I am so tangled in the midst of spring and wanting to get outside and clear some invasives so that I can spread seed. I think I have to do this inside, too, clear the invasives and husks so I can plant with intention.

For now, I’ll share with you a Dream Journal and Graphite Drawn Cover tutorial we, @pegandawl finished Saturday, along with some of this week’s self portraits.

Today is Day 46 of The 100 Day Project! I am building tumult rather than settling into a rhythm. This was unexpected and I think I am bouncing about in pandemonium as a result.

We’ve had a few hot days in Pennsylvania. Snow next week. Today is overcast and cozy chilly. I’ve been a wild woman, mood-wise, unable to stabilize a drawing pattern. The 100 Day project has, for the last nine years, given me a ritual to delight in daily, to look forward to after a few days of figuring out the shape of it. Small steps everyday toward a project. A cohesive idea. My self-portraits have undone that pattern. They may also be undoing me.

Though I do love a good undoing.

The night of the full moon, feeling gloomy, I went out for a short moon sighting walk. I ended up — uncharacteristically, Gogol Bordello still playing from our after-dinner clean-up party — running two-miles in our hilly neighbourhood. I am not a runner. It was an astonishingly slow two miles. I returned home, positively drenched and buoyant. I resisted diving into the pond for all the goose shit and the internet haunts of ecoli and other sicknesses. Instead, I took a cold shower, began to draw the moonlight with me in it, day 39, and went to sleep.

Soon after, Pearl began to sweetly wail about a tummy ache. Reluctantly, I got up and accompanied her out into the balmy under-the-full-moon-well-lit night for the first of our bright night wanders and successful attempts to loosen stuck and smelly things.

When I heard Silas’s footsteps above me in the morning, I awoke, heavy with exhaustion, but with an appreciation for Pearl’s choice of such a weird and lovely night for the occasion.

I somnambulated through my morning. Breakfast for Silas. Drive to school. Morning pages. Morning drawing. Fifty push-ups.

I showed up exhausted to a late morning appointment with a trainer and a friend, delirious with laughter and my inability to function. New at this, we’ve not found our edge. I always feel like he can push us harder. Yesterday was the day. Whether because I was utterly energyless, or this was the day of excess, I don’t know. There was a lot of laughing and flopping about.

He had us do thirty deficit push-ups which I did just fine after my morning fifty. Unlike the chin-ups, and hamstring on-the-ball-thing. I told them two years ago I couldn’t do one. “It’s a long game,” he said, “and you have to keep doing it.”

I got to thinking about all the long games which seems like all I have these days. Dipping into these everythings smally, like journaling, push-ups, walks, drawing, ungardening, gardening, yoga, work, family, food, books, and how when I pause any of them, it is like I am starting over.

This is what is happening with my 100 Day project — it feels like a different kind of hard. Because I do not know what I am doing, each day is like Day 1. The self-portrait isn’t about getting my face right — it’s about learning, slowly and maybe defiantly, in

the mess and the moonlight, how to find myself in each day, a little changed.

This is the struggle I want. Even if what I bring publicly is raw and not ready to be shared. I’ve committed and so here I am — mess and all.

Like the multitude of sounds from a Victrola — not just the music, but the surface noise, the crickly-crackly needle drag, the silence it leaves us in when the music is over. Like the energizing effect of long-wave light from the sun on our mitochondria, whilst digging, hands in the dirt — ungardening. Like a photograph printed from a negative with the unspoken back story of hands in chemicals, silver splash, crudely cut tools dodging shadows, the smudge, the hunger of hours. The way raw milk cheese made in old wooden barrels creates a living ecosystem offering more protection, more resonance, and more weird.

The record, the light, the film, and the cheese all contain layers of information we are slowly beginning to understand. And yet we have replaced them with endlessness, fragmentation, jolting, — and worse, consistency.

The never silence.

In the old things, the same fullness remains. The life and wear and marks of hands and time on old tools and materials, give a restorative, accumulating vitality to a mark freshly made upon the page, to a book freshly bound. When I find a new-to-me tool or material or object, I invite it in to discover the marks it makes, and the place it holds in my world, upon my desk. This is how I find the magic in old things — the unexpected flutter.

