This is my dreamboard for August as I pray/wish/hope for shalom in my physical self.

Last month’s dream of curtains and spotlights is still alive and kicking. I’m still playing guitar, and I’m working with a life coach to figure out what that mysterious phrase might mean for me.

For more information about dreamboarding click here. Good shabbat to you!

May you have warm words on a cold evening,
A full moon on a dark night,
And the road downhill all the way to your door.

(An Irish blessing from an Irish lass. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!)

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Mmmmm…Fall is here, time to put on your warm socks, find your favorite blanket and curl up with a good read. Lucky you! My Fall zine is ready for you, just in time!

Volume three of a four-season series, the zine is dedicated to the some of the seasonal celebrations we practice in our home: Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, a 9/11 remembrance, and our communal meal. You’ll also find recipes, collages, and the next saint in my Saints and Sinners collection. The first ten orders will also receive an extra saint card to give a friend.

May the spirit of gratitude that accompanies this season be instilled deep within you!

Shalom,

Rachelle

“Blessed is the one who shares
the power and your beauty.”

Here’s another little matchbox shrine for the current Creativity Challenge. This fun project is perfect if you only have a little time to be your creative self. I made this ode to Mary in a half hour, while the kids ate afer school snacks at the kitchen table.

I’ve been carrying this vintage enamel token in my pocket for a couple of months, ever since I found it at our local flea market. I’m constantly afraid I’ve lost it, until I dig through the pile of dirty clothes to find her resting serenely in some pocket or another. I’ve been yearning the past few years for more feminine images of the Divine. The BVM, or Blessed Virgin Mary, is a good stand in. While while Mary doesn’t quite fit the bill for me in that regard, (DaVinci code conspiracy theories aside), I do find it comforting to have a nurturing mother figure at my side.

I’m having fun putting together a nice little ephemera package for making tin-box shrines. It will be the prize in the matchbook shrine drawing on October 5th. Carve out a little time for yourself this weekend and indulge in some mucking about with tiny things — make a matchbook shrine. There’s plenty of room in the pool!

P.s. Do you remember this song? Sometimes it gets stuck in my head when I’m wishing for Mary…

“So if I say save me, save me
Be the light in my eyes
And if I say ten Hail Mary’s
Leave a light on heaven for me …”

-Mary’s Prayer
Danny Wilson

a photo of a circus page in the shared journal Jen and I passed back and forth the last time we were blocked

I was so good about advance-posting things for while I was on vacation, and now that I’m back I’ve barely had time to touch the key board. The kids are bored with thier toys and feeling twitchy about the upcoming transition back to school. I’m longing for some studio time but loath to say goodbye to the few sunny days we’ve had this season in Seattle. Does anyone else find the last two weeks of “school’s out” a bit trying? What’s your solution? Post ideas below!

I did manage to happen upon a fun summer read while on vacation, and offer it to you now as twlight read for the dog days of Summer. Check out my review of Water for Elephants over at Magpie Suggests — and enter to win your very own copy! (Ooooo, I love give aways!)

Today’s review over in Magpie Suggests is of Karen Michel’s very useful book The Complete Guide to Altered Imagery. This is a great how-to for magpie artists like me. I’ll also be using this book in September to launch Magpie Girl’s First Friday Creative Challenge. Mark you calendars for the roll out of this every-one-can-play project starting September7th!

This week’s theme at Mama Says Om is “decision.” We happen to be standing on the edge of a pretty big decision. We are looking at some employment opportunities overseas. This comes up every six months or so, and up until now there’s not been a very good fit. But something new is on the horizon and we’re wondering if it might be for us.

There’s a kind of artwork that I do which I tend to think of as “art as spiritual journey.” These pieces are more craft and meditation than they are actual “art.” (Whatever that means.) I often find that they solidify a concept I’m trying to get my head around, or point me in a direction that I didn’t know I was longing for. Working on this piece for Mama Says Om helped me feel like the possibility of relocating was real, was firm. The collage embodied a concept in a way that my mental imagination alone could not. Now I feel like if we pursue this as an option it’s less ethereal — there’s something solid to stand on, and that is making me feel less afraid of the exploration.

To make this collage I used a piece of stationary with a travel theme as a background and applied a map from a European tour book. The birds are a stamp I carved out of a wine cork. The big red “you are here” arrow was cut out of electrical tape and the letters are stickers that I cut up so they didn’t look quite as scrapbook-y. Small pricing tags from an office supply store detail out the verb “to decide.” More stickers on the bottom spell out what I’d have to do if I moved out of familiar surrounds. The sentence in handwriting says “I have a fork” in Danish — the only thing I remember from the round of language lessons I took a year ago. (Actually, that’s not true. I also remember the word for apron and the word for living room … I’m sure those three things will take me a L-O-N-G way!)

Mama Says Om is a great experiment to help creative mom’s hold on to their art-and-soul. You can play too! Just check the weekly theme, and write, photograph, paint, collage, or whatever your way to a post on the topic. Then link to Mama Says Om to inspire and be inspired. Mama Says Om is brought to you by the wondergals at Elaine and Krystyn.

Ps. Here’s some links to other art-as-meditation projects that I’ve done in the past. A little note for context…I am an ordained minister and work with artists who are trying to find a new way to practice old faiths, as well as with interfaith communities, and with women who are trying to access the feminine divine. I teach workshops on art-based meditative practices. Contact me if your interested in booking me for a conference or retreat. moi at magpie dash girl dot com.

