Day 31 of Creativesprint (share one thing you learned from this experience) and Day 365 of 365 (!!!) of my 365 days project (make something loud today and let everyone know that it's the last day of your year!). So one thing I've learned during this year, but also during this Creativesprint, is, that being creative and making art is my way to talk about the elephant in the room: in my case, it was a way to think out loud about the elephant that is grief and loss and dying. And: "Woohooooo!" I made it! And I'm not going to stop! I'll start another 365 days project tomorrow. It is called "The Sixth Sentence Project". Stay tuned!

PS: I would like to thank everyone who supported me and cheered me on and was interested in what I was doing during the last year. It was such a gift! Thank you! 

Day 30 of Creativesprint (create a trophy) and 364 of 365 of my 365 days project (create a new birthday tradition). A trophy for the celebration of both occasions: finishing another Creativesprint and another year! Happy Birthday!

Day 29 of Creativesprint (make a rainbow) and 363 of 365 of my 365 days project (extend an existing photograph). Poems and rainbows and bubbles make me happy. 

Day 28 of Creativesprint (rework or revise a previous work from this creativesprint ) and 362 of 365 of my 365 days project (make a rainbow out of everyday objects). My friends' reaction to Day 11.

Day 27 of Creativesprint (make a mask) and 361 of 365 of my 365 days project (make something with bleach). I found a grief mask from Gabun - and I used the bleach filter. 

Day 26 of Creativesprint (make a diagram or chart) and 360 of 365 of my 365 days project (inspired by inner organs). My lungs when I smell lavender...

Day 25 of Creativesprint (what happened today in history?) and 359 of 365 of my 365 days project (create a city out of objects you have on hand). This is U.'s birthday today and she lives in the city that is pictured here.

Day 24 of Creativesprint (make a miniature landscape) and 358 of 365 of my 365 days project (create the illusion that someone is frozen mid-action). Hello again to the girl from earlier this Creativesprint - now reaching for Excalibur. 

Day 23 of Creativesprint (camouflage something) and 357 of 365 of my 365 days project (make something natural look digital). Karma Chameleon.

Day 21 of Creativesprint (make an ad for something) and 355 of 365 of my 365 days project (take two things that don't go together and find a way that they fit together). Make art! Be an artist! Don't let talent stop you!

Day 20 of Creativesprint (take something apart and put it back together in a new way) and 354 of 365 of my 365 days project (work with candy). EAT THE RICH. 👊🍍👑🖕 [pineapple out of finest Belgian waffles] --> find the video here.

Day 18 of Creativesprint (recreate a favorite childhood game) and 352 of 365 of my 365 days project (design a uniform for a job that doesn't normally have one). I loved watching people as a child (and I still love it).

Day 17 of Creativesprint (create something in the style of an artist you admire) and 351 of 365 of my 365 days project (add wings to something). Artist Kelsey Montague started the #whatliftsyou project (and my mum made the doll). I am a huge fan (of Kelsey and my mum). 

Day 16 of #creativesprint (make something that reminds you of a teacher who inspired You) and 350 of 365 of my 365 days project "365 Days in the Mourning" (have someone else start something and finish it). I told a friend about today's prompt and she started talking about her time in school and that she felt that a lot of her teachers never really got her and therefore treated her in ways, that hurt her. I had the same experiences in school (in slightly different ways)...the bottom line is, that we stopped trying to explain ourselves but instead started to look for people with whom we can be who we are.

Day 15 of Creativesprint (incorporate repetition into what you make today) and 349 of 365 of my 365 days project (make something unappetizing seem appetizing). Put a strawberry on a fly and the fly looks much more appetizing!

Day 14 of #creativesprint (make something out of things you would normally throw away) and 348 of 365 of my 365 days project "365 Days in the Mourning" (work with a disposable cup). I didn't have any disposable cup but a busy day, so this is it for today. 

Day 13 of #creativesprint (make something using only the contents of your purse) and 347 of 365 of my 365 days project "365 Days in the Mourning" (make a face to something that normally doesn't have one). Am I a worry doll? Or an Inca Goddess? - Everyday questions... 

Day 12 of Creativesprint (add eyes to an inanimate object) and 345 of 365 of my 365 days project (make a repeating image by folding paper and cutting out the shape of an object). Googly tears in a row. 💧💧💧

Day 11 of Creativesprint (spill something and create something from the mess) and 345 of 365 of my 365 days project (only work with the objects that are already on the table near you). - Ehm...YES. 😌

Day 10 of #creativesprint (if you were a superhero what would your name and your super power be?) and 344 of 365 of my 365 days project "365 Days in the Mourning" (use stars as your inspiration today). My name is Regy and my super power is to empower others. 

