Return of the Postcards

I've been slacking BIG TIME on the postcards, and I apologize. BUT, there are more on the way so as always, holler if you want one.

Send your address to me at inspirepostcards@gmail.com!

Snail mail

I'm a little more than a week into this project and having a lot of fun with it. While I am enjoying myself doing this, it is also serving its intended purpose really well. I am developing a discipline of both reading my bible every day AND doing something creative every day. It is also teaching me to loosen up and let go, bit by bit. The idea isn't to spend hours each day creating draft after draft until I'm satisfied; it's to spend a few minutes each day connecting and creating. I have to quiet the voice in my head telling me to start over because that line isn't straight enough, or I don't like where this is heading. It isn't about being perfect.

*all scripture is from the New Living Translation

If you want to receive a postcard and be a part of this project, please send your address to inspirepostcards@gmail.com. Don't be shy-  Join in on the snail mail fun!

5 (of the many) things I want from Raygun

There are plenty of unique places to explore in Des Moines' East Village, including previously mentioned shops, Found Things and Domestica, deliciously undead restaurant Zombie Burger, and Raygun, a t-shirt shop specializing in tongue-in-cheek love for the Midwest. It's another place I have trouble spending money because I know if I buy one thing, I'll buy them all.

Here are five things I want from Raygun right now:

Find more cool stuff from Raygun here:
http://raygunsite.com/

Happy Easter

Hope and joy abound on a day like today. CELEBRATE!
Happy Easter :)

Fear of a blank page, or empty day (and a new project!)

I think I've mentioned this video before on the blog, but here it is again with context.

It's a video from Creative Mornings, "a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types."  This particular lecture is by Kate Bingaman Burt, an "illustrator, educator, and maker of things." She works primarily with automated directives, and talks here about the idea that constraints drive creativity.

She relates her fear of a blank piece of paper. It's intimidating. I feel the same way about my time. A wide-open day is intimidating. How will I fill that time? How should I fill that time? How many things will I fail to get done in that time? Could I have better used that time? I will get less done in a completely wide-open day than one where I only have a 30 minute window between work and other obligations simply because of it's overwhelming emptiness. It's like when you have so much to do that you simply sit down and do nothing instead because you don't know where to start, except the complete opposite.

One of my biggest problems is that I am an "all-or-nothing" girl. In other words, if you can't give your best, don't even bother. If I can't set aside several hours to deep clean my house, then I won't clean at all. Sometimes I come up with an idea for a project, but don't think I can carry it out exactly how I imagine it in my head, so I never start it. If I eat an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's in one sitting, I have already failed and won't even try to eat well the next day. If I miss a day of reading my Bible, why bother picking it up the next 35 days. Yeah, it's been 35 days.

While always giving your best is a great sentiment, this is a horrible way to live. Procrastination by way of perfectionism...strange. It doesn't even make sense. Each day is a learning experience. No one picks up a paint brush and instantly composes a masterpiece (except for child prodigies, but let's just not talk about them).

How many experiences have I missed because I was afraid to fail before I even started?

Don't worry. Just do. Make. Create. Try.

I will stop admitting defeat before the day has even begun. Let's say it again together, louder this time.
I WILL STOP ADMITTING DEFEAT BEFORE THE DAY HAS BEGUN.

Kate Bingaman Burt's rules for a project are as follows:
1. You must have a limitation on your format
2. You must have a framework for your content
3. You must have a restriction on your tools

So here's my project:

Every day I will pick a phrase or verse from that day's Bible reading. I will write that verse on a postcard, and send it to someone. I will only use black ink. I will do this for 3 months. I will photograph each postcard, and at the end of each week I will post the photos here.

SO, if you would like to receive a postcard (whether I know you or not), send me your address to this email: inspirepostcards@gmail.com, and you will receive one! 

Please help me out and send your address! Also, who doesn't love to get mail that isn't someone asking for money?

I have tried this kind of project before and lost track. You may remember a little thing called "100 days of Hand-lettering" that lasted less than ten days. Sigh. Well this time, I'm inviting you to keep me accountable. Bug me about it. If I haven't posted in a while, feel free to send a barrage of texts, emails, phone calls to get on it.

Some recent pages

Haven't posted any pages since I started working on a new group of papers- the Central Wisconsin group.  There are four papers in the Central Wisconsin group: the Wausau Daily Herald, the Stevens Point Journal, the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune, and the Marshfield News Herald. Here are just a few examples of what I've been up to since working with these papers.

Here's a fun challenge: Design an A1 without
a single photo (except for the  Packers promo)

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Okay, I'll just say it.  I hate summer. I know- I can hear the disbelieving shrieks of schoolchildren everywhere, but it is just awful.  Okay, maybe not awful, but it's about as close as you can get to being awful without actually being awful.

My two main reasons for disliking summer are as follows:
1. It is extraordinarily hot outside all the time. Some days I wonder why I even bothered to shower before work when I sweat two gallons walking from the parking lot to the building.
2. The primary sport of the season is baseball.  I used to rag on baseball all the time for being boring.  I have since retracted those comments and warmed up to it, but it's not soccer or football. Baseball is like that last resort friend you keep in the wings. Well I have nothing better to do...I guess I'll watch baseball.

Anyway, apparently this isn't the popular view because every year on Ohio University's campus around March, or whenever the temperature rises above 40 degrees, students flock to "South Beach," throwing frisbees and playing basketball in shorts and t-shirts or sunbathing in bikinis.  And every year, I laugh at its ridiculousness.  It is just way to cold for that stuff still.  But people do it because they can't wait for it to actually be warm enough for both this behavior and apparel to be acceptable.  They grab on to any little taste of summer they can get and dive in. This is how I am about fall. 

As soon as it drops below 70 degrees, whether we have passed Labor Day or not, it is fall, and I am wearing jeans and a hoodie, drinking hot beverages like it is my job, and talking about football and leaves to anyone who will listen, which often means that I'm talking to myself.

Maybe it's just residual excitement from the years of my life when fall meant it was time to head back to school, start to soccer and marching band season, and wear the same hoodie every day for a week without judgment, but I just don't get this excited for any other season.

Maybe it's because fall weather is absolutely the most beautiful and comfortable weather of the year.  I wish I could spend all day hanging out under a tree with a book.  I can enjoy a cup of coffee without sweating at the same time.  Fall even smells good.

Maybe it's because when fall arrives, I know that Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner, and I am a total freak about the holidays. Oh, it's October? Josh Groban Holiday Pandora station, here I come.  Not to mention, I have already scoped out nurseries where I can buy a real Christmas tree (they're the only kind that count). Little known fact: Santa himself despises fake Christmas trees and skips over the houses of people that harbor them.  Okay, that's not true, but this one is: the first commercially manufactured fake Christmas trees were made by a toilet brush company. Your fake Christmas tree is a giant, green toilet brush, and that is how I will forever see it.

Or maybe it's because fall is the season for me to get my hopes up every year that my beloved Cincinnati Bengals will win the Super Bowl.  You're all laughing, aren't you?  Yes, I am aware that the Bengals haven't won a playoff game since I was born, but hey, go big or go home.  Some day it will happen, and I will be able to say I believed the whole time. Haters gonna hate.

Whatever it is, I'm happy that fall is here and ready to enjoy it.

More ink and watercolor pencils...