I am also taking "Learning to Swim" with Sara. The work is here.

The exercise on the left is a demonstration of the use of the Pathfinder and selecting different ways for the objects to interact with one another.

Next,creating a chunky guitar by using a Color Blend on a drawing of an object which has been reshaped with the Bloat Tool and duplicated was pretty quick! The Grid Tool was used for the strings. The Grid tool also makes some pretty good windows. I used the Pathfinder for the text in the frame.

Next, the Crystallize Tool used on an object.

Beneath theses are the flowers done with shapes and the Wrinkle Tool.

At the very bottom is the sea image. I used color Blends for the sky and the sun, custom gradients for the clouds along with the warp Tools to make them appear more like clouds.