This banner was many weeks in the making, not because I spent a lot of time working on it, but because i spent so much time working on other things. There’s a lot to do in a library. So I stayed late twice this week and, I confess, cannibalized the flowers from another project completed some years back. Sometimes I save pieces of old bulletin boards. That saved a lot of time.
No idea what inspired the catterflies.
i took like 2 dozen photos of this little ornament I made for my mom and none of them came out very well, so I’m just posting this one with the caveat that it’s not a very good photograph. But I think it’s a pretty cute ornament.
Originally, I wanted to buy something like this, but I couldn’t find anything I liked well enough. Everything was either very ugly or very overpriced or both. And I’m not saying these are perfect, but I like them better than most of the things I saw in the stores, and I liked the price better as well.
The hummingbirds bodies are polymer clay, about an inch and a half long, and their beaks are wire. I found an old mother of pearl earring that looked kind of like a wing, and then threw in that purple bead for good measure. The designs are painted with acrylic paint. I found just enough of this red ribbon to hang this ornament, and then to tie a bow on the box that I put the ornament in.
I find that fascism is really crushing my creative spirit. It’s hard to take pleasure in making things anymore. It feels like work. There’s not a lot of joy left, but I also feel like if I don’t make things, then the fascists win.
My mom really liked her tiny birds.
One of the GATE teachers liked my owl bulletin board so much she gave me a book called October, October by Katya Balen, which prominently features an owl, although that owl is a baby barn owl and my original owl was an adult great horned owl (inspired by a juvenile great horned owl). I wanted to make her a little owl card but baby barn owls are kind of ugly so I drew an adult.
That’s this owl.
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