Daily Collage, December 5 - 11

Sunday, December 5: Grateful for secondhand shops.

Inspired by my visit to The Village Merchants today, today’s gratitude is all for secondhand shops and the treasure they bring me. So much of my wardrobe is secondhand, not to mention my craft supplies, picture frames, office supplies, miscellaneous house supplies…

While I didn’t get this pad of decorative scrapbook paper today, I did get it from The Village Merchants on an earlier trip. These things sell for like $20+ new, but I got this stack of mixed fancy papers for just a couple bucks. This sheet specifically felt perfect for my theme, since it’s a compilation of all the other paper designs that came in this bundle— pretty good metaphor for a secondhand shop, right? It’s a place where all these different, unrelated objects get thrown together.

What do you do in a secondhand shop? You dig in with your hands. You thumb through books, you pull clothes off the rack, you pick up the odds and ends to inspect them before you commit to bringing them home. A lot of the stuff I buy, I’m intending to use in art projects- t-shirt designs to cut into embroidery backgrounds, picture-heavy books to cut up for collage, artisanal blank notebooks and photo albums to fill up with art. And then there’s the actual arts and crafts supplies I get while I’m there, like glue sticks, tape, binder clips, cardstock, ink pads… so much! Still sealed! Each unused item selling for no more than a dollar! So, I cut out the hands to represent pawing through secondhand wares and making something with them by hand later.

Another score from today’s excursion! As the cover says, it’s a sheet of double sided adhesive, so you can turn any paper (or felt, or fabric, or any other lightweight object) into a sticker. It’s really wide, super strong, double-sided tape.

I attached the adhesive sheet to the back of the accent paper that would be halo-ing my gold hands.

These leftover bits still had perfectly good adhesive on their backs, so I used my star-shaped hole punch on ‘em to make mini sticker stars.

It wasn’t until I looked at the finished piece that it finally dawned on me that my golden hands made a very literal visual pun. Secondhand. Second hand. Two hands. Two hands representing the secondhand? A bit on the nose there, how embarrassing 😬

Monday, December 6: Grateful for tea.

“What am I grateful for today?” I asked Matt and without pausing to consider the soul-searching gravity of the question he answers “Tea” and… he wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t wrong.

Where else are you gunna find The New Candle Book- each page bursting with lush full page photos to inspire ideas for displaying, using and making candles- than at a secondhand shop (Goodwill) for just $2?

The photography by Debbie Patterson really is rich and provides lots of high quality, large shots of objects that are perfect for featuring in collages.

Which background to use, which background to use…

I went with this image of a candle in a tea cup because it’s a pretty good representation of how warm and full a good cuppa makes me feel.

Tuesday, December 7: Grateful for Good Brain Days.

I had a Good Brain Day. I felt grounded, present, calm, creative, warm, full, and stable.

Left: Rock n Roll Bride magazine issue 29, Right: that candle book from yesterday

Leafy window to show nature and structure. Swirly fat-bottomed pear represents being grounded and also lit up with ideas and (reasonable) good feelings. The black circle with gold vines is primarily to help the top of the lit pear visually pop against the background, but I could bullshit a little and say that the leafy designs mean “creativity” or something.

Wednesday , December 8: Grateful for chocolate.

YES, MY PERIOD STARTED TODAY, WHAT OF IT.

Critique magazine, Spring 1997. Photo of the cast bronze statue “Apollo Belvedere” by Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi.

I was looking for images that conveyed the sensation of richness, warmth, fullness, luxurious, softness, engulfing, and swirling. Also, Bonus Penis? YOU’RE WELCOME.

Thursday, December 9: Grateful for vegetables (especially beets)

Friday, December 10: Grateful for podcasts.

Listen. A collage-a-day for a whole month means some of them aren’t gunna be winners, ok? Some of them are going to be monster balloon women who watch you through your window while calmly drinking a watermelon lemonade. Just… watching. She likes to watch.

My intention was that the balloons would represent podcasts? Because they’re these self-contained pods of entertainment that make you happy. And… you listen to podcasts with headphones, usually, so only you can hear them? So all these delightful little podcasts are basically floating around inside your head, making you feel like you’re hanging out with a group of friends but the friends only exist in your mind????? I DON’T KNOW AND IT WAS LATE AND NOW THIS MONSTER BALLOON WOMAN IS WATCHING ME THROUGH MY WINDOW LIKE AN UTTER CREEPER OH GOD WHAT HAVE I MADE SEND HEL—

Saturday, December 11: Grateful for my body.

I love my body. I love what it can do, what it feels, how it’s always changing, the soft bits, the hard bits, the way it smells, the power it has and the vulnerability. I love taking workout classes through Zoom with my friends who live faraway, I love indoor climbing with my husband at his gym, I love dancing barefoot by myself in my kitchen. I love burrito-ing in a blanket on the couch, I love carrying Tig against my chest and shoulder, I love precisely cutting out an intricate image from a magazine with a blade, and most of all I love spooning with Matt at the end of the day as we fall asleep. That last one is actually the thing I most look forward to every day. I love my body most when it is smooshed together with the person I love most and we are an island radiating warmth in the middle of the sea that is our bed.

See you next week with the next round-up of daily collages!