About.me–a one-stop portal!

As a BzzAgent, I had the opportunity to sign up for About.me, which is a site that allows me to create a digital “calling card” that links up all of my online media. What’s cool about About.me is that not only is it easy to use, but it provides one, graphically-pleasing platform for my internet presence. Through BzzAgent, I received an offer to score 50 business cards from About.me as well, which I will redeem once I format my About.me site in the way I want.

About.me is very easy to use; its simple and interactive design interface allowed me to choose a variety of color schemes, opacity for text boxes, an original background image, and more. I chose to use a background design that About.me shares with the public so that I could advertise my online Avon store. At any time, I can upload an image of my choice to further personalize my page.

I like the feature at the top of About.me that allows me to browse different users’ profiles. There are so many different people using this service–some, like me, who are advertising a business, and others, who use it as a portal to their other online media. I was inspired to design my own About.me after spending some time reviewing other user’s pages–clearly, there is a need for a “one-portal” concept to link up one’s internet presence. On my About.me page, I linked my facebook, twitter, this blog, and my Avon online store page. If I direct people to my About.me link, it’s easy for them to navigate these links from one place.

About.me currently has an email feature as well–I claimed my email name and now I can get free email through the site. It’s another way to drive my potential Avon customers to my facebook business page as well as my Avon online store. I appreciate the opportunity to receive and send mail through the About.me site! I don’t need to rely on personal email accounts; About.me seems to have all avenues covered!

I would recommend About.me to anyone who wants some internet visibility and a place to organize one’s internet life. With an intuitive set-up, About.me doesn’t require that you be a computer programmer to set up your internet “calling card.” You can create a pleasing, clean, and interesting site in minutes–and you can track its traffic through the About.me site stats. Very cool! I’ll keep you posted to see how my About.me is helping me stay organized while also promoting my Avon business!

Here is the link to my About.me page: http://about.me/mrs.morris

Thanks, BzzAgent! 🙂

 

Loving the Mixed-Media Collage

There is something about cutting paper that is so relaxing. I could spend a huge chunk of time just sitting and cutting out paper detailing for collage work. It’s so funny how I’ve moved into a visual art/ more tactile artistic direction than my writing, which I never expected. It’s just that I’m really enjoying the immediate sense of creating something without worrying about a lot of rules. Working with the altered books I started is so freeing and it’s helping me see things differently around me, like dragonflies and tiny shards of rocks, and my toddler’s bright smile. I get so mired down in the day-to-day @ my teaching job that I forget how to live an artistic, creative life. And that’s what I really want–an “artful” life, oh–and a house at the beach. I want to live there all summer. That’s my total dream–just living near the water, wandering around in the sun, and making art all summer with my family. That would be total and complete sanity and happiness for me. Until then, I want to keep up this momentum & stop putting my art and writing aside. My husband is inspiring me with his blogging–http://elvisdo.wordpress.com  He’s an amazing artist but he’s embracing the writer part of himself. I want to work with that and embrace myself as a “mixed-media” artist. Who cares if I can’t draw? LOL. My new goals are to learn how to sew, and to learn better Photoshop skills. I am itching to make digital collage, too.

So here are some pics of my book(s) in progress…the splatter page was painted by a student of mine in the art/ writing class I finished teaching last week.

...tempura and acrylic paints.

Fiddling with acrylics and festive images.

I put a little folklore rhyme about gypsies in there...

 

Back to Work

So I took a random summer job this year, teaching altered book arts to campers in 4th-8th grade. I say random because I never expected to be teaching little kids (I work with high school students) or working for a Gifted and Talented camp. Yet I have full control over my class, and it’s only for three weeks, which is nice. I’ll have three weeks before the summer ends and I have to re-enter the doldrums of public school education.

Since I’ve started working with the campers, I’m designing two altered books of my own–kind of in tandem with the kids. I have this really strong impetus to keep working, to write, to collage. There is something so satisfying about cutting paper, mounting images, and fiddling with media. I am currently loving my acrylic paints, Sharpie pens, my bone folder, and oil pastels.

