Caption Contest #2

The second Better Off Soaked Giveaway is brought to you by the extremely creative and talented Recycling Zychal who has generously offered to gift a custom-made Upcycled Umbrella Hood to one of you lucky readers. The winner gets to choose a fabric from her Etsy page, the Eco-Fi felt lining and snap enclosure. Your final product will look like this.

Like the last contest, everyone who leaves a caption for one of the umbrella photos posted below is entered, and you may enter once for every photo. However, now with more awesome! Instead of using a random number generator, this time we're going to let you readers (and your friends on Twitter and Facebook!) vote for the winner. Create and leave your captions from now until Midnight, Sunday, November 29th. Then voting for the favorite caption will be held Monday and Tuesday.

Without further ado - the candidates! Create one caption for any or all of the five photos taken by our artist, Taryn Zychal. Indicate in your comment which photo the caption is for. Have fun, and good luck!

PHOTO 1:


PHOTO 2:


PHOTO 3:


PHOTO 4:


PHOTO 5:


Artist's background in her own words:

I started Recycling Zychal on Earth Day of 2009, but the idea of making dog coats from broken umbrellas started about 5 years ago when I bought an umbrella at the salvation army. It was teal and had white whales along the edge, it was really cute, but found out when I got home that it was unrepairable and broken. I couldn't bare to throw it out, and I knew I would eventually think of something to do with it. I tucked it away and a year later got my first pug, Jake. The idea struck me to make him a dog coat from the broken umbrella after a whale print collar had made me remember that I had the fabric. At the time I didn't know how to sew so the original prototype is glued together. I wound up entering it into ReadyMade Magazine's Maguyver Broken Umbrella Challenge and it came in runner up, but I had received so much attention for it, I decided to learn to sew and start the company. I stuck to just custom-fit dog coats for awhile, but I have expanded to the HOOD, which comes from my Polish roots and is a new-school version of the babushka. I also have Man HOODs which will be debuting on the site next week, Kitty Toys that help raise money for a no-kill shelter in Arizona and am launching a few more items before the holidays, all of which are made partly by salvaged broken umbrella fabric and utilize the liquid resistant properties of the material. I think of myself as less of a "crafter" and more of a product designer who just uses umbrella nylon as my medium.

So, in short: Taryn is awesome. And if you need another reason why, she also said that she'll donate $1 to the Morris Animal Refuge in Center City Philadelphia for every broken umbrella donated to her.

Follow her here.
And a very special thanks to @stylestance who connected us by featuring us on her blog on the same day! Heart! Swelling!