The world is richer than our excessive and too tidy reproductions of it. Some things are long felt before they are understood.

I have so many stories of found things and their effects to tell. The ruling pen is an exciting one. I was introduced to them by Lisa Brown a few years ago during an excursion we made into the wilderness along with Dasha. (Thank you Lisa!)

We need to hold onto these things, and to share them. And to allow them to move through us, and loosen stuck things.

The irony here is that in trying to articulate this to share digitally, I didn’t make any good marks yesterday. My time was spent in the telling, in the adding to the endless excess. But here I am. And now I shall attempt to loosen a self portrait.

I did it! With yesterday’s unfinished thought added to today. Days 33 and 34 of #the100dayprojecy . Me twice. Like old images I used to make photographically, but this one, inadvertently shaped like an hourglass. Oh dear.

I am officially reading too many books at once.

Today is Day 17 of my Self Portrait project and it is snowing. Yesterday felt like summer and I went swimming after a long hike in our breath-constricting pond.

I am taking self portraits very much day by day, and it is interesting to see them coming together on Instagram visually, and otherwise more vaguely in different sketchbooks as I navigate my materials, skills (or lack of), and intention — which is simply getting to it.

Daily drawings produce some maybe embarrassing results (which I share) but in those

garbagy days lie the most growth, I think. It is a matter of endurance and patience which I am softening myself to with this project.

I made some process reels for Being Margaux Kent on Instagram!

I hope everyone who is partaking has found a kind of rhythm to their days. I haven’t, but I knew what I was getting into this year. All other years I began with a format that made daily-ing fairly simple. This year, each day requires thinking, which can be burdensome and bruising.

I found myself checking the clock today, which I never do in Leah’s yoga class. I realised, eventually, it was the silence. I’ve had inner chatter since the summer and the voices — my beloved and ungovernable companions — have suddenly gone silent. I’ve reached stillness and it doesn’t please me. Though I think I’ve arrived somehow, I feel more lost than ever.

It feels like losing someone and coming face to face with a stranger — myself. How telling, this being the beginning of 100 Days of Self Portraits. I am, in fact, looking for myself, but in the twistiness of this beginning, I’ve lost what little I thought I’d known, though I'm not sure it was ever really mine.

All of this experimentation and mark making is meaningful, and gives me the satisfaction of having accomplished something each day, but, as I wrote to myself today: “You will eventually have to connect the dots.” In a conversation with a friend, I wondered if sharing work online — even if to very few eyes — releases me from the deeper work of doing. I share a moment and poof! I am free and onto the next thing. If I hold back from sharing, I may lose the motivating deadline, but I’ll not be able to begin to connect the dots into a bigger project.

I never know what is true — one day this, the next, its inversion.

Already, I feel myself rushing to send this off. I’ll cringe later but done is done.

With that said, here are some of this week’s experiments:

Everything we do or everything we want to do must be kept up. This drawing of me is from a few years back. i tried something similar —I drew about ten or so — but this old one was the best. So here it is. Maybe not actually a cheat .

I started my morning reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and then scribbled in my journal. Though exhausted, I wrote something and went straight into this too‑quick sketch of it. Some days are speedier than others—and sometimes uglier—but today feels closer to something.⁠

From my journal:

I am wobbly this morning as I have been all week. The 100 Day project, I am sure, is part of my wobbling, along with this endless, wet winter. Usually I choose something easier:

1. A set of materials (that also look great in photographs!)
2. A small, mostly consistent scale or journal to work in
3. I draw or write something from my days which always reveal surprises!

This year:
1. I have no set materials
2. No fixed scale
3. Self-portrait is the only thing, and anything goes — it doesn’t even have to be me! But also it is me — for 100 days.

It is in this openness, this room without walls, that I wobble. I didn’t set out to torment myself. I intended this to be challenging and here I am. A rhythm must rise up. Something will shake out. I think of those antique brass stacking sieves that I always wanted for sifting dirt for paint and other treasures. I always expect magic in the ongoingness.

