One of my newest creative projects has been shadowbox making.
I knew I wanted to make some as Christmas gifts, and I had already had this idea (and had pinned a whole bunch of inspiration onto a secret Pinterest board!) before we went on vacation.
I also knew that vacation would be a perfect time to collect some items; down by the coast there’s plenty of lovely pieces of nature, and of course the cherry on top is that much of it came from some of our favorite places.
Halloween…?
Ahh yes, the holiday that people try to tell me I must celebrate before I’m allowed to put up my Christmas lights.
What a ridiculous notion 🤭
the true Halloween magic is that my camera placement was so perfect that you cannot see the piles of junk just over the stonewall in the neighbors’ yard *chef’s kiss*
Usually while I eat breakfast I like to scroll through the daily news articles, because there’s always something interesting mixed into the boring stuff. A new fossil discovered? An octopus that’s been recorded punching fish? Red carpet photos from an award show that I didn’t know was going on? All good things to read, look at, watch, and (when it comes to fashion) judge while I eat my homemade sourdough bread, and start my day.
But lately almost every article has been political, with a certain orange-faced idiot and his moronic toadies plastered across all the news story.
As expected, it’s all been not only depressing and scary (exciting news: it’s almost time to try to enroll in healthcare that I’ll probably be denied! 🥂), it’s also been so blatantly and disgustingly hypocritical that it just about makes my blood boil.
As you can imagine: not a great way to start my day. So I decided to take a little break from the daily onslaught of terrible news, and take that time to get back to my Pinterest scrolling instead. After all, tis the season for new inspiration and creativity 🍂
No one can stop me from getting excited about making Christmas ornaments.
my Pinterest feed has been full of vintage-autumn photography vibes, and when I saw the yellow maple leaves falling, I knew I had to get out for a morning photoshoot
Last year I was given a pile of old gardening magazines; I didn’t have a plan for what I’d do with them, but I held onto them because I just had a feeling that they’d come in handy at some point.
It took a while, but I was right.
believe it or not, these millions of scraps of paper were somewhat organized
It finally happened: I painted my deer skull, and ‼spoiler alert‼ it came out better than I imagined it would.
I’ve been talking about this project for a hot minute, but it was just too much for me to seriously think about for a while. I was scared to jump into it prematurely and ruin it (it’s not like I have an unlimited amount of skulls here — all of mine are very special and meaningful to me).
the gold detailing really brought the project to life
art by jordan rae 