February...or that shortest longest month

This February was a long month for me. It was a month of waiting. Would I get into that midwestern school and at long last start the course towards my PhD?

(Spoiler alert: I did not.) (Which made me all the more grateful for this project.)

I think I have to blame Lilly for this one: she is all about creating projects, often during Lent. Since this month would be a time of waiting, a time of hoping, I decided I needed a project. Something tangible. I love making collages and I had been making them more often since I realized making them was something I used to love doing. So my assignment, should I accept it, was this: to make a collage every morning for the month of February. I could only use new magazine clippings, since part of this project was reducing my stash of magazines. As I read the book Yarn Harlot, I realize all crafters have our stashes. There ARE some magazines I will never cut up. But then there are the magazines that I buy willy nilly, with the sole purpose of cutting them into these:

(Yes, this is the product of my month of collages.) I started February 2nd, but since this was a leap year, I would still have 28 collages at the end of the month, whether I got into grad school or not.

Collages may not be your thing. Find something that is. But make it manageable, and preferably tangible. One poem per day. One blog post per day. The key is to set a short time period. Few of us can make a collage every morning until the end of time. But the discipline of one a day, for a short period, helps the focus, helps with the desert, helps with the waiting for what may come.

Here are a few of my favorites: 

 not officially part of the set, but a precurser that inspired the project

 First one.

 (detail)

 I made use of strips of color, like the aquamarine from a Tiffany ad on the right edge of this collage.

 (detail) I liked using words like stitches to "mend" a seam.

 Did this one on the day I woke up to the news that Whitney Houston had died.

 an early one, with spinning thoughts in my head concerning my new relationship.

 Left side: diptych

 Right side: diptych

I did a few with Emma Stone as the "face"/background.

And on the back, I journaled a little, either about my feelings, or about the collage, or both. It was a great exercise in craft, because I wasn't making these as art pieces, they were for my own consumption. They taught me a lot about making collages, as I had to create daily. Best of all, in the deep of a Pittsburgh winter, this project got me out of bed every morning. And, that, my friends, is worth a lot.