Day 9 of Creativesprint (incorporate shoes into what you do today) and 343 of 365 of my 365 days project (make something boring seem exciting). Hold on! 

Day 8 of CreativeSprint (create a greeting card for an unspecial occasion) and 342 of 365 of my 365 days project (create evidence of an event that didn't happen). Stressful events happen to end in nose bleeding in my family - so seeing someone with damaged blood vessels and running blood is something fairly familiar to me. However, (luckily) it did not happen today.

Day 7 of CreativeSprint (look up and create something inspired by what you see) and 341 of 365 of my 365 days project (make a functioning mobile). Today, a young child next to me on the ferry said to their mother: "Wow! Look, Mum! There is so much sky above us!"

Day 6 of CreativeSprint (create a face from the food leftover on your plate after a meal) and 340 of 365 of my 365 days project "365 Days in the Mourning" (work only with what's in your or someone else's pockets today: the mobile phone and my hand). "Why aren't you smiling?" - 

Me: 🖕😬🖕

Day 5 of CreativeSprint (take a 5-minute walk and make something with what you find wherever you end up) and 339 of 365 of my 365 days project (create something that is only visible from one specific angle - kind of). A dancing phoenix...

Day 4 of CreativeSprint (what would the cover of your autobiography look like?) and 338 of 365 of my 365 days project (make something that shows the passage of time).

Day 3 of CreativeSprint (close your eyes - what is the first color you notice when you open your eyes? Create a monochromatic collage) and 337 of 365 of my 365 days project (work blindfolded). BLUES.

336 of 365 of my 365 days project "365 Days in the Mourning" about grief and loss (censor something that doesn't need to be) and Day 2 of CreativeSprint (make something inspired by the meaning of your name). Thinking about the meaning of my name (Regina is the latin word for "queen"), I always wonder if "being queen" is a goal to live for or an attitude to live by...

Creativesprint starts today (woohoo! ) and I'll combine my 365days project (it's the last month!) with the daily prompts in October. Day 1 = Make something that fits in the palm of your hand and Day 335 of 365 = Make something to protect a delicate object. In my yearlong project I think about grief and loss and dying - the human heart is such a delicate object, and most of the times it seems to me, that I try to protect it with bare hands.

Work with barcodes today. This is a little Banksy tribute.

Make a trophy. Hell yeah...

Make a flower out of everyday objects.

Time for finger painting! - Is this meta finger painting? 

Work with tissue paper today. - Tears of joy on tissue.

Make something with a snack before you eat it. My grandpa loved these sweet cookie sticks with nuts from Switzerland called "Nuss Stängeli" - and I love them, too!

Create an alternate alphabet for a new culture. We need to talk about death and everything related if we want to create a death positive culture.

Use the world of amphibians as your inspiration today. My nailpolish-color is called "Urban Chameleon" and I bought it because of that name (and because I like the color, too - of course).

Make something that would not normally melt seem like it has. A melting heart today...

Work with music media. Cassette-owl.

Make alternate signage for bathroom doors.

Create a visual diagram for something that would not normally need one. When I'm frustrated or sad, I make some art so that I'm not that sad and frustrated anymore. Do I need to be sad to make art? Fortunatelly not: I am also creative when I'm relaxed and happy. Lucky me, my art alows me to have all the feelings!

Make something out of keys. Mixing keys today...

Write a ten-word murder mystery.

Work with only rubber bands today. Lately I noticed, that a rainbow might be one of my favorite symbols...

Something that goes over a foot. A little memento mori to go.

Work with rice.

Create a clear version of something that is normally not transparent. Ehm...yes... Current state of mind. 

Create a tattoo. I actually think this might be a good tattoo one day: grief and hope (feather and rainbow).

Work with fire today. I didn't want to burn the hotel room down, so instead I decided to tell the story of my great-grandmother catching fire... Every year my family gathers around a large pot of red wine punch around Christmas time and every year the tale is told that years ago, my great-grandmother's clothes suddenly catched fire and one had to blow it out quickly... I never got to know my great-grandparents. They died before I was born. But even my younger cousin said a few years ago while sitting in front of the red wine punch pot: "Do you remember when great-grandma catched fire?" and everyone replied immediately: "Yes, of course!"

Reflections.

Make something with items that would be found in a hardware store. - I don't know where this came from. But it was the first idea I had today.

Create something that can be rolled down a hill. - Rolling rolling rolling with the ghost of the past... 

