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The 2020 SAJ Calendar (rough draft) is HERE!
I know some of you still wait around for these. You are amazingly patient people and I love you. I hope you love this calendar!
Click here to download. (uploading to dropbox this year, crossing fingers it works)
If you know the drill, you know what to do. If you don’t here is a recap: This is the first draft so there might be errors as I hand-typeset this whole thing myself and I am NOT a perfectionist. Please let me know what you find (Get your red pens out, my editor perfectionist friends!) and I will fix and re-upload a new revised draft as soon as this vacationing body can muster.
Happy New Year Everybody! 2020 is going to roar!
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Let’s Make Matchbox Valentines!
Who wants to make teeny tiny fastidious little matchbox Valentines with tiny bits of paper and tape and glue, paint and and Mod Podge! I do! I do! Nobody else does but that’s why you come here, right? To imagine what it would be like and vicariously live through me. Well, guess what? I love tiny tedious projects like this. The more mess the better. And this one was a doozy.
First, I painted the boxes. It’s a bit of a sticky mess trying to paint them while holding the box with your fingers and getting the paint smudged by your fingers and all over yourself. Of course I should just paint one side at a time and wait for it to dry before moving onto the next but WHO DOES THAT? Not me. I just smudge my way forward.
Most people would cuss and get frustrated at this process but I don’t. It’s like getting on the same freeway and cussing out the traffic everyday. Why bother? It’s the same traffic everyday. Nothing changes? Why not just pop in a podcast, accept that you are going to be staring at break lights for the next hour and just chill? That’s my motto. Pop in a podcast and chill.
It does get easier the more you do it.
Not that I’m an expert at painting but I don’t get that frustrated anymore. I do think my painting skills or choice of paintbrushes needs some work.
After I painted the boxes completely (and let it dry) and then painted flowers and decorations on top of that, I printed out some fiddly little valentine illustrations and got to work cutting them out.
Why, yes, I am quite insane. I love to fiddle! Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. Sticky tape sticking everywhere and cutting it to small tiny pieces with my trust exacto knife! I need a new self-cutting mat. This one is well-used.
I second-guessed my color choices and didn’t cut everything out perfectly but that’s okay because I am NOT a perfectionist. Stick it and go with it!
I’m actually quite proud of these suckers. Now who to gift them to?
Leave a comment and I’ll pick five readers and send them out like old times via snail mail.
I can’t promise they’ll make it by Valentines’s Day but maybe you don’t mind. :)
