I rue the day I put away Christmas decorations. It has got to be one of my least favorite days ever. Finding all the right boxes, trailing glitter everywhere, stuffing garland and lights back into their homes for the next 10 months makes me incredibly cranky. I just wish I could wave I wand and have Christmas pack itself up.

I suppose this is just one of those adult things I’ll need to get used to.

I took a break after shattering an ornament and I decided to spend a little bit of time sketching (and hopefully forget about the massive trail of pine needles that I’d need to vacuum up shortly thereafter).

The box of pinecones was at my feet (I put pinecones EVERYWHERE during the holidays) so I pulled a few out and played a few contour drawings, and few blind drawings and then finally tried to organize a decent composition.

I’m happy with the turnout, but also acutely aware of the pine needle problem. I hope everyone’s holiday undecorating is going smoothly — I’m off to vacuum!

It warmed up a tad this week. And so thoughts of spring crept into my sketching

This drawing was a lot of fun to work on. Weaving branches, grass and leaves into a circular pattern was incredibly meditative and I very quickly lost track of the time and kept drawing right through dinner.

Whoops

I pulled out my old rock collection yesterday.

Most of the rocks were found during weekend hikes up in Michigan, with the majority of their original homes lost in the sea of memory. There are a few stones however that I will never forget picking up.

…a chipped shale shard in parking lot under the Skylon tower, a perfect 50/50 gray stone found in the street trying to cross to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (in hindsight, I should have focused on crossing the huge street and not trying to get the rock!) a pink granite from the Flatirons in Boulder, a small mottled rock from my grandparent’s old house…

As I held each one, I was brought back to the memory of finding it and soon the hours I had planned to dedicate to reorganizing my closet were lost in fond remembrance. Oops. I guess there’s always tomorrow for closet cleaning.
Early this morning I started drawing a few similar geometric forms and decided to design a new set of blank cards from some of my sketches. Luckily, I had a stack of cards and envelopes that has been begging for a design for months, so I decided to create a few runs of the gemstone cards.

I am quite pleased with how they turned out and am excited to use them to send out notes to our friends and family!

I put up a few extra packs for sale on Etsy as too, maybe someone else can get some use of them as well Click here to check them out at my shop!