Create something based on the shapes found in a plant. - 🐦

What can you do with a pad of sticky notes? Ehem... It was the last sticky note on the pad and I didn't have another one. So I made it my theme for today: I wrote on it the last note from Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven". 

Transform a piece of advertising so that it has a new message. Death - operates quickly and natural.

Make chimes out of whatever materials you like. Kohlrabi chimes in memoriam my grandma and her garden.

Use the world of reptiles as your inspiration today. - Going a little Saint-Exupery today...is it a hat or a boa constrictor that swallowed up a heart?

Work only with boxes from packaged food products today. Is this paradise?

Pick a random date in history and make something inspired by what happened that day. - Mansplaining started early...🙄 - On this day in 1789 Wilhelm Herschel discovered a new moon of Saturn: Enceladus.

Make something in which the sense of touch is the essential component. In times of trouble, I place my head on the wooden table I inherited from my great-grandparents and just the touch helps me to calm down.

Work only with silver materials today. I found this little guy abandoned in a box on the street with a sign "take me with you" on it. How could I not? I made him the King of Silver Linings. 

Try doing a normal activity in reverse order. - When the background casts a cloud over everything else...

Make something on glass. "Cover me with soft earth... jasmine, lilies and myrtle, and when they grow above me...they will breathe the fragrance of my heart into space." (Kahlil Gibran)

Write a letter to a fictional character. I love "The Hound of the Baskervilles"!

I wrote this letter with a pen I got from someone I met recently, who learned about my project and gave me his pen: "this might be useful one day." - So, yes! Thank you, it was very useful today!

Make something that is normally portable into something that isn't anymore. - Grief.

Work with salt. A little umbrella in the pouring rain...

Work only with squares today. I did a little "light at the end of the tunnel"-stamping for today's prompt.

Make something outdoors look like it's indoors. Okay, this turned out not quite as I planned, but still: I know exactly, what my grandma would have said to the poor plant: "go to the hairdresser's! You look like a witch!"

Write a short love song about a pet. This is for my pet fly Rufus: I let you go - I know in time, you will come back.

Do someone else's job for part of the day and create something based on the experience. I am on vacation, so I tried to be a beach beauty for a few hours...

Make something inspired by your favorite television show as a kid. I liked the episode of the "Sendung mit der Maus", where they explained to kids (and adults) what happens when someone dies. And the presenter tested how it feels to lie in a coffin.

Make an anagram of your name: REGAIN. Sitting at the seashore always helps me regaining my strength.

Do something in which silence is an essential component. Silence is weighing me down tonight.

Work with disposable plastic utensils. A friend's friend got a tattoo of his late wife picturing her as a mermaid. I love the idea very much. 

Make something that looks like it was turned inside out. A Grief-matroschka: when you feel your loss and you feel it through all your layers...

(Finally after three days offline) Make something that makes a sound on its own. Didn't we all think as a child that the shells make the sound of the sea on their own?

Imagine you are an animal and work as that animal would today. I dotted a self portrait of a dragonfly. I killed one today while racing down a hill with my bicycle...RIP and I'm very sorry!

Work with balloons. A sad and breathless poem for today: Roses are red and these balloons, too. I can't inflate them, shoobeedoobeedoo.

Make a monument to a mundane event, place, or person. RIP toilet paper: Toilet paper roll tombstone in the design of a weeping angel. 

Create something inspired by a piece of spam e-mail you have recently received. Some dadaesque thoughts on a Sunday evening. Powered by my #spamfolder...

If you could do or be anything in the world, what would it be? I wish I would be self-confident in the right moments (and not just pretending to be). So here is my practice in self-confidence for today.

Use your pocket change to make something worth more than what you could buy with it. SOLD! (Just kidding - but I did the same when I was in school: my friend and I created a sculpture just like that in the picture and we put a tag with "10.000,- SOLD" on it and attracted some attention...those were the days! - Okay, one of those two or three happy days in school. 😬😶)

Go back to the future. Present Tree and Future Tree.

Work with a tin can. Hang in there!

Make something that goes over a hand.

Add a door where one wouldn't normally exist. Door to the glasshouse.

Work with ice cubes today. Shortly before meltdown.

Make a Venn diagram in an unexpected way. Sometimes I miss the people who didn't like my haircut - I miss some of these people more than others though.

Use sand as your inspiration today. It is really hot here...

Recreate a famous work of art. Banksy for today: During the last days, I attended a conference on the critique of domination. Amongst other things, we talked about the grief-like feeling, when thinking about (and trying to act against) all the abuse of power, social injustice, political backlash, etc.

