrast in image form, so Lily was a natural choice for my second mood board.

There are snowflakes scattered about since Lily asks Santa for snow, only for there to be a snow-induced citywide blackout. It goes without saying that Raspberry writes some of the best dialogue known to humankind. She makes the line “It’s all my fault!” so funny! Lily’s reactions in the story are always super animated too, so I thought a cartoony art style would be a perfect fit for her. The background is actually the same color as Lily’s tears, so it’s kind of like she cried so much that she filled up the whole mood board. It’s still a bright, cheery blue, though. All the colors on this mood board are a big contrast from the black and white palette for Charlie’s. And instead of creepy eyes, it’s Lily’s stuffed animals that line up to judge her. I thought the comic-like “oops” and speech bubble added to the fun vibes. I also included a non-canon version of Lily’s letter to Santa and a little Twitter logo in the corner since she tweets a picture of her letter to Santa instead of mailing it. The letter is, of course, written with the glittery red pen that Lily insists on using. So, there’s definitely a lot going on in this mood board. It honestly might be a little too chaotic. Luckily, chaos is very in character for Lily, I think.

Raspberry

I went with How Journeys End by Pineapple because I love me some fantasy vibes and WLW slow burn (cause it’s gonna happen, right, Pineapple? Please~) I found this pretty image of parchment with some dried flowers on it that inspired this mood board because of the letter and the conspiracy plot, plus all the flower mentions. It just fit. Then I built around that (like how the story is built around this conspiracy… get it? I sound like a middle schooler trying to get an A haha). I have a princess holding a crown for Siana. Is she adjusting it? Putting it on to ascend to her amazing royal-ness? Or about to take it off as a sacrifice for the woman she loves? I’ve got a knight hidden behind armor (metaphorrrrrr) with a raised blade, whether to strike or defend. I have another sword too because the picture is cool, and also because I feel like Princess Siana might totally take it up to defend her people. Then I have a mysterious, hooded figure because I feel like there’s some dark magic behind the scenes working against my OTP. For this mood board, I wanted to focus on some of my favorite elements of the story, but I feel like it doesn’t do Pineapple’s amazing work of art justice haha. I kinda wanted to throw in a bunch more pictures, but Pineapple is so good at subtlety and making these conspiracy-heavy plots (or am I just overthinking every character’s actions?) seem straightforward enough. My usual chaos was contained to reflect that. I was going to add some quotes, but honestly I couldn’t choose because the story’s too good!!!

For Apple, I had to go with Ocean’s Favor because MERMAIDS. I chose a blue-ish color scheme for obvious reasons, and I have our beloved captain and a couple mermaids. I really liked the mermaid at the top because she’s suspended in the air, and it made me think of the mermaid-who’s-maybe-not-dead. I also have another mermaid picture that I loved because she’s waiting for something and it hit me in the feels (imagine, if you will, a sweet precious kid-mermaid waiting for her mom who hasn’t come back yet *crying emoji*). I also found a lily that reminds me of the quest the pirate fam was on (even though it doesn’t have the red veins like in the story). And finally, the map and the ship in fog for poetic reasons, of course. Because aren’t they all lost and trying to find their way?? I used two of my favorite quotes because they give me the FEELS (conspiracy theory: our beloved captain hasn’t returned from a mermaid’s clutches because that mermaid took her heart! Was that planned, Apple??)

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Thanks for stopping by!

This challenge was a lot of fun for us! We hope that you enjoyed looking and reading, and hopefully gaining new insight! Let us know what you think in the comments or even try creating your own—we’d love to see it!