Today is Day 5. I made a Paper Doll Me in an Antique Brass Sieve Stack.⁠

For more on #the100dayproject, visit Substack!
⁠

I’ve not slept much since Christmas. Sometimes I wonder if I am seeing everything through the veil of someone desperately trying to remember. Have I been writing like this since the day I discovered I was switching “there” for “their”, “here” for “hear” in my journal? If so, I was in my twenties when that began. Flowers for Margaux.

Yesterday, after three days of allowing the cold and ice to keep me from walking, I ventured out to my most oft-entered stomping grounds. I had to put the Jeep into four-wheel drive to pull into the unplowed parking lot that was walled in with the street’s plowed snow, now ice. The paved path that I never prefer, was plowed. I began my walk on it, but I was cold and thinking only about where to put my hands to find warmth. The result: nowhere. I had walked a mile or so and no voices and magical thoughts wandered in and my fingers were numb. For a photograph, I decided to step off the path and break through the glistening icy surface. Stomp, stomp. The effort was instantly warming, so I continued. Normal walking broke the ice only occasionally, making me overly cautious. I had to step with effort. I stomped until I found the path along the river where pot sherds and glass fragments are always available for those looking, though I’d not look today. The trail was thin and iced over, revealing evidence of a walker or two, an excited dog skittering back and forth, and mountain bike tracks. On the path, my feet were like the metal ball in Bagatelle, navigating the nails for a path forward. When I grew weary, I’d sidestep and stomp a new path. Stomp, stomp. I liked the effort of it. The blood went straight to my ungloved fingers, warming them thoroughly. I unzipped my coat. I can only imagine how my brain would light up in a scan.

I’d ventured out to narrow down the too many ideas I have for my 100 Day Project this year. I don’t ever remember so much deliberation. In the past, an idea would appear and I’d accept. This is how it’s gone for the last eight years. Why is this year different? Perhaps I am taking myself too seriously. Or perhaps I need sleep.

Upon gathering photographs for this chaotic post, I came upon this photograph, and made my decision: 100 Days of Self Portraits, (loosely.) I’ll likely pair them with words as well.

We Find Ourselves Only By Looking Out at What Looks Back

(But don’t name a thing too tightly…)

This year’s ideas:

100 Days of Tiny Tins — 10 tins for 10 people each filled with 10 things. I’ve thought deeply on this one and love the energy of it, but the randomness and ten-ness feels less everyday-able. And I’ve already started, and have sent the tins out into the world. Perhaps this will always be a side project.

100 Days of Self Portraits — This thought arose as I was prompted to remember a project long ago abandoned. I’d use my old camera that Søren dug up and made me a strap for, alongside drawings, found things, and words. There is so much to uncover before I disappear.

100 Days of Mabel — a character in a picture book I’d love to bring to life.

100 Days of a drawing paired with words, templated

and this, added by Ashley in conversation yesterday:

100 Days of Pearl — “Imagine the openings and so many ideas on our list satisfied”, she said, and listed them: “Pearl Necklace, Oyster and Pearl Bags, Stationery” but these are Peg and Awl things and though tempting, the 100 Day Project is for me, Margaux. It is important for me to hold on to some part of myself alone.

100 Days of Bookbinding — I can imagine a wonderful old shelf filled with so many investigations of this beloved vessel, the book.

Past projects:

100 Days of Plants — I did this a few years. I drew plants from life and I learned so much and can probably benefit from this same prompt year after year.

100 Days of Flossie — another character from another picture book. So many abandoned projects, yet I accumulate so many fragments year after year.

100 Days of Left-Handed Journaling — This turned into one of my favourite projects for 3 years!

100 Days of Poems — I wrote a poem a day sent them in the mail to friends also partaking. This continued for 1.5 years!

100 Days of Tetra Pak Prints — last year’s adventure

Thank you for reading! And if you are partaking in , what have you decided and how did you come to the decision?

