Tag: boxes

All that glitters…

One thing about a house where a lot of crafting happens: There’s always some glitter somewhere. I’ll see it on Guinness’s nose, Margot’s paw. There’ll be some on Tom’s shirt or my cheeks. It’s never really gone, even if I haven’t used glitter for months, because whenever I pull paints and canvases or fabrics out, there will always be a bit of glitter clinging to them, too.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that right now, Tom and I keep finding magnetic words in odd places. He found a word on the living room floor. I found one in the bathroom sink. And yesterday, when I turned my silver Magnetic Poetry box around on my desk, I was reminded that someone I love has a free spirit and can NOT be boxed in.

Magnetic Poetry 365:1

From 1998 to 2004, I’d occasionally pull a handful of magnetic words from my silver poetry box or this refrigerator magnet game, and a few friends and I would each write poems using those words. We could use as many or as few of the words as we wanted, but we couldn’t add any words. I kept the poems in this journal; I don’t know how brilliant the poems are, but I do know that there are occasional word combinations that evoke vivid imagery or would make excellent titles for stories or songs.

In 2010, I wrote almost nothing beyond what’s in my LiveJournal. I did a lot of other creative things–designing, painting, sketching, sewing–but I’m a writer, and I miss putting words together, playing with them, creating with them.

Inspired by artist Gilbert Ruiz’s Draw365 and Austin Kleon’s Newspaper Blackout Poetry, I’ve decided to pull words every day for a year and create a poem from them. Good, bad, boring–doesn’t matter. I just need to start using my writing cells again. And if you’ve a mind to, feel free to use the words I pull to create your own poems.

see ya soon…

David has hit the road again on his Cross Country Dog in a Box Tour. I was able to get a fairly decent shot of Friday’s goodbye:

It was a great visit that I enjoyed so much. I still wish Debby could have been here, too. Next time, maybe.

Saturday is John Lennon’s birthday, which has me thinking of my late friend Riley. I wish he could see the Google Doodle video.

It’s been a week already!

My favorite interchange of the last week (a nod to our friend James), as I thanked Tim for bringing me the Honda emblem that he spotted lying on the ground after the wreck:

Tim: Will next be seen in a shadowbox.

Me: With a poem written about it.

On Saturday, Tom and I went to the repair lot to empty out Jet after he was officially declared totaled. Of course, I took photos. I also thanked Jet for taking such a hit–he was a lot more damaged than I’d understood him to be–yet still protecting his three precious passengers.

I want to thank everyone who’s sent e-mails, called, Tweeted, or checked in on Facebook. Tim and I opted not to give details and to keep our comments closed on LJ because other vehicles/property/people are involved. You never want to put anything on the Internet that could be misconstrued.

Something that made me laugh: A couple of years ago, I noticed that Jet had lost a reflector from his bumper. When I took him in for his regular servicing, I asked the dealer to replace it. Now anyone with sense knows this is a bad idea, right? Because a part that costs less than ten dollars will run you about the equivalent of two tanks of gas if you let the dealer put it on. Boy, was I bitter.

So when Tom took me to the scene of the accident on Saturday and I spied THIS in the gutter, I was all MINE!

It’ll add color to that shadowbox.

Hump Day Happy


One of my new favorite places at The Compound: Tucked into a corner of the window seat, this box holds watercolors; charcoal, colored, and graphite pencils; sketch pads; angel books for coloring–one crafting location for those hanging out with us to get happy by indulging their creativity. If you want some happiness, too, please comment with a page number between between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25, and I’ll give you the answer from the happiness book.

My retail moment

Sunday afternoon I went to my neighborhood Borders to pick up a book for a toddler I know. I was passing a display on my way to the stairs when a Beatles Trivial Pursuit game caught my eye. Beatles! I would be so lousy at that, even though I used to be great at Trivial Pursuit.

But I digress. Next to that board game was another one:

I took the top one off the stack and turned over the box to read more about it. Just then, I was reminded of my days in retail when a twenty-something man walked by and barely stopped long enough to say, “That could be fun, right?” before he snatched the next one off the stack and headed down the stairs.

Ah, those last few days of frantic holiday shopping, frequently by desperate and clueless males. I’ve had a lot of fun imagining the facial expressions of his possible recipients when they open their gift.

Hump Day Happy

People send me dolls.

That should be read as a statement of fact, not as if I’d written the command, “People, send me dolls!” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As I’ve explained before, many of my dolls are gifts. Whether they’re beloved dolls from a person’s collection that she (or he) donates to me so that I can include them in Beck’s Museum of Dolls, Dolls, Dolls in the Attic!, or dolls that people find discounted or for sale in a thrift store or online, my doll population grows. I’m not complaining about that AT ALL. I love them, from the most battered, dog-gnawed Skipper to the priciest designer Barbie never removed from her box.

These two Birthstone Barbies are recent additions to the collection. Mattel used the Model Muse body for them, and in Becky World, that can mean only one thing–you’ll eventually be seeing them wearing my designs. As models, they get names. Since amethyst is my sister’s birthstone and aquamarine is mine, I decided they should have names that are meaningful to us (and likely to no one else). Thus the redhead with the amethysts is now “Katie” and the blonde with the aquamarines is “Dandy.”

Here’s another gorgeous beauty. With apologies to those of you who love your super heroes, I’m not acquainted with many details beyond those most commonly known. So I don’t have a lot of inside scoop on Dinah Drake or Dinah Laurel Lance, the mother and daughter whose alter egos have been the “Black Canary” dating from 1947. What I do know is that this is one sizzling Barbie, and she got even hotter when she borrowed Christina Aguilera’s shiny pants and teamed up with…


The Harley Barbies! These were provided by one of my favorite motorcyclists/writers, Linda Raven Moore, who wrote the wonderful A Little Twist of Texas (which I once reviewed here). For a while, the Harley Barbies were misplaced within the mysterious labyrinth of the postal system, but now they’re free to ride. Today they’re ready to wheel their way through the pages of the happiness book just for you. All you need to do is comment with a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25. Happy trails!