I now need to learn how to photograph my work so that it’s not so blurry and crazy. I should perhaps read the manual that came with my camera, so that I can try more manual settings rather than the auto settings. It would also help if my hands didn’t shake so much.

Here are a few images of my early work from this summer. I will photograph the rest as I go. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a decent scanner/ printer so that I can scan in my work instead of taking shat photographs of it.

 

Sand between the Toes

The summer has been difficult with all of our money troubles here @ home, but we did get the chance to travel a bit to the beach. Timothy was nearly nine months-old and he was so curious about everything. Loud noises, like the ocean, though, made him nervous. He didn’t mind the sand so much–and there’s something wonderful about babies at the beach, even though it’s an enormous pain in the booty to bring a baby there. You haul all of the paraphernalia up to the ocean, and he only wants to stay for ten minutes. We got about an hour of time seaside before he got fussy. I had one swim in some really rough water. The riptide was exceptionally strong that day; I wished my older son, Matt, had tagged along because I feel safer swimming with him nearby. I guess because I didn’t get to swim that much, I am missing the beach now more than ever. I just feel more like myself near the ocean. Everything in me gets very centered. It’s my dream to have a beach house to live in for the whole summer. Matt and I would be so happy there, and CJ would too because–growing up in Vancouver–the ocean is a part of him as well. We are in financial chaos so even considering a home there is futile for now. Hope we win the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes! 🙂

 

Watermelon–Poetry.com 20-word challenge

she pushes

a mouthful of watermelon

into her laughing jaws

the delicious cold penetrates

like novocaine

 

Cobwebs

Mama would brush her daughter’s tendrils
as if she could fingerpaint the past away,
and her toddler would chocolate-smile and lick the brownie batter
while Mama’s haunted eyes never completely refocused.

************

This is inspired by the 4-line challenge hosted by The Arcanum Cafe (link below). In this exercise, poets must write only FOUR lines based upon a one-word prompt. In this case, the prompt is “cobwebs.”

 

Bind Us Together–Acrostic Poem

Before leaving for work
I glance back at the bed–
Not too subtle, but you are asleep,
Dreaming of what, I can only imagine.

Under the covers, your form a smooth topography–
So tempting to rejoin you

There. Warm sheets, my lips pressed
On your shoulder like a just-licked postage stamp,
Greedy for more of your touch,
Eager to hear one of your sleepy sighs.
Tousled black hair, a shadowy corona encircling your
Head—I can feel its seductive softness
Even now, poised on the morning’s edge–I smile, and
Remember.

 

Underworld

 

He fed me pomegranate seeds
one by one; I felt the rubies burst
on my tongue–now I’m tethered here,
living a half-life, shrouded in darkness.

****************

Poor Persephone, tricked into living with Hades for half of every year. I wrote this small poem in response to the Exercises and Challenges bulletin board posted on http://www.arcanumcafe.com

There, writers post a four-line poem that is inspired by one word left in a previous bulletin board post. I used the word “Underworld.”

 

Rituals

She watches her lover sip the witches’ brew
with disgust, his familiar form silhouetted by the evening’s blue cloak.

Many twilights are spent the same way–
listening to the koi swish beneath the pond’s
mirrored-glass surface, time passing with each pucker
of their orange-black lips. Her fish friends speak a foreign language;

she believes that they murmur secrets about escape–

help trapped within bubbles that rise to the surface.
She leans in closer to capture the mysteries
and drown out the icy tinkle in his nearby glass
as he brings it to his lips, lost in his own rituals.

*******

This was in response to a writer’s block challenge, for which you have to write a poem based upon words listed by a previous writer. The words I got–disgust, blue, many, glass, time, friends, help. Why don’t you give a poem a try using the same words?

 

Leather–acrostic poem

Love, with you, has never been
Expected. A faceted jewel nestled in a secret box,
A star that streaks across the evening sky, your eyes
Transforming from cocoa to caramel when the sun
Hits the irises. Love watercolors our world and allows the light
Entrance into hidden niches. Our Eden before the Fall,
Resilient and eternal.

…it’s my three-year wedding anniversary, and the theme is “leather.” Hence the title 🙂