(vintage escutcheon, sea shell, chalk, base of vintage tin soldier, vintage button, linen thread, assorted papers, paint)
Sneak peeks on Instagram and Twitter
have already revealed to some of you that this year I'm going to be very traditional - my (entirely unrelated to all things Christmas) advent calendar is matchbox-size again! As time has passed I've slightly deviated from my original plan (circa 2008) to make these boxes out of things within arm's reach and without purchasing any supplies. I'd still say 95% of the material is leftovers from other projects, or junk found, collected or received from thoughtful parents, relatives and friends, and the 5% was definitely purchased for some other purpose I've long forgotten. My material stash has grown so much there's very little within arm's reach anymore, except in late November, early December, when my workspace turns into a massive mound of matchbox-size scraps and findings, and you have very poor chances to cross the room without stepping on the artist's equivalent for a lego.
I was already certain I'd have to skip this year's calendar because my wrists kept getting worse and worse, but a few weeks ago a chiropractor fixed my hands to better than nearly ever condition and I'm able to do pretty much anything at the moment. My wrists were considered unfixable by anything but surgery for many, many years, until this one bright young man said there's basically nothing wrong with my wrists and started putting my spine back in order. Now there's actually a bloodflow in my fingers and all sorts of nice things happening. There's a lot of work ahead of me if I want to keep my wrists from hurting again (and I do!), but at least I'm avoiding a surgery that wouldn't have fixed my problem in the first place. A really, really lovely turn in a long and painful story. And I hope I can wave goodbye to tenosynovitis for a while, and if not, maybe I could meet that jerk only once a year instead of thrice a year.
If you're just finding your way here, you could have a browse in the archives to see my previous advent calendars:
2014 - larger mixed media boxes
2013 - blog fail, no calendar here, butI made a lovely one for my V
2009 - no group photo, but two extra boxes due to the fact I began on the first advent instead of December first. Some of my personal favourites were made in 2009, so it's worth a look, too.
I hope to see you a lot these coming weeks (like, for example, here - with a new post every day at 9:00 GMT+2, or later in the day on Twitter or Instagram)!