Scratch off cootie catcher

Now isn't that a catchy title?

Last year, Lynn sent me a fantastic birthday gift - a cootie catcher with a scratch off heart.

One pick at a time I got words of wisdom on how to start a new decade:

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. | When planning for a year plant corn. When planning for a decade plant trees. When planning for life train and educate people. | Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results. | Success is often the result of taking a mis-step in the right direction.

A lot of sage advice to mull over, pal; good thing we have a decade to do so.

Kenya!

(a.k.a to continue an African theme...)
The card is such a classic African image.  I love the colored pencil, this one and her next card are just stunning!  

Jessica drew this card after a trip to Kenya to see her former host family.  She hadn't seen them in a decade, but found other than all being a bit older and further along in their careers it was an easy reconnection.  I often wonder about visiting my old host families, but don't live or travel anywhere in their area of the world anymore.  Its been 10 years for me too, and I like to image what my host siblings grew up to become. Any people you used to know that you wonder 'where are they now?' This postcard also is a continuation of our recent 'inspiration' theme.  Jessica was inspired by an in flight magazine.  She wrote to me these are a great resource.  So, I think we have finally found the one purpose for this type of reading material- congrats on that Jess people were never sure what those were for until now :-)

Los Animales

Jessica drew this little sketch of an animal as she was thinking of Northern Ghana.  That area is quieter and full of nature, so maybe she was channeling its peace into hectic work life? Having just been on Safari myself I can identify him as a Thompson Gazelle or Impala!

She went on to write about turning 30- a transition we've both had lately.  Apparently, Jessica read that the 20's are now emerging adulthood while 30 means you're truly an adult (this has something to do with the brain).  Jessica jokingly says we are both slow to mature, but according to science we're just following normal human development!

Four seasons

Lynn was playing around with common postal pal themes - seasons and trees - when she drew this card. This image does not do her creation justice. By the time she sent this, she was finding herself in the middle of the summer break feeling relatively unproductive except for regular work outs. Aspirations of creating art everyday had not been reached so she wrote that she had looked for inspiration in old drawing pads... which apparently led to little more than a reminder of the ceramics class she had taken with me in our senior year (not a bad thing to remember I must say). Perhaps in hopes of soliciting ideas, she spent the rest of the card asking me about my creative outlets... which in theory was a good strategy except for the fact that by this time I had morphed into a complete workaholic. Not an art inducing activity. Somehow though Lynn pulled through and kept up with her post cards.

Since this week I have been trying to make myself sit down to draw a card after a crazy month, reading this is a good reminder to me that I should not wait for a great source of inspiration. Taking a pause and letting ones mind wander - at last - is likely to be all I can manage and is luckily all that I should need.

Flying through time

This blog is getting loopy in very fun ways. A year ago, I blogged about a cut paper postcard I made the year before, reflecting that I would have liked to do something similar but to then lay the cut paper on photo paper to create a cyanotype. A few weeks later, I got this card from Lynn showing me she had tried my idea out. It worked!

In other words this blog post was two years in the making in that it is about a card that was inspired by a blog post that was inspired by a postcard made two years ago...

Africa

So this card is of an African image.  Jessica drew it while talking with a friend on Skype, pretty impressive that she did this great drawing at half attention.  Its so detailed the way she's layered the colors!

She wrote on the back, comparing her ideas of West Africa before getting there to the life she'd experienced since arriving.  She had some different ideas than what she ended up seeing.  It was so interesting to me that this was the card I am posting about having just come home from my own Africa experience.  Having just come back from Tanzania I find myself thinking about the same thing.  Tanzania is full of wonderful people, nature, and overall spirit but lacks infrastructure that makes life easier.  People seem to spend so much time doing the basic tasks of survival even in big cities. I know Jessica has a lot of great work going on with her organization and its great to see how she's meeting a true need!

Rothko and Yoga

Jessica was inspired by those two things to draw this illustration with a nice color combo!  She asked me how things were wrapping up with school, remember she was hyper and giddy as a child and wishing me and the teachers luck as we corraled the kiddos for the last few weeks of June.  She was just getting back from vacation, or maybe still thinking about one from a few weeks back, while I was starting out my summer break.  I think the restorative theme of this card was good for both of us!