February Monthly Memories Print

This year I started a snail mail club where I send out creative prompts and projects each month. Our first project is the Monthly Memories Print. The idea is to fill in 1 square on the print every month inspired by that time in our lives. We'll keep doing this each month until all the boxes are filled in and we have a visual representation of our entire year! 

Here’s a little more about what I did for my February square. For this project—and creating in general— I’m really trying to lean into how I feel and this idea is what came up and stood out.

The month was a little rough for me—what stands out is feeling heartache. It was my dog Valentine’s first adoption anniversary after her passing, Vday always reminds me of her, and a relationship I was in ended.

What surprisingly brought me a lot of comfort and clarity was reading quotes on Instagram! (I’ve always loved a good quote / affirmation / song lyric—anyone else?) I started writing some of them down in my notes app and wanted to make a physical version of that.

I added a pink paper pocket with a red paper heart and a band aid on it to keep the quotes in. I designed the band aid digitally then printed it out and colored parts of it in.

I sized the quotes so they would fit into the pocket and printed those out as well. I did have to fold them to fit and I like how they stick out,

My inspiration didn't come from this but this section also reminds me of Valentine's Day at school as a kid where we would give all our classmates valentines and sometimes we would have a big construction pocket that we decorated to put it in. 

If you can relate to feeling loss and grief during this time, I hope some of these words resonate and bring you comfort too and I wish you healing and peace.