A smile is a heart is a smile is a heart is a smile is a heart is a smile is a heart is a smile

Imagination rules

Reposting Instagram featuring ‘A Moon or a Button’ by Ruth Krauss and Remy Charlip (1959) 🌝🌞

🧡

🌝 🌞

Before the eight Oscars and EGOT status, Alan Menken spent the 1970s and ‘80s writing shows for New York’s theater scene that often went nowhere. He created his “Disney Renaissance” and reputation the world knows of him today by staying in love with the work and putting in the hours ❤️ Source: The Talks.

Below: my ai-generated art using the. prompt “create a complex non-linear luminous pure white system trajectory image”. I love the result 🤍 #nonlinear success

My illustration of flowers that I created for A Right Brain Assessment of the MTA

🐾

Just finished this illustration ♥️

California pup, hazel eye & blue eye, out and about in Santa Monica.

Writer’s block (or “Jenny” as her friends call her) decided the most creative thing she could do that day was… absolutely nothing.

She didn’t fight it. Instead, she grabbed a coffee, packed up a six-pack of premium half-baked ideas, and headed straight for the lake.

She cast a line into the water, and waited. Surprisingly She didn’t catch a thing. She spent four blissfully unproductive hours admiring the shimmering water. No nagging sentences, no demanding to-dos. Just the sound of nothing much happening.

When she finally packed up, something shifted. The pressure was gone. She came back to her desk lighter, clearer— like her brain rebooted while she wasn’t looking. And just like that, she was ready to write.

Turns out, the old saying holds up: silence really is golden.

Take the break when you need it. Your best ideas are probably out there… just waiting to be hooked :) ✨

Life got busy, and my workout routine slipped onto the back burner. If you’ve managed to avoid that, I’m impressed. If not, I 100% relate. Either way, today I’m officially getting my tush back into the gym.

We all know the usual perks of exercise like better sleep and more energy, but I recently read an article by MindBodyGreen, Strong Muscles, Strong Mind, that takes it a step further. It describes exercise as a sort of cheat code for the brain.

Movement helps regulate cortisol, our primary stress hormone, while boosting endorphins, those feel-good chemicals that lift our mood. Regular exercise can actually reshape the brain by building new neural pathways. In other words, working out doesn’t just make us feel better, it helps create the ideal conditions for our brains to perform at their best.

Pretty cool, right?

If you’re restarting too, here’s the game plan I’m sticking to, modified from the article:

• Mix it up: I’m aiming for 2-3 HIIT workouts and 2-3 strength days. It keeps the body adaptable and the brain building “resilience pathways.”

• Anti-Boredom List: Life is too short for workouts you hate. I’ve got a list of a few activities that don’t feel like a chore (like dancing and hiking) to lean on when my energy is low.

• Don’t skip rest: Sleep, good food, and downtime are part of the plan. I include these to avoid burnout.

• The Buddy System: Everything’s better with a partner-in-crime. It’s a lot harder to hit the snooze button when you know someone is waiting for you to show up.

What’s your go-to workout for busy days?

I find this funny. #positiveAffirmation. 🧑🏻‍🎨

I tried a different drawing technique for this illustration, and I really like how it turned out. I usually start by outlining everything in black ink, but this time I painted the color first and added the outlines afterward. It’s a subtle shift, but I think it gives the illustration a more realistic feel.

♡✨

Fishermans Bay Garden

🚲

🐶 Photo @maison_flanuer

Flower 🌸 @car__lotta via @ad_magazine

Flower 🌼, Irving Penn

On a beach walk: Me, Mom, Sister, and Kaia (same that I illustrated recently)

Flowers🌷via @ad_magazine

If you made a Life Weather Map for yourself, what would you chart, and why? (I’ve been thinking about illustrative journaling and life maps. I’ll explore this more later 🔎 :).

“Luck sets the weather. Integrity sets the direction”

🧭

The Interview:

The following is a reflective interview, part of an ongoing project to record important family memories. Today’s spotlight: my stepdad, a very successful businessman-entrepreneur who loves family, art, music, and offering strong opinions, whether you solicit them or not 😉

On Business

What’s a lesson about work, money, or success that either surprised you or became important to you over the years?
Success requires a great deal of luck and good timing. In my case, I was in the right place at the right time, and that was partly luck. You should never take success for granted, because timing plays a much larger role than people like to admit.

