A Bed of Roses. Collage.

New Year’s Eve will be lit by a Blue Moon and the moonlight will welcome the new year, 2010. Obviously, this only happens once in a blue moon!

As I prepared my dreamboard for the Full Moon Circle, I thought a lot about this. The Blue Moon shining as fireworks go off and the new year rings in. The passage between the first and second decade of this century.

Then I thought about the word I’ve chosen to guide me through the New Year. My word is “ease”. I thought of clouds and minimalism. But in the end my research of the word and its origin lead me to the synonym “bed of roses”, and that was irresistible! So here it is, passionate, romantic ease!

Tags: collage, dreamboard, dreams, ease, full moon, making wishes, vintage

Dreamboard. Full Harvest Moon. October 2009.

A Dreamboard for the Full Harvest Moon. Layers of transformation, expanding creative expressions, painting, photography, writing, type… The past, the present. And finding a focus for the future.

I was standing in the museum of a castle ruin, reading fascinating (no I’m not being sarcastic) and informative text on those typical museum boards, when suddenly the graffiti on the wall behind the board caught my attention. Or rather came forward to me, like a wave of text, like light, layers and layers of graffiti carved onto the stone wall. And I started to photograph the graffiti, going from room to room, floor to floor, captivated by it, following its light, and forgetting everything else… The earliest date I found was 1609, and the most recent was 2009. It was like a living memorial to all those people. I imagined each person writing their name on the wall, carving glorious moments of stolen kisses, or writing a “here I am, I exist” in the middle of an everyday experience… I wondered if people ever recalled, later on, the moment when they crafted that graffiti…

When I returned from my journey to Öland, my best friend wanted to see my photos from my trip, but I mostly have loads of photos of this graffiti from the castle… One of the images, the one below, was the starting point for this collage, and was meant to be the focal point, and yet it didn’t make it in! Somehow it just got to be too much.

Here is a desktop wallpaper and an October desktop calendar version of my Harvest Moon dreamscape.

Centuries of layered graffiti on the wall of a castle ruin.

Tags: collage, creative process, Creativity, dreamboard, dreams, fonts, full moon, grafitti, handwriting, history, layers, letters, making wishes, orange, Photography, purple, vintage, watercolours

October. Russet, plum, dark brown, rust, gold, purple and green. Mushrooms. Candied apples. Figs. Pumpkins. Roasted chestnuts. Halloween. And as I walk down the road, a scattering of acorns, pine cones and oak leaves.

I’ve been working on this image, inspired by my trip to Öland and the graffiti in a medieval castle. Creating a dreamscape in a whole different format when I realised it would work as a desktop wallpaper too, so I adapted the montage with its layers of writing and watercolours to desktop sizes and also made a desktop calendar version for October. This download contains fullscreen, widescreen and iPhone versions, with and without the calendar. Montage wallpaper works very well with the collection of Purple Luminous Folder Icons, the Orange and Pink Folder Icons.

Save this wallpaper to your computer.

Tags: collage, desktop calendar, desktop wallpaper, fonts, grafitti, history, layers, letters, orange, Photography, purple, vintage, watercolours