Is this cheating? Of course not, Margaux, keep looking for the stranger’s (stranger?) hand.

Here goes:

Nightwalk. I love a night walk year round. Walter and I walk at night a lot. But this was meant for a friend whom I’ve been begging for more Nightwalks with. Alas, the begging shall persist.

Some friends share such similar thoughts it can feel like an echo - sometimes comforting though of course not always. This is for the comforting echos.

Sometimes it is hard to be yourself or return to the weird from the days of old. Dancing in the rain is a way.

Books, oh.

Wherever and whenever Pearl, enchantment follows.

I don’t always or often love neat and tidy and I appreciate the menacing chaos of a storm.

No matter how little and how monstery the sleep, with the dawn comes peace.

I am thinking about making these into postcards — what do you think?

Sometimes I love just drawing things (and my favourite creature). Once the list is made, there is not much thinking. So often I beg for time to think — other times I want to just make marks with some parameters like: good light, a good pen, ink, a book and time!

I made a little gift guide of Things I Love a few years ago and reshared some of them recently. Here is a little sketchbook of some new Things I Love — but first — a video about one of the oft’ asked about treasures that I drew these objects with: An Antique Ruling Pen!

Will you make a Things I Love book?!

Tiny Tinned Treasres Co-creating Session with me and Helen Stark!

​After last year’s overwhelmingly positive response, Margaux and Helen are hosting their 2nd Tiny Tinned Treasures co-creating meet.

​Everyone can bring their own tiny tins (or other projects) and can tune in while we’re chatting. There will be a chance to share your projects during the 2nd half of the call.

​To celebrate the end of 2025, this call is free and will be limited, please join on a first-come-first-served basis.

When I began making books and things as a Little — I just made. I’d wake up early, as I do still, and make things. It was compulsive. It was every day. I used trash — boxes, mail, and scraps. And office supplies — pencils, highlighters, staples and a copy machine. I still have that compulsion. I still make everyday, but with the awareness of time and other’s eyes, and a loose goal like sharing publicly, here, on Thursdays. There was a time when I’d watch myself working from above. I don’t see that way now. Was that someone me, now? Me in the future? Where is that overseer?

I find someone to correspond with, but wonder if it is a vague conversation with myself.

Hello?

I have volumes of rambling that mark my days on this planet, but I am losing the thread of just making. Or I am wanting to find some other thread to pull on. Or I am wanting to complete A Thing Made with intention and finality.

I am nearing the end of the journal I made in July and contemplating a shape shift, or a size shift. Something to contain things differently. Something to nudge me into a different rhythm. To jostle me out of the familiar.

But my thoughts and days are fragmented, and I long for a stretch of time stuck in a middle place near water with limited access to this interworld overseer. But maybe not. As usual, I ramble, and wonder what I’ve become tangled in.

I’ve started a new thing.
And it is wobbly.
And it is tingly.

I’ve been swimming daily since our pond was reconfigured. The water this morning was a little cooler, and it took one lap extra to warm up. After that lap I felt the transformation of body and spirit from my perch on the rock. The muscles in my arms and back awakened, and already I am breathing better. But the pond isn’t big enough for me to get lost — and getting lost is how words flutter in. I’ve been without words mostly, and that is something other.

Mostly I’ve been swimming in darkness.

I promised to share some of my favourite art supplies this week and was quickly overwhelmed with which to share. I’ll start with journaling because I only need a few treasures. Of course the possibilities within are endless and depend on whether I am journaling at home or elsewhere.

The necessities: a journal, pen, and pencil.

Journal:

I make my own. I care about the paper and how the whole book looks and feels. I usually carry a big one, sometimes a big and a small, and infrequently just a small.

2. (this two won’t delete — help!)
   

   
   Pen:
   Pen. Already. I love my perfect pen and it is hard to find. And I found another, just, and promptly lost it. So I share these notes with weight. I am an energetic human and yesterday I was positively whirling. I think I lost it on a hike so I must hurry today to return to the same trail with my eyes peeled. Ugh. Anyway, moving past this:
   

   • Rapidograph: My love. A vintage technical pen. I love the look and feel of the pen in my hands, and I love, love her thin line. I still have a stash but they are persnickety and with varying smoothness. My new one was perfect. Too perfect. The scritchy scratchy is the dream of dreams.