What matters more than intelligence in business?
Self-esteem. That is an easy one. It is the most important trait a person can have. It has to be part of who you are. That does not mean it cannot be built over time, but it is difficult. Without it, intelligence alone will not carry you very far.

On Life

What did you overestimate in your 30s?
Not very much. I became a CEO at age 31, running a company with about 600 employees. I was young and willing to take calculated risks. I was trained in finance and analytics and at the time knew very little about running a company at that scale.

I put myself in a position where I was visible, and I asked for the promotion. I went to the senior executives; they did not come to me.

If you could invite three people to dinner, living or dead, who would you invite?
First would be Winston Churchill. I consider him the most important world leader of our lifetime. I have read a great deal about him and admire his bravery and willingness to take enormous risks for the good of the free world.

Second would be Beethoven. He is the greatest producer of music of all time. I am listening to him right now. I would be fascinated to talk to him about how he saw the world.

The third would be someone from much further back in history, like Julius Caesar or Plato. I would want to understand how they thought and what their presence was like. Would you feel awe in the room? Would they dominate the conversation?

Artists we discussed over the holidays

Giorgio Morandi. “Still Life” (1931)

His good friend Takesada Matsutani studio + work, photos from NYT

“Circle Yellow-19” (2019)

Louise Bourgeois, three images from The Puritan Suite 1997-2003

He and my mom, out and about in California

♡

☀️

This is Archie. He’s deaf and doesn’t hear when his humans get home. Luckily, his little brother Frankie lets him know with a gentle nudge to make sure he doesn’t miss the moment. (Video and poem below illustration).

Poem for a friend

If I could write a poem.

I would write it just for you.

But I can not write a poem.

So what am I to do?

If I could write a poem.

I would tell you lots of things.

Of love and happiness.

and the joy your friendship brings.

But I can not write a poem.

So you will never know. So, I will have to tell you instead.

Just how much I love you.

And now I have to go.. Because life is short, I choose to share what’s true.

I found this poem online, credited to an unknown source. I rewrote two of the lines. Here’s to keeping things simple, saying what you mean, and making every day count. Happy New Year :)

That’s how I found a New Yorker article on how Ishiguro uses science fiction to probe delicate questions tucked inside ordinary life— our quirks, our fear of endings, the weight we place to our existence. The article opens with “Martian poetry,” a 1980s literary trend where writers like Craig Raine, in “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home,” imagined confused aliens observing human behavior. It’s clever and sweet— a Martian trying to figure us out. And it echoes what Ishiguro does: taking familiar routines and revealing how absurd or unexpectedly meaningful they can be.

Both the Martian poets and Ishiguro encourage us to see how strange, precious, and temporary it all is. It made me think: if we stepped outside our habits for five minutes, which ones might surprise us? ✨

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979)

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings –

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside –
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone’s pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves –
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

Illustrations of some of the verses:

“Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings / and some are treasured for their markings…”

Caxtons = books, named after William Caxton, the first English printer.
Books look like winged creatures (pages as wings). Their “markings” are printed words and illustrations.

“I have never seen one fly, but / sometimes they perch on the hand.”

We hold books in our hands— the Martian sees this as a bird “perching”.

“But time is tied to the wrist / or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.”

Clocks and watches seem like humans keep “time” as a pet.

“At night, when all the colours die, / they hide in pairs / and read about themselves – / in colour, with their eyelids shut.”

Dreaming— vivid and colorful even when eyes are closed.
Illustration by Tim Coffey

Wreath illustration of @gooderlily

Holiday inspiration ✨ 🌼 🌹 🌸 🍄

@debeaulieuparis ornaments

@ritzparis tree by @anne.vitchen and team

Snoopy! @voguethailand and @snoopygrams

@attepmt wreath and bow for @surpriseparis

@laura_weir zoom zoom 🎄

♡ QOTD

I love books for two reasons: fiction lets me explore imaginative worlds, and business books provide practical insights. In either case, I’m not the expert. The author leads the way.