Work with a cardboard box. This is a test pattern I draw on cardboard: it appeared when communication and radio reception broke down. During the past days this came to my mind...

Make a unique miniature golf set. When the Grim Reaper comes knocking... See video on Instagram. 

Work only with Duplos today. Tiger and sheep.

Make a unique checkers set.... Or kind of checkers set.

Carve something unusual. I carved a mushroom: in German, there is the term "Trauerkloß" which literally means "grief dumpling", but might best be translated with "wet blanket".

Start something and let someone else finish it. I arrived at my parents' house late this evening without any great ideas or a finished daily project.  Everyone was tired, so we did this in 2 minutes: I did the head, my mum the torso and my dad the feet: Exquisite Corpse completed!

Make something with only the color brown. Short coffee break to recharge one's batteries.

Make something that would normally be considered cute and cuddly into something that isn't. Really: I tried!

Make an artificial window. This is a collage with the newest sticker from the FeministStickerClub. How about some blooming power when you're looking out of the window?!

Put pen to paper and draw for thirty minutes without stopping or lifting the pen from the page. Light and darkness.

Use tape to make something three-dimensional. Stereotyping and -taping the landscape I come from...

Make a good luck charm. This is a pin and the design is inspired by my dear friend and creative surprise bag M.

Create something involving a pet. Since two days I have a pet fly named Lorelai. I tried to show it the way out of the window, but it seems Lorelai didn't get my intentions... 🙄 So today I tried to make friends with it: I made a companion and gave Lorelai something to read - maybe we share the same interests...?!

Create something that can transport you (and others) across a room. I lined up the furniture in my living room to (in theory) walk across the room without touching the floor. And isn't "the Ground is Lava!" a good metaphor for being in mourning?!

Work with natural materials to make something that would not normally be found in nature. Today's prompt comes with a wagging finger: how ecofriendly are our burials? How can we make them more ecofriendly?

Make shoes out of an unexpected material (they don't have to be functional). Lack of seriousness today, so here  is Edition "One Foot in the Grave" for you.

Make something inspired by popcorn. This is a remake of one of my favorite comics (by #theawkwardyeti).

Open a random drawer and create something with just the contents: Legacy. 

Hide and seek. Trying to find myself... 

Use a needle and thread. Important information today! 📢 

And a reminder for myself to stay humble...

Create the illusion that the world has been turned upside down. - In my experience, this is exactly what grief feels like. 🌪

Frame something.

Make a postage stamp. My grandmother loved cyclamen. For some inexplicable reason (Sorry 😬).

Use markers as your material or inspiration today. Slaying old-fashioned social rules on "how to mourn" with a lightsaber? Yes! And the force was strong with this one: The sun made it light up when I took the picture! 😍 

Make up a new sport. Okay, it's not new, but still not olympic: dead man's floating.

Make something with disposable chopsticks. Painting with chopsticks.

Create the illusion that the color has been removed from something. A rainbow.

Make a mural. I named this "My own Guernica".

Make a unique bookmark and leave it at a library for someone to find. This is a book by Georg Pieper a psychologist specialized in trauma therapy who wrote this book about his experiences with people coping with loss and traumatic circumstances. I left a flower in it for someone else to find.

Use the human body to make something. I tried to paint more intuitivly today - my inspiration were the lyrics from "Walking in Space": "My body is walking in space, my soul is in orbit with God face to face. [...] my mind is clear as country air, I feel my flesh, all colors mesh..." 

Make alternative labels. Ehm, yes.......

Create a portmonteau (a new word created by sticking together parts of two preexisting words, whose meaning is basically a blend of the two original words. I wanted to combine "grief" and "creativity" because this is what I try to do the whole year: greativity. But today, it's only "grief" and "rage": GRAGE.

Be inspired by clouds. I generated a word cloud out of Joan Didion's words on grief. "Grief when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be."

Create a new superheroine. This is the superwoman who has the superpower to accept that she is not always strong and embraces her weekness (and in case you might not recognized it: she is wearing sweatpants).

Make a container. This container out of arms and hands carries a heart.

Be inspired by a bicycle. These Ghost Bikes are also part of the city I live in. They mark the places where fatal accidents happened with cyclists involved.

Make something perfectly balanced. In grief councelling, I often work with this metaphor: something perfectly balanced is suddenly in total imbalance through death - and it takes a lot of time to somehow get the system in balance again (and not by removing the deceased from the picture, but by incorporate him*her in a new way and balance this out). 

Transform a room into a new environment. The basement in my house will never be the same...

Make a unique playing card. Death and the maiden - one of my favorite themes during this project.

