YELLOW - #PonderMonsterRainbowCollection

YELLOW

Things are getting interesting! The competition is more fierce, the hiding spots are more challenging and my lovely treasure hunting army has grown bigger than ever. After being featured on a recent episode of Dateline NBC "The Road Home", the PonderMonster hunting army jumped from 400 to almost 3000 nearly overnight!! A bit overwhelming indeed, but this will definitely make it more fun for all of us.

YELLOW = HAPPY
Again, simple enough right? For this, a triple-grinned monster was created to reflect this wonderful theme.

Here's the note inside.

Trying something a little bit different, I wanted to see how much participation would be received from you prior to hiding any of these bad boys around town. I asked you to think about your favorite YELLOW places around town, take a picture of it and send it to me. This was to give me a few ideas of where to hide around town, AND to give you some sort of heads up as to where you can find them when the time comes. This is what you sent in...

 Most excellent job :)

YELLOW painting 1 of 3 was placed in the location of one of the three images at the top of this picture. It was placed outside the door of Vine St. Pub and was swooped up so fast it made my head spin. Probably under 60 seconds. Didn't even have time to get the camera rolling (again...). There was nothing posted about it for about 4 hours. Couldn't figure out what happened to it. Then @rsears44 posted a picture. Phew! It was slightly uneventful, also don't know how excited they were about getting it, but maybe they have it happily hanging up somewhere awesome.

YELLOW painting 2 of 3 was placed on the yellowest bench in the heart of downtown Denver on the corner of 14th and Curtis. This one was found by the lovely @anastatiar. She stopped someone on the street to take a picture of her and her newly found friend.

YELLOW painting 3 of 3 was placed in a patch of yellow tulips at one of my favorite places ever, the Denver Botanic Gardens! Found by the fierce and wonderful @hannahfergesen accompanied by @laralove86. Should go nicely with her collection of fine art. This painting was narrowly missed by Zachary Cross, who called me up and said, "I rode my bike there as fast as I could, and when I arrived, I saw two girls walking off with the painting!! AAARRRRGH!!" (You'll find one someday buddy)

Super wicked mega awesome turbo happy CONGRATULATIONS to all my PonderMonster treasure hunters out there who found the YELLOW paintings in this series of the #PonderMonsterRainbowCollection. Better #LUCK next time to those who missed this round.

Much love,

-PM

ORANGE - #PonderMonsterRainbowCollection

ORANGE

Welcome back @PonderMonster treasure hunters!

ORANGE = WARMTH
Trying to figure out how to show warmth was a bit difficult at first, until I decided that a scarf would be the simplest way to do depict this feeling.

This time around, the thought of searching for more random hunters was my goal. Although it was only done with one painting, it was a wonderful success! Without advertising, the painting was left behind near a table at a local coffee shop. It took a couple of hours, but low and behold, someone eventually posted their findings to instagram. Yay!! I learned that the letter found on the back had to be addressed a bit differently. Now it says, "To: Anyone, read me." The unadvertised random placement was actually an experiment for future treasure hunts...

ORANGE painting 1 of 3 was placed at the bottom of an electrical box, next to a table just outside of Pablo's coffeehouse at 6th and Washington. Found by @Shamelessmax whilst sipping a cup of morning joe. Apparently, taking a moment to enjoy life paid off. 

ORANGE painting 2 of 3 was placed around back of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts near the 'dancing aliens'. Hung on the corner of yet another electrical box, this one paired nicely with a very iconic place in Denver. After hanging around for about 2 hours, my phone died and I decided to just leave it to the universe. Not 2 minutes after taking off @nikkinaw13, while walking near work, picked it up and snapped an exciting selfie.

ORANGE painting 3 of 3 was placed on a sign near the giant cow sculptures at the Denver Art Museum off of 12th and Acoma. Took about 40 minutes, and as luck would have it I was rolling my camera! @Uglytiki 'Lance Armstronged' it several miles across town and swiped the last painting of the ORANGE series. Quite impressive!

CONGRATULATIONS to all the treasure hunters who found the ORANGE paintings in the #PonderMonsterRainbowCollection this time around. Next stop YELLOW!! Will one be yours?

Happy hunting and much love,

-PM

RED - #PonderMonsterRainbowCollection

RED

Hello again my lovely treasure hunters! Got some catching up to do, so here we go. We've got through a few colors already (1 painting left for YELLOW), and after each color has been fully found, a post will be written. This way, you can see who got each painting and where they were left.

A watched painting is never found.
Since this project has begun, I've done my absolute best to try and film each time a painting gets taken. Something has happened almost every single time that has prevented me from capturing the moment... dead battery, double punching the record button, turning my head for 30 seconds, giving up and leaving after 2 hours (and then found exactly 1 minute later) I can't catch a break!! The reason I do this is the only thing in return I get from creating these treasure hunts. Nothing makes me more happy than to make others happy :) seems like a fair trade off right? When I first started this, I didn't think that I would want to stick around and see who takes each one, but as soon as I posted the first one, it was like leaving a child on a street corner. Maybe someday I'll put something together for all of you to see, but for now, I'll show you what I can. It's a good thing I make my finders take a selfie with their new piece of art to pick up the slack where my filming is lacking.

This is the letter found inside.

RED = LOVE
Simple enough. Each color will represent an emotion or characteristic of some kind and what's more representative of red than love? Decided this little happy go lucky fella should have some hearts for eyes (that glow under UV light)!

RED painting 1 of 3 was placed on the corner of 13th and Washington, just outside of Wax Trax. It was so early in the morning that I figured no one would get it for a while. I hung out for about 15 minutes, watched a few people walk right past it and left. Not 2 minutes later @uglytiki swooped it up, took a picture and ran home. Sweet, this actually works!!!!!

RED painting 2 of 3 was placed in the alley behind Tony P's off 17th and Clarkson. Thought the boundaries of challenges should begin to be tested. No surprise, but it turns out that my treasure hunters are wicked sma't. Saying something along the lines of, "If you recognize this view and this wall, this painting is yours." I looked down for two seconds, a car pulled up and a @mollyisme1 jumps out (I frantically try to get my camera turned on and recording) she sees the painting, puts her hands in the air, fits pumps and jumps for joy gets into her car and drives off. Missed the first exciting part...

RED painting 3 of 3 was left across the street from Sexy Pizza off of 11th and Ogden. Found by a curious @invadervega, she seemed to get the feeling she was being watched and played it cool. Although, you can see the excitement in her eyes!

CONGRATULATIONS to all my lovely treasure hunters that found the color RED. Next stop, ORANGE!!!

Want to become a PonderMonster treasure hunter and find a painting of your very own?? Then join the fun on Instagram @PonderMonster #PonderMonsterRainbowCollection.

Much love,
-PM