Jump

I can't stand waiting to finish my cards for Mystic Paper before I reveal the first part of my DT assignment.  I'm really excited to share this french hanger project with you all.  It took me a couple days of obsessing over the beautiful paper to come up with the "Garden Gnome" idea.

My parents have a camper van (lovingly named "VanGo") they use to travel all over Arizona and other states and enjoy the wilderness, each other, and pre-retirement. One summer they traveled around with a ceramic "traveling" gnome. The whole thing had the feel of an inside joke, but that's mom and dad, incredible senses of humor.  The theme of my project finally became clear when I found the photo.

The precious baby is my dear aunt Amy at 6 months. My dad's youngest sister died about 3 years ago after only 42 years of life. When I get this back from Mystic I am giving it to my daddy. He is quite the gardener actually and I hope he loves this piece which commemorates aunt Amy's sprite-lyness and connection with nature.

 

I'm amazed when inspiration hits. The "ah ha" moment. Lightening shock. Like, "By George, I've got it!" And a little bit of pride for what my brain has envisioned.  It's a feeling always followed by an intense desire to create; to pull the vision from the dancing images and then to hope. To hope that when I manipulate the raw materials, the finished project will even fractionally live up to the dream. It's exciting.  Like leaping off a cliff into glossy water.  Whether or not the vision was everything I wanted, at least I jumped.