Make a unique cathouse. This is a kind of collaboration today with my late grandfather: he built this rack to store kitchen utensils - I don't think he imagined it to be someday used as a cathouse... Surprise!

Use dirt as your medium today. This might look like broccoli in the first place, but it actually is a brain out of mud (coffee grounds and flower soil).

Create a Mad Libs-style story (remove words and replace them with blank lines) and have a friend fill it in. Squirrels and ducks.

Make something appetizing seem unappetizing. My grandpa used to dunk almost everything edible in his tea with milk. I remember, as a child I was in disgust and in awe at the same time. And he used to tell us this joke again and again: "Don't forget to eat carrots, so you don't need to wear eyeglasses - look at the rabbits: they always eat carrots and I never saw one rabbit with eyeglasses!"  So here is a carrot rabbit dunked in tea with milk. Eeeeh! 

Make something inspired by trees. Annual rings.

Work only with blue materials today. Scuba diving in a sea of tears: "I'm blue - Scuba Di Scuba Dooo"... 🎶

Create a mosaic using cut paper. Currently no smile and order available.

Be inspired by measuring devices. This was the first thing that came to my mind: a hommage to The Undertaker. Maybe I read too many Lucky Luke comics in my life?! 

Create flip-book animation. This is how heart warming works. Find the video on Instagram! 

Work with light. Today, there is lesser light than darkness.

Make a legal graffiti. Surrounded by fossils and future fossils at the beach.

Use toothpicks as your main material today: what it feels like vs. what it actually looks like.

Use only the things you would find in a first-aid kit. A first-aid bench to sit and rest.

212 of my 365 days project (use the world of fish as your inspiration today) and Reflection Day of #creativesprint (what is one thing you learned from this experience?): I learned that I can leave the everyday grey behind and jump head first in the sea of love and creativity where a encouraging, witty and supportive  community of other sprinters awaits me. 

210 of my 365 days project (make something inside a bottle - I changed it to outside) and Day 29 of #creativesprint (revisit and revise): I chose to redo Day 25 (start something and then have someone else add to it). To celebrate the start of our vacation, @morekompensationforthisnation and I decorated a bottle with holiday plans on Post its.

209 of my 365 days project (create a package for something that is normally unwrapped) and Day 28 of #creativesprint (create a map of your heart). Since I am focusing on grief and loss in my yearlong project, I went more metaphorical today: I feel a deep sadness about things, relationships and circumstances in which my heart isn't fully in anymore. However, it isn't easy to leave just like that...

206 of my 365 days project (look at the sky after the sun goes down) and Day 25 of #creativesprint (start something and then have one or more people add on to it): everyone sees a different sky. This is a family color-boration from one end of the country to the other.

205 of my 365 days project (make a meal that doesn't look like what it actually is) and Day 24 of #creativesprint (incorporate numbers): Still counting...

204 of my 365 days project (think about a friend you haven't talked to in a while and get in touch) and Day 23 of #creativesprint (create something inspired by shadows): "Sometimes you can't run from the shadow. But you can invite it to dance." [unknown] I created a postcard to send it to my friend whom I thought of, while making this. 

203 of my 365 days project (make a map to a fictional place) and Day 22 of #creativesprint (make a work of art for a pet to enjoy): walking the dog with death in mind.

202 of my 365 days project (make something new look old) and Day 21 of #creativesprint (create an illusion of a window): The Royal Mounds in Gamla/Sweden (still on my list of the cemeteries I want to see) on IKEA box.

201 of my 365 days project (build and use eyeglasses) and Day 20 of #creativesprint (create an amazing new hairstyle). I dedicate my hairstyle to my grandma, who said  "Your hair is a mess and you look like a witch!" instead of "I love you.". The last years of her life this conversation became our little "code".

200 of my 365 days project (work with hair) and Day 19 of #creativesprint (make something while you are in a public place and leave it there for others to find). Crazy combo today... I left a little bouquet on my plate.

199 of my 365 days project (make a flag) and Day 18 of #creativesprint (learn a new word): "Eros-Thanatos-Motif" = when in literature or in other forms of art, beauty and death appear together. I am at a music festival without a lot of supplies, so something easy for today.

198 of my 365 days project (diagram a new dance step) and Day 17 of #creativesprint (camouflage something): I hid Polka steps in Polka dots. My grandma loved this kind of music - and in case you're wondering about the steps: This is how my grandma "danced" the Polka. She just sit in her chair and tapped her feet to the right and to the left. 