Which is why reading Erika Ayers Badan’s Nobody Cares About Your Career comes at a great time. She’s refreshingly direct on many topics, including navigating performance reviews. She writes:

“You can and should do a lot of the heavy lifting [during a performance conversation with your boss]. You can quickly cover your successes, acknowledge your shortcomings, and offer ideas for how best to move yourself, your projects, and your team forward, all of which will disarm your boss and shows that you are willing to learn and improve, and most importantly, contribute. By doing this with a non-defensive attitude and not bringing your ego to the party, you’ve essentially changed the power dynamic from your boss to you.

Be sure sure to use language that makes you sound rational, informed, and articulate. Walk away with an agreement with your manager of what your plan and goals are for the coming months/year. People who go in prepared and with this mindset have stronger reviews and feel better about the discussions.

• In advance of your review, spend time anticipating both the good and bad things you’ll hear. Come up with three areas where you are crushing it and three areas where you can improve and grow. Try to anticipate what your boss might say. Be critical and blunt with yourself but not harsh or defeating. The point is that nothing should be a surprise and you should be prepared to offer a plan to improve whatever it is you might hear. (Note to self, you will need to execute this plan).

• Saying thank you goes a long way. Most managers dread performance reviews, so show some gratitude and appreciation, and, who knows, they might do the same for you.

• Organize your own feedback into logical, meaningful areas. Don’t list twenty places you can improve–distill those twenty things into three main areas of focus. Simplify your critique so that it doesn’t look like an Etch A Sketch of how I suck and the thousand things I could do to fix it.

• Your best defense is a good offense. After a short nod to all the great things you have done for work (not for you; remember nobody really cares about you but you–the review is about how you can better help the business), move quickly to your f*ckups and shortfalls. “Here’s what I’ve learned (what I didn’t do so great but will do better); here’s what I’m doing to improve on a lot of that stuff; and here’s what I’m excited about in the future”

Be in charge of your improvement: One week after your review, take initiative, and show your manager your plan. Send consistent and frequent updates on your progress, and, again, ask for feedback along the way. Don’t toss up a bunch of sh*t you’re never going to do, let alone follow up on. When making your plan, make sure it’s something you can sustain. Choose two things instead of twenty, and really commit to implementing them.”

My Quick Notes:

• Make a plan. Use your review as motivation to grow and sharpen your skills.

• Don’t take candid feedback personally. See it for what it is: guidance on how to make the business (and yourself) better.

• As Kim Scott, author of the New York Times bestseller Radical Candor, says: “good feedback isn’t mean—it’s clear.” This can apply anywhere, personally or professionally. When feedback is truthful and constructive, it becomes a powerful tool for improvement.

• Think of your review as math. What goals do you want to achieve, and what inputs or actions will get you to the outputs you’re aiming for?

A vision is the difference between doing things randomly and doing things that feel like they matter and add up to something.

-Erika Ayers Badan

Enjoy the process, even when it feels challenging. Every work of art starts somewhere 🖼️ ✨ Below are a few of my favorites, reposted:

Ellsworth Kelly; ‘Briar’, 1961

Jean-Michel Basquiat; ‘Untitled’, 1986

Josef Hoffmann; ‘Design for Twelve Brooches’, 1926

Piet Mondrian; ‘Amaryllis’, 1907

Egon Schiele; ‘Houses and Pines (Mödling)’, 1915

You are enough, just as you are,
A radiant soul, a shining star.
No need to prove, no need to chase,
You hold your worth in every space.

-Author: Unknown

Found these whimsical, vibrant photos by @darciejudson on Instagram ✨

I illustrated one photo from the series:

In my copy of The Martian, there’s an interview where author Andy Weir talks about his journey to becoming a published writer. His story reminded me of a quote from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People about the power of focus and intention. I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like this:

Bring purpose to everything you do. Keep a clear picture of what you want, and you’ll naturally start moving toward it. As you stay focused, you’ll spot opportunities that help make goals real. Thought is powerful — we become what we consistently think about.

