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One Little Word: May Recap

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Stay-at-home restrictions continued so taking on the #100DayProject was a good decision. I’ve enjoyed the excuse to pull out one of my coloring materials to use every day. I have an unusual stockpile of cards and an envelope of colored images for new cards, and I’ve sent a lot of cards as well.

I kept up with a photo-a-day. As you can see below, the majority of the photos were of flowers and the parks. No wonder! Winter kept a grip on us for the beginning of May, so green trees (not until after my birthday mid-month) and flowers were a very welcome sight. There are a couple of photos of the many birds that keep us entertained outside our kitchen window. We’re always glad to see the rose-breasted grosbeaks who only stay for a couple of weeks. Fortunately, the beautiful Baltimore Orioles stay most of the summer. We’ve seen a few hummingbirds, and have regular visits from two kinds of woodpeckers. The yellow finches, catbirds, and nuthatches also enjoy our feeders.

MayPhotoCollage

I also set a goal to walk every day which we did, sometimes in the snow, and once on a 90° day. The extremes were rather amazing. According to our Runkeeper app, we totaled a little over 74 miles for the month.

I read five books, none of which I rated with five stars although I enjoyed most of them. I particularly liked Rebecca Solnit’s Whose Story Is It? –a group of thoughtful essays about feminism, discrimination, and power, and Eric Larson’s lengthy, but well-written, intimate portrait of Winston Churchill during his first year as prime minister during WWII.

  Longings Knife Splendid

WhoseStory Camino

I intended to continue purging photos from my computer, but that fell by the wayside, so I’m taking that up in June with more concrete goals. I didn’t get back to my Copic Jumpstart class either, and know that will have to wait until the #100DayProject is complete.

As if the pandemic wasn’t enough, the month ended in tragedy and chaos—another Black life taken at the hands of the police resulting in peaceful protests that turned violent in over 140 cities, including Rochester. Our federal leadership does more to incite violence than calm—no sign of empathy or compassion. I fear for our future.

My June goals are much the same. I’ll continue with the #100DayProject, I have six books I want to read, and my study group is beginning our third project which would be book #7 for the month. I’m planning to set aside three times each day to tackle the reading. I want to purge another 5,000 photos (11,000 were purged by the end of April), and Tracy wants to reach 50 days of continuous walking. We’re planning a trip to Wisconsin at the end of the month which always alters our daily rhythms, so I hope to be particularly productive the first few weeks of the month.

 

Spring Card Camp

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I enrolled in the Online Card Classes “Spring Card Camp,” thinking it would provide some additional inspiration for my #The100DayProject of daily coloring.

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The first three lessons focused on stamping rather than coloring, but today’s lesson by Julie Ebersole was perfect, and definitely a technique I had never tried before. Each lesson in the camp is focused on creating two cards using one technique. This one was called the “Coordinating Die Cut Trick.” It requires a stamp with a matching die cut. I have plenty of those so I was a bit surprised how few stamp and die sets I had that I thought would work with for this technique. I’ve pulled a few more sets to try later, so you may see more of these. 

The first step is to stamp an image on the front of a card and then die cut. You set that die cut aside for card #2. Then you restamp the image through the die cut on the inside of the card. Here’s a look at the front of the card:

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Before coloring the inside image, I masked off the cute little elephant and added two other images to the inside of the card.

HBFlyWithMeInside

Here’s the second card. I opted to use an A4 card by Paper Source for this card, and added two die cut clouds.

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I popped the little guy up with some dimensional tape after stamping the sentiment. All the coloring was done with the Polychromos colored pencils.

#The100DayProject

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I’m quite sure I do not need another project, but it’s been over a year since I have sketched on a daily basis. During an online class on visual journaling, I came across a book called The Zen of Seeing/Drawing: Seeing/Drawing as a Meditation. The class focused on contemplative photography, but I enjoyed the book not only as a new way to approach photography, but also as a new way of approaching drawing. So when the #The100DayProject appeared in my email, I decided to make a go of it. While we were in Florida, I ordered two books, and I’ve read parts of both. I’ll be using them as a resource during the project. I decided to limit both time (20 minutes max), and materials: a small Moleskin Sketch book, a pencil, a Micron pen, and a waterbrush. If I have time, I’ll add some watercolor to the sketch. 

Supplies

With some encouragement from Honoré, I’m going to attempt a daily posting on Instagram as well. We’ll see how that goes. I started The 100 Day Project last year, but didn’t get very far. I thought, perhaps, a public commitment might improve my odds of success. 

Here’s Day 1. I’ve decided to lay out my materials each night before I go to bed, and to be sure to finish the sketch before noon. If I’m going to draw an object, I’ll find it the night before and lay it on the desk. I chose a little Easter decoration for the first one.

Day1