197 of my 365 days project (make something inspired by a mouth) and Day 16 of #creativesprint (Do something backwards). Ladies and gentleman, this is my attempt of artful vomiting, which was the first thing that came to my mind regarding the two prompts. [collage with glitter] 

196 of my 365 days project (write a ten-word fantasy story) and Day 15 of #creativesprint (create something by another sprinter's work): LOOK! THERE IS A LEMONCAKE-TREE ON MY FUTURE GRAVE! - @strawb3rrywitch (on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strawb3rrywitch/) started this month painting beautiful bottle caps and I hoped for a prompt like this to try it myself. Thank you very much, Sarah, for the inspiration! 💖🖌

195 of my 365 days project (create a monster that has never existed before) and Day 14 of #creativesprint (make something out of a disposable cup). A quick one for today (I was sitting in the train the whole day): this is a little rebellion-monster to go: if someone says you have to do something THAT WAY, it whispers in your ear: DO IT THE OTHER WAY! 

194 of my 365 days project (make something that is supposed to be walked on) and Day 13 of #creativesprint (find a unique way to say thank you to someone). What the lyrics say. 

193 of my 365 days project (built a puppet and make a performance) and Day 12 of #creativesprint (make a city skyline): "Meeeeeemoryyyyy! All alone in the mooooooonliiiiight. I can dream of the old days - life was beautiful then..." [you can find the video in Instagram]

192 of my 365 days project (make a family crest for your own family) and Day 11 of #creativesprint (turn something mundane into something exciting): my grandpa was a professional electrician - and all my folks think that this talent runs in the family...but we all had to learn the hard way, that a little bit more than talent is required when it comes to fixing electrical things (no worries: nothing really bad happened so far). 

191 of my 365 days project (use sugar as your medium today) and Day 10 of #creativesprint (select a picture and extend the image beyond its current frame): this is the memorial card for my dad's best friend combined with brown sugar and sugar sprinkles. On the front side the card says: "We can't direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails." 

190 of my 365 days project (work with [news] paper to make the biggest thing you can) and Day 9 of #creativesprint (combine two things that are usually considered opposites): I sorted out and cut some old paperwork - which also marks the end of a stage of my life. I turned the pieces of paper into scissors - at least in "Rock, Paper, Scissors" they don't go together...

189 of my 365 days project (write a limerick about yourself) and Day 8 of #creativesprint (use a collection of your own to create something): I "collect" stories of grief and currently, I am telling them in my project '365 Days: in the Mourning'. 

188 of my 365 days project (make something with your lunch before you eat it) and Day 7 of #creativesprint (find out something that happened today in history and make something inspired by it): The painter Caspar David Friedrich died on this day in 1840. So I remade his "The Sea of Ice". And Mum, if you see this: No, of course I don't eat sweets for lunch! 😱 (I ate them for dinner... 😬) 

187 of my 365days project (use a paper bag) and Day 6 of #creativesprint (incorporate pattern into what you make today): There is a pattern here! 

186 of 365 (make something quiet) and Day 5 of #creativesprint (make something using money): quiet death.

185 of 365 (work with only yellow materials today) and Day 4 of #creativesprint (create a face with only the materials you find in your purse): Sad Face. Including my hospice volunteer equipment: name tag, lighter, USB devices and something to eat in a lunchbox. 🤗

184 of 365 (the skyline of my hometown and other cities I lived in) and Day 3 of #creativesprint (something inspired by a song that makes me feel good (bittersweet feelings while listening to Adele's "Hometown Glory"). It's superweird: I am only homesick when I am on my way home. 🤔

183 of 365 and Day 2 of #creativesprint: Make a hat and wear it (the prompt for my yearlong project "365 Days: In the Mourning" about grief and loss) combined with words I can spell using only the letters in my name (prompt from Day 2). I made a hat with a veil and stiched the words "IN RAGE" in it (anagram from my name: Regina). My grandpa loved to sing and when my grandparents died, I stopped - somehow outraged about their death - the singing in public (e.g. in church or at parties) for a few years. And I wish I would have had this hat then, to give an explanation why I couldn't sing.

#Creativesprint starts today (yay 🎉) and I'll combine my 365days project with the daily prompts in May (at least I'll try). The first one was easy: Day 1 = Make something that fits in the palm of your hand and Day 182 of 365 = Work with your hands...literally. So I did a little palm reading: The story of my life first-hand (haha).

Use skeletons as your inspiration today. Ha! That was an easy one! Lets talk about the skeletons in my closet when it comes to grief and death: I think that guilt and grieving are often intertwined. And there are a lot of guilt-skeletons in my closet. One is, that I promised my great aunt that I would wash her car (I didn't really fancy doing that) and she died without her car being cleaned. - This is such a small thing after all these (fifteen) years, but see? The skeleton still rattles - or maybe it's my great aunt from above laughing at me?