In other words: what you think about, you attract. It’s all about manifestation. Your dominant thoughts — positive or negative — act like magnets, pulling in matching experiences and people. When you clearly see your goals and truly believe in them, your energy aligns, and momentum starts building to make them real.

✨ 🪐⚡️

What you think you about, you attract

✨

Illustration of a Sunday morning in September: coffee, book, magazine—

An Interview with Andy Weir, excerpted from The Martian.

ANDY WEIR was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects such as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. The Martian is his first novel.

Q. So it seems you’re a bit of a science geek. You list space travel, orbital dynamics, relativistic physics, astronomy, and the history of manned spaceflight among your interests. How did you incorporate these passions in The Martian?

A. Those interests allowed me to come up with the story in the first place. I love reading up on current space research. At some point I came up with the idea of an astronaut stranded on Mars. The more I worked on it, the more I realized I had accidentally spent my life researching for this story. Early on I decided that I would be as scientifically accurate as possible. To a nerd like me, working out all the math and physics for Mark’s problems and solutions was fun.

Q. Explain how the science in The Martian is true to life.

A. The basic structure of the Mars program in the book is very similar to a plan called Mars Direct (though I made changes here and there). It’s the most likely way that we will have our first Mars mission in real life. All the facts about Mars are accurate, as well as the physics of space travel the story presents. I even calculated the various orbital paths involved in the story, which required me to write my own software to track constant-thrust trajectories.

Q. What inspired you to write The Martian?

A. I was thinking about how best to do a manned Mars mission (because that’s the sort of dork I am). As the plan got more detailed, I started imagining what it would be like for the astronauts. Naturally, when designing a mission, you think up disaster scenarios and how likely the crew would be to survive. That’s when I started to realize this had real story potential.

Q. Are you an advocate for a manned mission to Mars? Are you hopeful we’ll actually make it out there sometime soon?

A. Of course I’m a huge fan of space travel, manned and unmanned. I would love to see people land on Mars in my lifetime. However, do I think it will actually happen? I’m not sure. Unlike the 1960s, we’re not in a race with anyone to get there, so it’s not a priority. Also, computer and robotics technologies are leaps and bounds better than they were during the days of Apollo. So logically you have to ask why we would risk human lives rather than just make better robots. Still, it would be awesome, and maybe that’s reason enough.

Q. Do you have anything in common with your wisecracking hero Mark Watney?

A. I’m the same level of smart-ass that he is. It was a really easy book to write; I just had him say what I would say. However, he’s smarter than I am and considerably more brave. I guess he’s who I wish I were.

Q. In The Martian, Watney has access to his crewmates’ digital entertainment on Mars, including TV episodes of Three’s Company, a variet of Beatles songs, and digital books including The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Any reason why you chose to work those specific examples into the novel?

A. It’s a selection of things I loved when I was growing up.

Q. You’re stranded on Mars and you can only take one book with you. What is it?

A. It’s always hard to pick on “favorite book.” Growing up, I loved early Robert Heinlein books most of all. So if I had to pick one, I’d go with Tunnel in the Sky. I do love a good survival story.

Q. How long do you think you’d last if you were left in Mark Watney’s position?

A. Not long at all. I don’t know how to grow crops or how to jury-rig the solutions he came up with. It’s a lot easier to write about an ordeal than it is to experience it.

Q. You have the chance to meet any astronaut living or dead: Who is it and why?

A. John Young. He is the quintessential astronaut. Competent, fearless, highly intelligent, and seemingly immune to stress. When Apollo 16 launched, his heart rate never got higher than 70. Most astronauts spike to at least 120 during launches.

Q. Watney seems to be able to maneuver his way around some pretty major problems with a little duct tape an ingenuity! So he’s a bit like MacGyver in that way. Did you watch the show as a kid? Any favorite episodes?

A. Indeed I did! I loved that show. My favorite episode was the one where engineering students had a barricade contest.

Q. Star Wars or Star Trek?

A. Doctor Who.

Q. Your idea of the perfect day . . .

A. Sleep in. Meet Buzz Aldrin for brunch. Head over to Jet Propulsion Lab and watch them control Curiosity Mars rover. Dinner with the writing staff of Doctor Who.