   • Dip, Ruling, and Glass Pens: I love these! I mostly use them at home or when I’m sitting for a while as they leave a thicker line and need drying time. And of course a bottle of ink. The dip pens are simple and have interchangeable nibs. The ruling pen line can be adjusted with a dial, and the glass pens in all their scritchy glory are a delight!

   • Fountain Pen: I don’t love most fountain pens; I find them thick and ugly (both line and object). But the TWSBI Eco has a thinnish, nice-sounding line. The pen is shockingly out of balance with the cap and there is a bright red end. But seeing the ink through the window is lovely — like putting goggles on in the pond and seeing the critters. It writes nicely and it won’t run off, I suspect.

   • Muji Pen: A good backup. I love the cloudy finish and the thin, thin 0.38 line. But it’s disposable, and sometimes they just stop working—I don’t know why.

   Pencil:
   I love having a pencil for sketching or for the moments when a pen isn’t right—which feels hazy now.

   • Vintage Pencils: Mostly. I love the way they look. Some are from Viarco - the fruity one was a vintage Viarco gift. Thank you Jose!

   • Ticonderoga Yellow Chubbies: My favorite. They’re for kindergarteners, which is funny. Big grip. The bigness puts the pencil in charge. And the soft lead. I take life into my own hands most days, but I LOVE being told what to do sometimes. Sometimes. The pencil guides me. I also love yoga for this—and being told to breathe.

   • Mechanical Pencils: I’ve been out of my mechanical pencil phase for a bit, but they’re nice—no eraser, no sharpener needed. Just extra lead. Don’t forget.
     
     And for the regular pencils:

   • Sharpeners: Brass sharpeners are great, and you can replace the blades.

   • Erasers: These are randos
     

   Adhesive. I used to carry a little bottle of bookbinding glue. Lately I’ve its just washi tape — why not?
   

I’ll try to embark on more next week, including what I carry it all in, which is my Sendak of course. And then maybe I’ll get back to journaling again.

Here is a little book I’ve started.

This morning, a lone Mourning Dove outside my studio door. I watch him peck. It is brighter this morning, still early, still quiet. Just me and the ‘Dove. I wonder where the others are. I’ve never followed the Mourning Doves as I do Toots and Yedda, the Canadian Goose couple who live on Pond Island here at the Five Acre Wood.

He was out early pecking. The Mourning Doves here huddle into a Japanese Snowball Tree just outside my door. There are three of these trees along the path up into the woodland. Every year I want to cut them down. I’ve already cut down so many of the intruders, like Burning Bush, Autumn Olive (I love the fruit and kept a few) Multi-Flora Rose, Japanese Honeysuckle, too many Barberries, Privit, Wysteria, Grape Vine, Mile-a-Minute, and others that were shrouding the hillside and tangling woodland when we moved here. But these three trees are home to so many Mourning Doves. When I walk on the path they flap out of the tree and fly circles above me, murmuring one thing or another. I appreciate the Mourning Doves togetherness, their mourning songs, their colour, and so I leave the trees.

And here we are, the beginning of an ungarder’s ramble.

I began my journey tending to the land here as neither gardener nor undardener. I began weary of city life without realising it. We bought our house and land with very little thought — one month and one day before the pandemic and moved out of Philadelphia a few days before Christmas, into the old house whose power had been turned off during temps that dropped below freezing. We huddled around the little gas fireplace and slept there, beaneath piles of 1980’s comforters our first night. This kind of stuff is what I call magic.

And too, Five acres!

My dad told me, when looking at the house with the realtor, “this is going to be a lot of work Margaux!” Having no idea what that meant exactly, I likely shrugged him off (sorry Pop!)