Make something unseasonal. 17 years ago they found my grandfather's dead body (we reported him missing four month before that). My grandpa was a big fan of carnival - and he handed his heart for everything "carnivalesque" down to me. (only 305 days until Carnival 2019!!!)

Use seeds to make something. "Oh no! He's dead!" - apple seeds with pen on paper. 🍎

Be inspired by the world of birds. I notice a certain affinity for drawing crows lately...

Make a robot out of everyday objects. This is a remembrance robot (without cookies in the cookie box - WHY??? 😨😲)

Make somewhere indoors seem like it's outdoors. I wish at the end of my life, this would be the last thing that I see - sitting in my favorite rocking chair. 🌤

Miniaturize! This is a mini coffin for a mini spider found dead in my cupboard.

Use only kitchen tools today. The Grim Reaper.

Create a new traffic sign. This is for one way streets and for everything else in life and for life itself.

Make a book out of something other than paper. I got this in a Kinder egg and it's a magic board and it's the last page of every book. 

Work with black and white. Yin and Yang: no life without death, no death without life...

Make something unintended out of existing instructions. Um...Yes... Sorry for the (intended) absurdity.

Create a personal shelter. A few years ago someone asked me: "where can you re-energize?" And I said: "On this particular spot on my red sofa between the right and the middle seat (when you stand in front of it)!" And it is my personal shelter from distress and source of energy and good vibes until today.

Write a ten-word horror or ghost story.

Work with pencils. "Over my dead bird's body."

Make a piece of armor for everyone or everything that needs protection. This is a quick draft for headphones that not only keep noices out, but might also keep unwanted disturbances away.

Transform a piece of furniture into something other than that it's meant for. I started this a few years ago: this is the door from my grandmother's  sewing room (she was a dressmaker) - when my grandparents died I asked for that door. First I wanted to transform it into a wardrobe, but it quickly became an art gallery in my living room (with changing exhibitions ;-).

Use the wind!

Work with only the items you find in your refrigerator. This is the world's best brownie recipe - carved in the butter you need for it. I got this recipe from a friend... We always made brownies in times of despair (during exam preparations) - most of the time late at night.

Create a trap. When it is 3 am in the mo(u)rning/ at night and you can't sleep but you are too tired to get out of your bed: The bed suddenly becomes a trap in which you are caught between concerns, doubts and sad thoughts and weariness...

Make something with an old calendar. This is a calendar from 2011 (the artist is Hermann Hesse) - I got it from my aunt who died of cancer not long after that. Last weekend I found it while sorting out books and documents.

Make a kit for an activity that normally would not need one. Attending a Funeral-Kit! 

Use makeup. Cemetery stroll! Everytime I take a walk in a cemetery (it doesn't matter in which cemetery), I feel a strange attachement to that place and to the people burried there... 

And another thought: will it be weird to use the makeup again with which I painted a grave? We'll see! 

Work with homonyms today. I work with this homonym all year! 

Make something that is strong enough to support your own weight. I'm in a hotel and almost broke this thing and please pay close attention to the stylish pink socks...Living on the edge. 🤗😌 

Two night owls on a magazine basket (?). In mythology, an owl is said to be a harbinger of death...

Work with toilet paper tubes. I am so sorry! Today's prompt is really bad in every possible way (I wish today's prompt would have been "Make two bad things in one") - so, first it is a really bad joke when talking about dying. 🙈😂😱 And it is also a really unhelpful thing to say to a grieving person (or any other person). And bonus: it is also really not good, when you run out of toilet paper... On weekends...expecting guests... (another story) 😵😁

Make something inspired by fingerprints. When one feels lost and alone between the lines and going around in circles, sometimes it's good to find someone to tell you where you are and from there you can start again, trying to find the way...

Create a board game. This game is called "We're not dead yet" and it's really simple: sometimes you're at a point in your life where it is necessary to have some tea or coffee (or an Happy Hour! 🍸) with friends just to celebrate that you did survive so far... (and sometimes it is also good to remember to write your advance directive 😉).

Make something light seem heavy. Ehem...yes.

Create a Rube Goldberg machine. The title song of this machine is "Paint it Black" - the beat of the song is the rhythm in which the red door is painted black (of course). 

