Election Day 2020

Hello Everyone,

In just a short while, I will be heading out to cast my ballot in the United States general election. It's being said today is the most important election day in our lifetime and I couldn't agree more.

So if you live in the USA, I hope you will be out there voting also.

Take care.

DIY: Painted Mini Halloween Pumpkins & a Día de Los Muertos Skull Banner

Hello and Happy Halloween friends!

This is indeed the strangest Halloween ever. Our city is heavily discouraging trick-or-treating, gatherings, corn mazes - all the traditional group activities. So I'm guessing there are many parents out there coming up with ideas for new ways to celebrate Halloween that don't include getting sick with the coronavirus. I'll bet pumpkin painting is on the list!

For this easy-peasy project, I bought three different kinds of ornamental pumpkins in three sizes and decorated each type the same.

For the large white pumpkins, I chose black and orange paint and black and orange decorative ribbons. To make the stars, I traced around two different sized chipboard stars with a Sharpie marker, then painted them in with black tempera paint. The plaid and polka dots were painted free hand.

For the small white pumpkins, I chose gold paint, gold wire 'vines' and velvety autumn colored leaves. Hint: to make the wire vines I wrapped the wire around a pencil, then slipped it over the stem.

And for the little orange pumpkins I painted the stems gold and then used my favorite white Gelly Roll pen for the embellishing.

I made the Día de Los Muertos banner a few years ago and I still love it. I simply drew one skull to use as a template and cut five out of white cardstock, drew in the facial features, and gave each a floral head piece. I then mounted them on the banners which are hand cut from a sheet of 12 x 12 Bo Bunny scrapbook paper, which I embossed with gold embossing powder around the outside edges.

And last but not least, in order to give my vignette above an extra wow factor, I filled my little plaster 'boo pumpkin' with seasonal mums. This is my only vintage Halloween decoration and I am crazy about it. I love that facial expression!

Thank you for looking and have a safe and fun Halloween (insert blood curdling scream here)!

Happy Autumn

Hello Friends, long time no publish!

I am still here, and unremarkably, still on leave from my government job due to the Coronavirus pandemic. In looking back, I see that the last time I published a post was on May 23rd, which was 66 days into my leave. Let's just say I'm not counting the days anymore...

Not surprisingly, nothing has changed for me. Like so many of you, I'm still waiting for some kind of normalcy to creep back into everyday life. But the virus keeps my town, county and state from moving beyond it. A glimmer of hope turns into another setback. For example, around the first of September there was a huge wild fire in our area and our town became engulfed in smoke. With the sky and air filled with hazardous soot and ash, it looked and felt like we were living on another planet. Staying home and staying safe took on yet another layer of new meaning. When the smoke finally cleared after about two weeks, it took several days to wash down all the lawn furniture and garden tools, scrub the front porch and the back deck and wash all the windows.

It was around that 66th day mentioned above that I started feeling all my creative energy fall away. Suddenly all my artistic endeavors seemed to evaporate. It felt like none of it was important, yet it also felt liberating to no longer be pushing myself. I let it all fall away. I dove into house cleaning and organizing activities and painted one of our bathrooms. I then turned to my art studio (nothing more than a space in the garage) and started cleaning up and organizing. Old paintings I made were either donated or thrown away. Unfinished scrapbook projects are now done. Years and years of family photos scattered everywhere are now in photo albums in date order!

With the change from summer to autumn I've started feeling a bit inspired by the colors of autumn. And I started a practice of taking a photo of anything that makes me happy - my morning coffee, a flower in my garden, my new slippers! This kind of exercise helps me focus on the good, even if just for a moment. It's the scrapbooker in me. I love making a page of my seasonal favorites.

But also, now that summer is gone and the days of living in the cold and dark are upon us, I'm feeling like I need to sink into coziness and to do activities that will keep me feeling life's energy. The time between autumn and the new year, even with the darkness and covid, are still opportunities to appreciate life, right? So now is a good time to start incorporating elements of hygge into our homes! Let's hear it for home made soup, flannel sheets, wool sweaters and the scent of eucalyptus floating in the air...

And on that note, I have a fun Halloween DIY to share with you, so I'll be back tomorrow!

Black Lives Matter Black Out Tuesday

Enough is enough.

Flattening the Curve, Day 66

Remembering Voyages Past

Dear friends, for over sixty days now I have been on a mandatory leave from my work site due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and have been blogging about that experience from the very first day of my leave.

And although my situation will not change, for the foreseeable future, my status has changed. I no longer am on mandatory leave, rather I have been furloughed until July 25th.

Although the county in which I live has done an excellent job of avoiding catastrophic illness and has, indeed, 'flattened the curve', the State of Oregon now has a severe deficit and many employees, including me, have been furloughed.

That doesn't mean that the coronavirus pandemic is over - far from it. We are only at the point of a slow and cautious reopening. Lane County petitioned to reopen and my town has entered 'Phase 1' of reopening. It's still early days in the efforts to keep everyone safe and I will still be following the stay home order, only going out for essentials.

So I will still be here on the blog, however I won't be titling every post 'Flattening the Curve' anymore. I will name posts according to what the subject matter is and use Flattening the Curve only when I have something specific to share about the status of the pandemic in my town and in my life.

With that, I hope you and your family are safe.

Thank you for reading and see you again soon.

 

Flattening the Curve, Day 64

She Took to the Wind, No Longer Tied Down by Him

Hello friends. Today is my sixty-fourth day of mandatory leave from my government job due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and I have a question for you.

Have you ever had to leave an unhealthy relationship? If you've seen any of my recent Collage Journal posts, you'll know that I have been thinking a lot about the decade in which I came of age and am working on documenting some of those memories in my journal using images cut from a stack of 1970s National Geographic magazines. The 70s were my coming of age decade.

As I was searching through the magazines and choosing what to use for the Collage Journal, I saw the image above of the woman sitting on the hood of the Buick LaSabre and I immediately remembered my own experience of owning just such a car.

And ironically that Buick turned out to be my escape car. It was a harmful relationship. There was no physical abuse, but there was plenty of emotional abuse and a pernicious control of my behavior. I knew I needed to escape or I would never become my own person.

That was a long time ago - and what helped me get away from that unhealthy relationship was a 1975 Buick LaSabre. So I took to the wind.

Flattening the Curve, Day 63

Hello friends. Today is my sixty-third day of quarantine due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and I'm back with another page spread from the vintage Boorum & Pease Miniature Account Book that I have been repurposing into a personal collage journal.

My plan for this layout is to write about what it felt like growing up in the 1970s with the societal expectation of being the pretty, dutiful girl. Something I always felt like I was failing at. But also rebelled against. Maybe you felt those things too when you were growing up?

Again, in sticking with my plan of just using three elements, I cut the images of the girls from various 1970s National Geographic magazines, added washi tape to the top and bottom borders and ink stamped a few butterflies. It's ready for the journaling which I plan to do with a calligraphy pen just as soon as I get my confidence up! Hopefully, by the next round of photographing more pages, I will have some examples of my writing...

If you would like to see more of the collage journal pages, just scroll down to 'Topics' in the right side bar and look for 'Collage Journal'.

Thank you for looking and see you again soon.