So I've been trying to eat healthier and to help me do that I've been tracking what I eat. Sort of. Not so consistently.  I finally realized that I needed some incentive to actually keep track of all this boring data. So I created a beautiful folder that serves as both a healthy recipe book and a food journal. Because as sad as it is, I am much more likely to follow through on my goals if they involve something pretty.

An image of the cover, with the title hand-stitched on:


And on the inside:


And a sneak peek at my recipe for high protein vegan waffles! They're delish!

Because I spent this past Christmas far from my family, I was determined to decorate our house so that my flatmates and I would get into the Christmas spirit. I had two self-made rules - that all of the decorations had to be handmade, and that they shouldn't be expensive. Which is how I determined that I should make an Origami Christmas tree.... the first and last Origami tree that I will ever make.


From this top view you can see the 6 boxes in each layer. It took me two days to make 150 paper boxes for the tree. I know that it doesn't look like that many, but there are 6 boxes in each layer, and each box had a top and bottom that fit together. There are 12 layers, plus the three boxes at the top, and I had to construct the boxes so that they would slowly get smaller, and leave me with a cone shape rather than a cylinder.

The lucky stars that decorate it were a bit of an afterthought. I had made about 500 lucky stars which I chained into a garland to decorate a real Christmas tree, and I had a couple of leftovers which I glued onto the tree in the spiral design.

In some respects, this should be in the Christmas thread, but the thing is that when Christmas ended, I couldn't bring myself to put the tree away. I love it too much - and so while I have moved it off my dining room table, it now sits on my desk in my room.

Here are a few pics of the tree in all it's glory:

Thanks for all the positive feedback! 

I get teased a lot at work for being a math teacher who's good at AND passionate about art, so it's nice to have an audience that's appreciative. (rather than mocking... even if it's not meant unkindly)

SierraPapaCharlie - The scribbly quality of the drawings just evolved naturally, as I often draw on the bus/train, and decided that I would have to find ways of living with my mistakes. I didn't want to be labouring over every line, making sure that I got the shape just right, and scribbling away makes me feel like I am carving the image out of the white spaces.

I would encourage anyone who is interested in mail art to look at Mail Art - The Forum, which posts projects that people can contribute to, as well as addresses that you can send mail art to. (You could always post your own address in the hopes that someone will send you something) http://www.mail-art.de/

There is also the postcrossing website, which allows you to sign up, get a random address, and sent a postcard to it, as well as receive a postcard from someone random in return. I have yet to take advantage of this service. http://www.postcrossing.com/

Just for good measure, here is my favourite image that I have posted so far:

These are a series of drawings that I made for a mail art project that I recently started. I have been living abroad, working as a math teacher for about two years, and had basically stopped making art all together. I decided that to make sure that I would get back into the habit of drawing and making art, that I would start mailing at least one art postcard every working day. (I could have said it would be every day, but I decided that I needed weekends off!) That way, I would have to keep drawing to keep up with mailing the postcards. A friend helped me build a website so that I could document the project. I'm putting up a few of the images here for you to see, but if you want to see the project as it unfolds, you should go to www.thisisart.ca.

Niels Bohr, the physicist


And it came in the night....