collage | Reflections on the Teche

Posts Tagged ‘collage’

Spiritual Thursday: I Cannot Keep from Singing

Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged collage, peace, poetry postcard, sacred music on September 3, 2026| 6 Comments »

Ramona has the roundup this month at Pleasures from the Page.

For September’s Spiritual Journey posts, Ramona asked us to consider her One Little Word, rhythm.

When I think of rhythm, I hear whatever anthem our choir sang on Sunday. This week the earworm is How Can I Keep from Singing, which wasn’t a hymn or anthem, but Zi, our director, played it as an instrumental on the piano. It has stayed with me.

I love these videos made during Covid when whole music was made in isolation.

I love to listen to sacred music when I am playing with collage. I have a discarded hymnal that I tear pages from. Sometimes the lines show through. Playing with collage has given me a feeling of freedom in creativity. I don’t worry about perfection at all. I select elements that please me.

I’ve made junk journal pages and postcards for poetry exchanges. I made the postcards by recycling canned drink boxes. I don’t feel precious about them. They will go into the mail and may get eaten or bent by the journey, and it doesn’t matter to me. I think there is a lesson in this kind of creating. Something sacred I am drawn to, a rhythm of peaceful dreaming.

Peace is an impractical word
playing well with others
like love
lingering in nature’s golden hours—
sunsets, rainbows…

Peace doesn’t always tell the truth.
Hang on to its tail
dangling like moss on Crepe Myrtle trees
in summer.

Wishing can make it so.

Margaret Simon, draft

How do you feel sacred rhythm? Peace? Creativity?

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Spiritual Thursday: Heart

Posted in Creativity, Gratitude, Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged collage, concrete poem, flowers, spiritual journey on February 3, 2022| 17 Comments »

Today’s Round-up for Spiritual Thursday posts is at Linda Mitchell’s site, A Word Edgewise.

I like to buy flowers. When I go to the grocery store, I often put a bouquet of flowers in my basket. I consider it rescuing them from certain death. Sometimes I find someone to give them to and other times, I cut them and place them in a vase for my husband and me to enjoy. Flowers just make life better.

The other day my neighbor shouted from her doorway, “Don’t go! I want to show you something.”

She brought out the amaryllis bulb I had place on her doorstep around Christmas time. It was blooming, a beautiful white double blossom.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she cried. “Do you want it back?”

“Of course not. It’s meant for you to enjoy.”

“I do love flowers, you know.”

What is in your heart today? Love, gratitude, grief? It’s all there. Take time today to hold your own heart with compassion. Buy yourself flowers.

To end this post, I want to share Avalyn’s heart poem. This was not my doing. She saw it in a book (Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog) that you can make a poem into a shape, so she wanted to try it. I showed her a quick YouTube video, and she created her own.

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Slice Of Life: Art Journal

Posted in Creativity, Gifted Education, Gratitude, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged #100DaysofNotebooking, art journal, collage, Margaret Alvarez, The Network for Grateful Living on February 1, 2022| 5 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

I filled the last page of my notebook, the one I use every day as I write alongside my students. We use marbleized composition books. With decorative paper, magazines, and other things, we collage covers for our notebooks. The last few days I have been stealing a few minutes here or there to work on my new notebook. Here are my completed covers. I tend to be pretty critical of my own collage work, but I like these.

One of the elements on the front cover came from an ArtSpark postcard exchange with Jone MacCulloch and Amy Souza. I cut the quotes on the back from a 2021 calendar.

May the space between where I am and where I want to be inspire me.
Tracee Ellis Ross

This week I am sharing videos from Margaret Alvarez about gratitude art journaling that I discovered in an email from The Network for Grateful Living. We’ve enjoying playing with these easy, yet creative ideas in my classroom. Day one was “Life is a gift” using watercolor shapes and sharpie designs. Day two we did string art. My students have been highly motivated by art journaling. These ideas are simple enough for my second graders while creative enough for my 6th graders. And it’s fun!

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Slice of Life: Notebooking Fun

Posted in Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged #100DaysofNotebooking, collage, quotes on January 11, 2022| 8 Comments »

When we returned from winter break, I started a new daily writing activity in my classroom: 100 Days of Notebooking. In truth we don’t have 100 days of school left, but no matter. The point is to write and draw and be creative every day in some way or another. My students have embraced this idea.

We start each entry with the date and a quote. I have a copy of 360 Days of Wonder which is full of quotes. I also allow students to look up quotes by famous people they admire. One student is choosing a sports quote each day.

The papers I used for the collage above were images in a National Geographic magazine of a polluted lake in Romania. I told Chloe about it and she wrote a poem about it. I asked her if I could have a copy for my notebook page.

For Christmas, one of my students gave me a gift card to Target, so I used it to get more notebooking supplies, washi tape, felt-tip pens, and decorative paper.

Michelle Haseltine started a Facebook group and an Instagram hashtag. It’s fun to be a part of a larger group. Everyone has their own unique style of notebooking. I enjoy drawing inspiration from others.

Avalyn picked out the quote above, and we discussed the figurative meaning of it. On her notebook page, she wrote a loving poem. You can see how she worked on the line breaks. She posted it on our Fanschool page. You can leave a comment for her here.