I AM IN...

...the garden, looking to "shed" some light on how I'm going to go about building a garden shed that'll please the Shadowy Figure! My guess is that he won't settle for simplicity. His garden shed must be shrouded in a foreboding aura that screams "ominous" and "green thumb", simultaneously.

Before I begin, I send the circus tent to the local laundromat. Amazingly, they've got machines large enough for circus tents. I request that they completely ignore the washing instructions stated on its label and instead, execute the washing in very hot water and same for the drying cycle. The point is to shrink that tent. They made me sign a liability waiver.

While I wait for that to pass, I get to work on building the garden shed. I begin by painting some of the life size legos using the red clown paint. Then, I slice those life size legos in half, but lengthwise. I disregard their bottom halves and lay them side by side to form a generous red rectangle. This will serve as the floor of the garden shed, but because the legos are smooth on the sides, I will need to glue them together to create a sturdy floor. I pop my first sour lemon bubblegum into my mouth. And then another. And yet another. I apply the chewed up gum to glue those red legos together until they form a solid floor. Then, I chew more sour lemon bubblegum and apply that gummy glue to the floor's surface so that I can attach a fluffy red carpet made from clown wigs. It's the perfect garden shed nightmare: imagine dropping a mini garden spade onto that wiggy floor and never finding it again! It would drive one to complete madness! I chose the sour lemon as a binding agent for a purpose too. The Shadowy Figure may love his evil antics, but if there's one thing he hates, it's mosquitos. The lemony fragrance should take care of that. By now, I've gone completely toothless and diabetic from all that bubblegum I've chewed. The Shadowy Figure would be proud of my dedication.

I then mount that red floor onto four clown car tires, because a garden shed without wheels is simply not a garden shed. Plus, it gives it great mobility. The irony being that once I surround that garden shed with a menacing waterless moat, it won't be able to wheel itself anywhere, anyways. But, before the moat, I've still got to finish the shed!

I apply clown paint to coat the remaining life size legos: some white, some black, some red. I use these plastic bricks to build the garden shed walls. I then construct a circular door using a blend of popcorn bricks, licorice logs, sour grape bubblegum and some wood chips, giving this round door a texture not pleasant to the touch. The round door has been painted to look like an open mouth, with a show of sharp teeth. Stepping back, I observe my creation: a white garden shed with a red circular door painted as an open mouth and two lego eyes integrated into the white lego wall, right above that mouth door. I attached a red clown nose onto the door knob and when my shrunken tent arrived back from the laundromat service, it was added to complete the roof of the garden shed, almost like it was wearing a hat. Perfect protection against the rain. It also added an ominous edge to the garden shed, that pointed tent with its red and white spiral design.

Now... the time has come to break all city bylaws by digging a deep moat around the garden shed. This is to prevent unwanted visitors from stealing gardening tools from the shed (yes, the garden shed is now stacked with awesome gardening tools!). It's a waterless moat, too wide to jump over. But, I wanted to design a moat that was both menacing and alluring. It's a deep drop, but if you were to peer below, you'd notice that the moat was filled with bright pink cotton candy! Plenty of it!! Enough to cushion one's fall and supply a lifetime of sugar if trapped below, eternally. But at a price. Scattered and shattered about this huge pink pillow of cotton candy goodness are sharp cracked teacups. The drop down the moat may indeed be cushioned, but not without a few cuts and scrapes.

I realize that the Shadowy Figure is not without a heart. He's not all about evil antics, you know. He does indeed love to offer a ray of hope unto others and I planned to show this side of him when designing this waterless moat around his beloved garden shed. I've attached a couple of tightropes that span across the moat, all the way to the where the garden shed stands, to give visitors the "hope" that they too have a chance to walk across the cotton candy canyon to squeeze that clown nose door knob. And for that extra hope, I've attached some balloon animals on the tightropes, to let visitors know that if "heavy" mammals such as balloon circus elephants and balloon circus lions can safely walk the tightropes, so could anyone! For obvious reasons, however, those tightropes were never securely fastened to the ground to begin with.

To truly gain access the Shadowy Figure's garden shed, one needed to activate the hidden lego drawbridge that would slide from the ground beneath and stretch across the moat to where the garden shed stood. In the grass, before one reaches the cotton candy moat, there stands a clown garden gnome. All one needs to do is to squat down and look the gnome in his high-tech, facial-recognition camera eyes while tugging at his clown squirting bow tie and wait to get water squirted inside one's open mouth. This last detail is most important or the activation won't work. Plus, it's a nod to the garden shed's round door design! My way of adding a hidden Easter egg to my creation. ;)

Hope the Shadowy Figure loves his garden shed! :P



My preferred choices of builder awards:

- Banished
- First Feudal
- Chambers of Devious Design
- Aven Colony
- Loop Hero
- Craft The World + Craft the World - Abandoned Mines


Edit: Thanks, bjgamer, for yet another fun giveaway! I love how you try to bring out the creative side in us with these amusing challenges. ;) Have fun everyone!