Q. You original, self-published version of The Martian became a phenomenon online. Were you expecting the overwhelmingly positive reception the book received?

A. I had no idea it was going to do so well. The story had been available for free on my website for months, and I assumed anyone who wanted to read it had already read it. A few readers had requested I post a Kindle version because it’s easier to download that way. So I went ahead and did it, setting the price to the minimum Amazon would allow. As it sold more and more copies I just watched in awe.

Q. Film rights to The Martian were sold to writer-producer Simon Kinberg (Mr & Mrs. Smith, Sherlock Holmes, X-Men: First Class). What was your first reaction?

A. Of course I’m thrilled to have a movie in the works. The move deal and print publishing deal came within a week of each other, so I was a little shell-shocked. In fact, it was such a sudden launch into the big leagues that I literally had a difficult time believing it. I actually worried it could all be an elaborate scam. So I guess that was my first reaction: “Is this really happening!?”

An Essay from Andy Weir: How Science Made Me a Writer

I’m a nerd.

Okay, a lot of people say that these days. But I really am. I was hired as a computer programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen. I have seen every existing episode of Doctor Who (classic and modern). I study orbital dynamics as a hobby. My idea of a good time is sitting down and drawing on that knowledge to imagine a space mission from beginning to end, getting right as many details as a I can.

Pretty frickin’ nerdy, right?

On top of that, as you might expect, I’ve also been a science-fiction fan ever since I was old enough to read, which was when I started plowing through my dad’s nearly infinite collection of Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, and all the other great authors of the genre.

One day, in between doing highly charismatic non-nerdy things, I started working up a manned Mars mission in my head. I even wrote my own software to calculate the orbital trajectory my imaginary crew would take to get from Earth to Mars. And not some boring Hohmann Transfer, either! I envisioned a constantly accelerating VASIMR-powered ship, which—ahem. Sorry, got carried away. Anyway, I had to account for failure scenarios on their surface mission. What if something went wrong? How could I design the mission so the crew would have contingency plans? What if they had multiple failures, one after another, that ruined those contingency plans?

While working that out, I started to realize their increasingly desperate solutions would make a pretty interesting story. That’s when I came up with the idea for The Martian.

Oh, one more nerdy hobby I forgot to mention up top: I’ve also been a wannabe writer since I was a teenager. I wrote countless short stories and even penned two complete books before The Martian. My first book was so horrible I have deleted all copies of it. Thankfully, it was before the Internet so there are no lurking caches of it anywhere. I made up for that failure by writing a second book that was also crappy. This time I resolved to do better.

So I created an unlucky main character named Mark Watney and then spent 368 pages making his life a living hell. He’s stranded on Mars, his crew has evacuated and thinks he’s dead, and he has no way to contact Earth.

Even though my plan was to torture Mark, I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want my hero to suffer one unlikely, disastrous coincidence after the next. I decided that each problem Mark faced had to be a plausible consequence of his situation—or, better yet, an unintended consequence of his solution to a previous problem. He could suffer an equipment failure in machinery stretched beyond its intended use, but he couldn’t be struck by lightening and then have a meteor crash on him.

I also really wanted Mark to be fallible. Yeah, okay, I made him smarter and more resourceful than you or I would be in that situation. But hey, it’s only realistic to do that when your hero’s an astronaut. Nevertheless, in a situation where even the smallest mistake can be catastrophic, and you’re forced to make life-or-death decisions every day, even the brightest person is going to slip sometimes and invite disaster.

Was I worried about whether my scenario would give me enough plot to sustain a novel?

Did I wonder if being that realistic would make a boring story?

Hell yes.

But as I wrote, I bungled my way into a revelation: Science creates plot! As I worked out the intricacies of each problem and solution, little details I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed became critical problems Mark had to solve. No need for meteor strikes—the surprises, catastrophes, and narrow escapes were coming fast and furious on their own.

