Let A Little Hope In

It's dark and rainy in Portland, Oregon today and if you watched the news, looked at the paper, (or even outside) you might be feeling pretty blue. Dark, depressing news seems to be everywhere. And it's always changing. At first it's the economy, lost jobs, music and art teachers getting cut, food boxes, etc, etc...and now...swine flu. Seriously. enough.

So, I'm sticking my nose up at all the down and depressing news and am going to spend my day in the land of happiness, hope, and bright colors! If you see me today, I may just blind you with obnoxious colors just to get a jolt outta life! But I'm just done with all this depressing talk right now. We have lives to live dammit!

So, on to that. The first image above all this whining is a new Encaustic collage painting that I actually worked on during a class I taught this past weekend at Collage and DIY Lounge! I always get so energized and inspired by my students, that I try to sneak in a little fun play while they are happily creating. I just posted this piece to my Etsy store yesterday so I can share it with someone else in the world!

Since I don't think I'm going out walking today in the rain, I wanted to share my silly missing letter signs from North Portland. The first image has been missing letters for years. It is technically "fabric world", but with all the missing bits of letters on that sign, it is loving referred to as "f'bic vod". I went there once to get some batting and the "A" was dangling precariously from above and I stood there and just prayed that it would fall into my hands to keep and lovingly display in my home. But no. Oh well.
The "Twilight Room" is a local establishment and popular college bar, and only recently lost an "o". They serve amazingly good patty melts here and I once scared an entire karaoke bar full of people here when I sang "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane (these were all country song folks) and I don't think anyone recognized it.

I hope, wherever you are, you can find a bit of sunny, happy, even obnoxiously fun, bit of hope out there today. Grab it. Hang on to it. Decorate it with glitter and stickers and wear it on your sleeve proudly. We're going to be positive, hopeful, happy people. And that's that!