The Other Side of Somewhere

Flickr Favorites Mosaic (e) Swap

Supafly Design hosted a really neat e-swap on swap-bot where the participants put together a mosaic of favorite photos on flickr and emailed the mosaic to their assigned partners.  How cool is that?  So easy and fun! I hope this trend for e-swaps continues.

Here is my mosaic.  There is no rhyme or reason for the images chosen; they are simply images that I love and make me happy.

Enjoy!

Please visit the talented photographers and owners of these lovely images:
1. The color of existance!, 2. The Notebook 2, 3. february 2008 calendar page, 4. lemony goodness, 5. Follow your art, 6. Rainbow-Stripey, 7. coletas, 8. Huh?, 9. redgirl, 10. the real thing, 11. Funny Faces, 12. We all scream, 13. stable, 14. Goldie!, 15. mixed media handbag, 16. morning walk

Fifty Cent Dreams and Stuff

The last few months I've had vivid and interesting dreams featuring symbols that repeat themselves (not exact repetitions, more like variations on a theme).  Symbols like elevators, escalators, and skyscrapers, and one unusual dream involving, er, melted butter. 

Being naturally curious, I decided to start keeping track of these dreams and try to divine what, if anything, they might mean.  Dreams remind me of poetry in that they both deal in metaphor.  I love that!

I've been paging through modern dream interpretation books and tomes that include page after page of boring Freudian dream philosophy and Jungian archetype dream philosophy, and not finding a reference anywhere to elevators, escalators, skyscrapers, and, ahem, the melted butter, so imagine my amusement when I found this book at the thrift store today for fifty cents!  Written in 1952 it addresses all of my symbols except for skyscrapers.  Inside is a handwritten dedication in blue ink reading: "to my Darling little Dreamer, Christmas 1952, Your loving husband."

Such a perfect and serendipitous find!  Not only may it possibly help me discover patterns and meanings in my dreams, but will be great for collage work as well!

* * *

On the creative front, I am still plugging along with my day/week/month project.  You can follow along on flickr.  At the 30 day mark I have a few things planned, so stay tuned for that.  I'm only on Day 21, but I'm already learning a lot through this process. 

Today, I went out to swap-bot; I hadn't been there in awhile.  Swap-bot is a wonderment of swapping goodness!  People swap everything from themed CDs, to zines and artist trading cards to postcard and holiday themed projects.  So much fun!  I signed up for these: A cupcake atc swap and flickr favorites swap (which requires no sending of anything and is so easy its ridiculous!). 

Go forth and swap!  It's good for you!

* * *

If you are here looking for the All About Blythe page, I've temporarily removed it from my blog.  I am trying to decide if the Blythe stuff needs its own blog.  I hesitate to do that because I don't like the idea of breaking my interests down into six gazillion blogs, but I want to keep a balance of things here (it's not all Blythe, it's not all art, it's a lot of everything).  I'll figure it out; in the meantime I've removed the page.

However, Blythe aficionados, do not despair!  I am hosting a Blythe photo swap via swap-bot!  You can check out all the details and sign up via the link.

Finally, whether you are Blythe collector or not, you might appreciate this article profiling the designer of the original Blythe doll in 1972 and the revival of the doll in the last many years.

Enjoy!

Blue and Orange Kind of Day

Blue Orange Box w/Handle
Originally uploaded by Jeannine P..

Today has been a mixed bag.

First, the splendid and delightful ...

I received a box from my partner in the Blue/Orange swap I hosted through swap-bot. Melissa sent this **gorgeous** little box filled with treasures and papers and lovely handmade items! It was truly a sight to behold and brought many giggles and smiles. It was really difficult to stop and take photos of everything. :)

If you weren't able to join in our color swap this go around, I hope you'll join us for a future swap. This is such an inspiring and fun activity on both the giving and receiving ends of things.

We still do not know anything solid about Mr. P.'s work situation. Mr. P, you may or may not know, is a Marine and this job change came out of nowhere. Blindsided might describe what is happening, but only just. We are readying for the worst, but hoping for the best. The worst case scenario involves a very long separation (so long, I can't bear to write it out). He won't necessarily go to a scary place, but he might. Either way, he won't be here and he will be very far away from home.

There is still much that is unresolved and so there is hope. "When nothing is sure, anything is possible", says author Margaret Drabble. This is a comforting thought.

Emily Dickinson wrote about "hope being that thing with feathers"; I had no idea it weighed so much or could pierce so sharply.

It's a weird time, for sure.

(Journal page)