Out of my Gourd

I'm sitting here on November 2nd, listening to the dreaded "mainstream media",  anxious for the election to be over!  I can barely stand to go on Facebook lately, with all the intense political commentary and, frankly, propaganda (both sides).  Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, of course, and even entitled to try and sway others to their side, but when it gets so ugly and relentless, it drives me nuts.  So, as a little diversion, a collage challenge was in order:

Out of My Gourd

It's been nice to escape to my little world of cutting-and-pasting, participating in Mary Green's collage challenge for November.  She generously gathered this trio of autumnal images for us to work with:

and I did a little stack-em-up interpretation, and also figured out how to do a color gradation in Photoshop (waaay easier than I thought!).  I've been trying to used these monthly exercises to go a few baby steps further with my very minimal knowledge of Photoshop--that way I don't feel so guilty about spending time on this unnecessary stuff instead of the necessary stuff I should be doing.

The stuff I should be doing is getting projects finished for our fourth annual Holiday Boutique, which is in two weeks.  Gulp.  Our humble little sale, at my friend Chris's house, has grown each year and we are looking forward to a pretty huge turnout this year.  It's always a lot of stress, but the fun outweighs it by a ton, and it is great to see old friends who stop by.  By the way, I did NOT get accepted into the big Portland craft show ("Crafty Wonderland") that I wrote about a few posts ago.  It was both disappointing (boohoo: rejection) and also a giant relief (we have a dang holiday boutique to put together!)--a real mixed bag of emotion.  But throngs of vendors applied (Portland is very crafty!), and they ended up with a glut of jewelry people (my primary offering was my soldered shadowbox pendants), and I was put on a waiting list.  Like I always say (too often, it seems), it keeps me humble.

Go Obama!