It is a lot of work, my dad wasn’t wrong. But what is work? I don’t know the answer to this either. I just know that when I don’t have the work (ie, this winter I was a lump) I wither. I need the work. I need the hill walks and stretches and movement. I need the sweating and the digging, the planting. I need a place to put my pirated plants, my traded plants, and my purchased plants. I need the mowing (I’ll explain.) I need movement to allow thoughts to flourish. This morning I wandered across the land, picking up fallen limbs and sticks along the way, to visit the places where I planted so many babies — bulbs, tubers, rootstock, corms, &c — I push the leaves away and find their green nubs (and sometimes yellow) stretttching out after this long, cold, winter. When you put your hands into the earth and soak your knees in mud and limbs in thorns and thistles and prickly stickly pokey things, you remember where everything is. Even with a bad memory.

Last year I bought and planted 1250 snowdrops. The year before I dug bunches up from the site where the snowdrops and winter aconite flourished for decades but were now being destroyed with concrete — another Wawa moving in. I snuck in with my shovel — and once with my dad who taught me this type of behavior when I was younger. We’d get tickets for the cheap seats and sneak up to the front for concerts with stories of misplaced tickets and a mother up there, see, “Hey Mom!” and I’d wave. I filled my truck with thousands of plants and planted them here. Thousands of plants don’t look like much on five acres though. Not yet anyway, even with my favourite math - snowdrop math. Every 1000 bulbs should be 3000 this year, right? The clumps are fuller and lovelier, but still, they are so petite these little flowers. And so many of the others I’ve planted, like Dutchman’s Breeches, Bloodroot, Twin Leaf, Trillium, and Trout Lily — to name a few — are so tiny. Carolina Spring Beauties, one of the few natives here when we moved in — cover the hillsides and the edges of the woodland. They are tiny too. Jack-in-the-Pulpit were here — then I added a few hundred more. And then I may have killed them all. Maybe not. I don’t know how to learn this. I think I did kill them. I mowed away so much Barberry that, having decades to thrive, stood taller than me. During this time they ensured the safety of so many white-footed-mice and their nest mates — the Deer Tick. Deer couldn’t navigate the barbs — neither could I prior to using the Brush Mower — first on loan from my friends at Refugia Design, then as a gift from Walter. The Barberry didn’t go down easy. It thrashed and slashed until my flesh was crisscrossed with welts and droplets of blood from it’s abundant thin barbs. In the end, its glorious yellow macerated guts and limbs were strewn and mulched upon the woodland floor. The following Spring, the Jack-in-the-Pulpits were abundant and I patted myself on the back for the good work! “Hooray!” But the next year, so few returned, and those that did looked frail. Instead of my favourite cloaked aliens, there stood an army of Garlic Mustard. I felt defeated and foolish. I could weep again writing about it. This reminds me of another story, me and a tree and a machete in Ecuador, but I’ll save that one for another day.

I rattle on. I am without a journal and must spend the rest of today making one. And then my next post may not be so long.

Two updates! Today is Day 10 of #the100dayproject . Yesterday I remembered that things get messy before they get good. This was/is comforting. These little prints are fun, but I have not been struck with anything magical yet. I remember the beginning of my poetry project, biking through trails in Cape Cod, a pause from a retreat, trying to scrape words together, failing and wondering why I was embarking on a poetry project at all. But still I wrote poems everyday for one and a half years.

I always know if I keep going something will rise up.

So here I am again with these tiny prints pressing on.

I made a short flip through of my first 10 days @beingmargauxkent on Instagram

The Rat Room, the Alien, + the Stone

Now that the concrete has cured, Walter has been tearing out the frankensteined plastic and plastered amalgum on walls and ceiling in The Rat Room. Yesterday he found The Stone that confirms my research - our house was built in the 1800s and not 1775 as declared in the listing. Wah. Just numbers anyway, but I love the idea older. Before this part of the world had the name: United States of America.