And the deeper into the book I got, the more excited I became, because I found that I was arriving at that place writers dream of: I was coming up with plot twists that genuinely surprised me, yet felt totally organic to the situation I’d dreamed up. This allowed me to do what writers treasure more than anything else: catch the reader off-guard. There’s nothing better than knowing you’re going to outwit the reader. And the type of people who read sci-fi are very difficult to outwit.

I originally wrote The Martian as a free serial novel, posting one chapter at a time to my website. Thanks to my previous attempts at writing, I had a small but loyal following of readers who read each chapter as I finished it. Theis turned out to be an amazing process. I got tons of feedback as the story progressed, and I fine-tuned the novel as I went along.

Eventually, my website readers started bugging me to put the book up on Amazon so they could read it on their Kindles. So I formatted the book, slapped a public-domain photo of Mars on the cover, and tossed it up there. I priced it at 99 cents because Amazon wouldn’t let me make it free permanently.

After that, things got a little crazy. Next thing I knew, it was one of Amazon’s top five sci-fi bestsellers, and tens of thousands of people had downloaded it. Then a literary agent and publishers came knocking, and movie studios started bidding on the film rights. And ultimately, in one of the more surreal moments of my life, I found myself looking at my name on the New York Times bestseller list.

In those months since I first started putting chapters online, I’ve received fan e-mails from astronauts, people in Mission Control, nuclear submarine technicians, chemists, physicists, geologists, and folks in pretty much every other scientific discipline. All of them had nice things to say about the book’s technical accuracy, though some of them also sent formal proofs detailing where I’d gone wrong. I corrected those problems (mostly) in the final edition that went to print.

Even more satisfying than those responses to the science, though, were all the readers who told me I’d succeeded in my other goal, the one that really made me tremble in fear as I was writing: People kept telling me how exciting and suspenseful and surprising the book was. My favorite fan mail is the kind that starts “Normally I don’t read science-fiction, but . . .”

That response is pretty damn incredible, considering all I really did was write about how much I love science—albeit while tormenting my main character with the constant threat of death.

Eh. Mark’s a smart guy. He can handle it.

A version of this essay was originally published on Salon.com.

Why Some People Have All The Luck

174KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The article starts with the observation that some entrepreneurs and business professionals seem to have “all the luck.” But, according to writer Anthony Tjan, what looks like luck is rarely just chance. Instead, it comes from a repeatable mindset — what he calls a “lucky mindset” — built on three behaviors:

1. Humility keeps you open to learning. People with humility don’t let setbacks define them. They stay curious, adaptable, and alert for the next opportunity.

2. Curiosity pushes you to explore. “Lucky” people are inquisitive, always scanning for new possibilities and ready to adjust when circumstances change.

3. Optimism fuels you to act. When opportunity knocks, optimism gives them confidence to move quickly and make smart decisions.

My quick notes:

• Attitude matters more than traits. Being open to change, willing to shift your path or perspective can make all the difference.

• Networks + action = Luck multiplier. Being connected + being alert + taking action = producing more “luck.”

• Preparation meets opportunity. As the saying goes: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

🌻

Illustration of daisies photo by @birgittetheresa

Positive mindset = positive energy ✨

♡ ☀️

It’s easy: print your design on copy paper and glue it to cardstock, or print directly on cardstock if your printer can handle it.

Voilà— custom cards, made by you.

Want to try mine? You can download all my illustrations right from the blog. 🎺🎸✨

Step-by-Step DIY Guide

1. Download an illustration
   Click on any image. Drag and drop to your computer.

2. Resize the illustration
   Before printing, reduce the image to about 50% of its original size so it fits neatly on a 4x6 card. Play around with the dimensions depending on the size card or style you’re after.

3. Print
   Print the image on regular copy paper. Or, if your printer allows, print straight to cardstock and skip the glue altogether.

4. Mount on cardstock
   Cut out the printed illustration and glue it to a piece of cardstock.

5. Enjoy your custom stationery!
   That’s it— you’ve got a cute, one-of-a-kind card, perfect for notes, or even framing.

6. Envelopes: I like using colorful envelopes; like the ones offered at Papersource.

I made cards from my recent music series:

🎺🎸✨ Excerpt (Plato):