The Gift of "Having to make do."

Christmas 1994.  

I had no money.  Seriously.  I was checking the couch cushions for lost change.  I looked through the closet to see if there was any money hiding in my raincoat pockets.  I was behind on the rent.  I was scared.

This was my life.  I was newly divorced.  My daughter and I had survived the Northridge Earthquake and we left Los Angeles with basically the clothes on our backs and moved back home to Connecticut where I could look after my mother.  I was a single parent, teaching adjunct classes at Fairfield University and living on a shoestring.  

I've never had the money to buy Christmas cards.  And this lack created the necessity to make my own.  This is how I created my collage card.  The background is from a picture of the night sky I took from an old magazine I found in a doctor's office.  The little gifts were also cut out--from another magazine.  And then the photograph of my daughter is from a Polaroid I took of her in Los Angeles, before our big move back East.

I'm not saying it's the most incredible card in the world, but I just found it recently and you know what--I do think it's the most incredible card in the world.  It's interesting how the patina of age makes ordinary things extraordinary.

I also think that in our digital age we find real life, slightly rough around the edges artifacts to be more and more appealing because they are so very human.  So real.

And this brings me to my creative prompt:  Make a collage.  Take three things that don't belong together and then put them together.  Make this easy.  Have fun.  Don't judge it, just enjoy it.  And finally, I'd like you to put your collage away for at least a year.  Let time age it and bring a certain magic along the way.

And if you need a creative prompt:  Here's a word: "gift."  

Have fun!

Love,

Jamie