If the test is “close your eyes and imagine a white teapot” and you close your eyes and see what you always see when you close your eyes: an inky watercolour wash, but this time, a little white, a vague white, a barely grey even, a darker grey than white. If a whiter grey then black is vaguely there, but mostly because you are searching for it, then you have Aphantastia, then I have Aphantasia. ⁠
⁠
This new discovery has clarified so much for me!⁠
⁠
And now that I've drawn this cottontail bunny with no reference, (though I see so many cottontails daily) it is clear that I've also drawn a fox and a frog. Whom I also daily see.

July 31st 2022

ps: I love this creature and this is why I want to lean into this mind blindness of mine!

It is hard for me to evaluate myself, because I feel so solidly in 5 and I wonder if I’m just not doing it right. Perhaps in 100 days I’ll have something new to report. When I learned about Aphantasia through an article Katie sent me back in 2022 from the Wall Street Journal so much became clear to me, like getting lost, lying to people when they said, “can you picture it?” always needing something to be drawn, for example, Walter will say, “This is what I am thinking for this room…”, and I’ll say, “Can you draw it for me?” because without the drawing I get exhausted as I am lost immediately in the conversation because I can’t picture it. But I didn’t know this was a thing until the article, so I don’t know what I thought was happening.

My 8th Year Participating in #the100DayProject !

This is a round about beginning to an explanation of what I am doing for #the100dayproject this year, because on Day 1, I only knew I was making a little print every day for 100 days. I also knew the project would take shape once it began and it did! By Day 2 I realized that this project is about drawing with mind blindness, blankness, Aphantasia…

The day before, I bound a little book (I’ll share this process soon in Making Things!)

Day 1: Snowdrops

What I learned: You always return to presenting a project in book form first, and you will always add words and other things. This is what makes your work yours even when all else feels haphazard.

What else I learned: Return to this one. This is not what you want of your lines.

Day 2: Fox

What I learned: This isn’t a project about tiny prints - that’s the form. This is a project about memory and Aphantasia resulting from the fox that passed by my window. Thank you Fox!

What else I learned: I listened to #the100daypodcast with and Rukmini Padar for some inspiration and cut out a lot of blanks from Tetra Pak containers. I’ll need to do this again as it made for a pleasant night of mindless making and mindful listening.

Day 3: Hawk

What I learned: It is so hard to not cheat.

What else I learned: Katie Van Vliet commented on my Instagram post, that if I put the Tetra Pak face up and the paper on top I would get a deeper embossed edge. Magic! Thank you !

Day 4: White Oak Leaf

What I learned: Make 2 or 3 etchings a day. Repetition and practice are so necessary.

Day 5: Earth Worm

What I learned: Document what you are learning everyday, it changes, you will forget.

Tools of the Trade for Tiny Prints!

1. XS Printing Press from Open Press Porject

2. Antique Awl found at Flea Market (of course I’ll be collecting more old mark makers for at least 100 Days!)

3. Water vessel for soaking paper. This gorgeous little ceramic fish tin from Heirloom Home and Garden

4. Paper. I am using Arches Hot Press fitted in an old tin that I originally planned to present this work in.

5. Tetra Paks! I don’t buy much water but Flow’s Strawberry Rose is a nice double whammy. Mmmmm.

6. Messy stuff. I’ll use this for days - I am always a mess, especially when it comes to wasteful materials that I use and reuse. It is truly part of my joy and the final results. My longest 100 Day Project was 3 years and I called it Smudge!

7. Ink. I started with the gouache because I had it. Not ideal, but it does work and the tube is delicious. I bought the Speedball Ink because it was convenient at the craft store but the big plastic tube is an eye sore so I will replace it. Don’t judge.

Tools and Materials for my 2025 100 Day Project:

1. Handmade Journal

2. Washi Tape + dispenser for teeth marks

3. Wax paper envelope for each day’s prints and Tetra Pak etching, labeled

4. Ruling Pen and Brush Rest (because I just made the brush rest and am excited about it but also using other pens and I sent this brush rest to a friend so I have to make a new one.

5. Old box for prints

Bookbinding

I’ll share the process for making the journal featured here in time! If you are interested let me know, Nothing like a little force/encouragement to make a thing happen!