Other Stuff
spring equinox
dia de los meurtos: derrida (by Lindell Alderman), altar for darfur
feminine divine,
ignatian examen high point,
ignatian examen, low point
thank you
perched
tsunami intercession
justice (by Rebecca Dallin),

The Ramadan Collection
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight

Okay, so PMS and migraine hit last week and by Thursday I was cussing under my breath, throwing plates at the anger altar, and wondering WHAT ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE DOING IN MY HOUSE?! It’s been a hard week and week-end with a lot of pain, meds, and foggy headedness. Saturday we spent way too much money going to see Pirates of the Caribean III, which was totally disppointed followed by a long day Sunday doing absolutely nothing — just hanging around the house all the grey day, watching bad television and putting all of our CD’s on my Zune. Today is Memorial Day and a third blessed weekend-day when the sun finally broke though! In spite of the ongoing migraine, I put my dog on his leash and walked to my studio. I was grumpy enough to intentionally avoid the sweet developmentally disabled seniors who live in the group home between my house and my studio (they love Sam, Sam doesn’t love them), but shored-up enough by Paul’s willingness to let me spend most of the day away from the kiddos that I got my butt in gear in time to spend 5 blissful hours snipping and transfering and generally making a wonderful mess at my drafting table. I added several pages to the Summertime zine, including this one which confirms that yes, inspite of PMS and patriarchy, I enjoy being a girl. Hope it brings you a smile today.

P.s. A very BIG thank you to my long suffering spouse for his unwavering belief that I should “get thee to thy studio.” Your right Paul, I always DO feel better after I’ve been in the studio!

Much Love and Whimsy,

Rachelle

Ooooo…aren’t they so pretty? I’m having so much fun working on my next Zine! Though the pages might not look like much, it’s a long process as each page is features either watercolors, ink work, or image transfers. For instance, here’s the process for these two simple pages:

-journal for an hour about what you want to say
-edit it down to a pithy little opening salvo
-find a background image — in this case a photograph of handmade soap blocks in sherbert colors
-scan in photograph
-reduce to various sizes and adjust the colors
-cut large sheets of cardstock to zine-appropriate sizes
-use gel medium to transfer the image onto the zine page (spread gel medium. use brayer to remove air bubbles. burnish just the right amount. wait the perfect amount of ’set’ time. gently peel back the image paper. rub off excess paper pulp with your figure pads. repeat when it doesn’t work the first time.)
-pen out what you want to write on scratch pages to get the spacing decent
-look up various and sundry spellings
-resize summer photographs to be the right teeny tine “photo booth” size
-affix photos to zine pages
-hand-write text
-forget to leave enough margins for the binding. begin again at step one.

I know there are simpler ways to make zines. Ways that involve only a computer and a xerox machine at Kinkos. But I just can’t help it. I love the handmade-ness of it all. I’ve put at least 24 hours into this already and I’m only on page six! Paul says I can spend one day of the three day weekend at my studio, so I’m hoping to have them ready by the end of the weekend for June orders. Now all I need is a name…hmmmmm….

I have to use white out on my calendar. This is not my work calendar or anything, it’s just our family calendar—like the one your mom hung in the kitchen to keep track of the soccer games and such. Ours was hung on the side of the refridgerator, right next to the door from the garage. Many were the times I would come into the kitchen to find my mother speaking tersely to one of us, usually my brother, when a scheduling conflict arose. “This. Was. Not. On. The. Calendar.”

I have always had a thing for calendars. Its comforting to me to come to a clean page at the beginning of the month and fill in a few activities on those little boxes. It fels orderly, manageable. With the advance of time and technology my calendars got an upgrade. There were computer-generated weekly schedules and palm pilots that warned me when someone’s birthday was coming up. These magic electric things could change font colors, flash reminders, and–wonders of all wonders—sync.

Then, I quit my day job. I blissfully relegated my PDA to the back of the junk drawer. No more meetings! No more babysitter juggling! No more multi-tasking! I could downsize to an Ann Taintor calendar. Life would be SO MUCH simpler.

Maybe I should have actually read the caustically funny barbs on the Anne Taintor calendar, because the whole “life is simpler” stay at home mom thing doesn’t really exist. Not then. Not now. Almost as soon as I tacked up my quaint little paper calendar, reality hit. Followed by white out. There is so much stuff on my calendar, and it changes SO OFTEN that I can’t fit all the stuff into those moderate sized squares. I have to scratch things, shove stuff into the margins, and add little extras on with florescent post-it notes. And of this calendarizing doesn’t even begin to reflect all the stuff I really do in a day…”grocery shopping” isn’t up there for instance, or “bill paying,” or “dish washing.” You get the idea.

Recently a friend suggested I solve the problem by getting a bigger calendar. Maybe one of those desk-sized calendars or a big soccer-mom style dry erase board? This does not seem like a good idea. Bigger calendar = more space to schedule stuff = more white out.

Instead, I think I’ll downsize. Yes, gentle readers, “Do Less” is my new motto. Doing less will help my kids be less stressed. It will help my brain stay out of the theta state where all the intake nerves are firing at the same time. And it will help me live counter-culturally to my experience-obsessed cohorts who seem to think their kids will end up living out of a grocery cart if they don’t have some sort of after school activity everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.

“Do Less”

It sounds nice, doesn’t it?

How about it? Wanna try? What are some of the things you need to do less of?