Make something with crayons. What would you pack in a suitcase for your final journey? I'm not sure...maybe I would prefer my handbag and everything that's in it to a suitcase?! (I am on vacation and I put only the coloring pencils in my current suitcase)

Make something on or with your nose. When you are a bereaved family member, it is like having a giant pimple on your nose: some people stop meeting you because they are afraid it is contagious, some people are staring at you without knowing what to say, and only the brave ones and empathatic enough ask: "How are you holding up with this giant pimple on your nose? How can I help?"

Make something with all utensils in your household. I spent the day on the train so the only utensils I had on hand were my hands (and my new reading matter - very subtly presented in this work 😉). Nevertheless, if you don't have anything else, you can still spread some love, can't you? Usually I try to avoid talking to other people on the train, but today there were nice people on the train and to sum it up: the saying "everyone has their own story" is very true. 

Make something purple. This is inspired by Prince's "Purple Rain", just because it is the first thing that came to my mind and someone called it a "slow-burn, red-hot emo joy". 

Make something inspired by your favorite movie. I don't know what my favorite movie is. Sometimes I'm really upset, that I don't have an answer to this question (and all the other questions everyone else seems to have an answer to). 

Visualize a word chosen randomly from a dictionary. I found the word "maccabeus" and thought "Ah, it's the beetle!" As it turned out I confused "maccabeus" with "scarabeus". So here is a scarabeus - an old Egyptian symbol for reincarnation and resurrection.  (Judas Maccabeus was a priest who led the revolt against the Seleucid Empire in Israel in the second century BC...says this really useful thing called internet)

Make something incongruous. Use an unexpected material to make something familiar. This is a feather out of chopsticks. And another quote from Max Porter's "Grief is the Thing with Feathers": "Grief felt fourth-dimensional, abstract, faintly familiar. I was cold."

Use your hands as your feed for what you do today. Clenching one's fist and some baby steps...I can relate this to the grieving process.

Inspired by taste. A few weeks ago, one of my hospice volunteer colleagues and I were discussing the most favourite meal of the guests (patients): Nothing fancy, just bread with bacon and eggs.

Make a pop up. Today: dancing on this thin line between madness and sanity... 🌈

Create a rebus. This is a Tracy Chapman Song... "I'll see the black eyed cavalcade, lights on in the morn

I'll run fast and far away, I'll run without stopping

Till heart and feet fail or until I can stand

Be and be not afraid

Be and be not afraid

Be and be not afraid to reach for heaven" 

Make something that will decay over time. Memento Mori Apple.

Make something inspired by a fictional character. So maybe he is not a fully fictional character, but anyway, here is something inspired by Mitch Albom's "Tuesdays with Morrie".

Something inspired by the mourning sky. It's a colourful grey... 

Create a life-size person using your clothes. We all know, most people die in their beds...

Make a rubbing by placing paper over rough objects and use charcoal to pick up the details. This is the imprint of the bathroom floor, where I sometimes sit and wonder what I'm doing in this crazy life. Did you notice that it looks like fingerprints?

Reinterpret your favorite childhood story. I loved that at the end of every adventure, Petzi and his friends came home and had a pancake banquet. I like the thought of having some comfort food when the going gets tough...this was yesterday's dinner. 😌

Make something surrealistic. The Valley of Tears.

Make something on your shirt and wear it today. If someone wants to talk to me, here is the first sentence of my answer. 🤗❤

Make a word out of objects in your environment. HEAVEN. People often ask me: Do you think dead people go to heaven? Do you think there is something like "heaven"? My answer is: I don't know! But if you need an honest answer, I'd say: I hope there is "heaven". Because I like the thought of a place to go to after death where it is nice weather and where it is quite and peaceful, maybe sometimes some dancing... Because why should I think that there is nothing or blackness or so, when I can imagine something nice? And I really hope that it is "low-threshold" to enter, so you don't need any membership card from a specific church or group etc. to get into! 😇

Pick a piece of music. I picked four of my favorite pieces of music - they are linked to different times of grief. 

Currency for a fantasy country. In the Land of Grief the currency is basically made of good thoughts, thoughtful words and helpful hands. 

Write a ten word autobiography. "I am a grief magnet - that is fine by me."

Mail art. Make or remake a postcard. I got this postcard from a friend it says in German: "I didn't opt for this life. I just got into it." - But yeah... There is some gratitude for that...

Something flying. This is a little butterfly. My cousin would have been 18 years old this year. He was stillborn and after all this years I still can't grasp it.

Work with triangles. This is me in a nutshell. And no, this is not me going from one extreme to another. It's more like knowing the ins and outs of both sides of this triangle and also acknowlegding that the basis of my emotions is on a spectrum between these two poles...

Make something that seems to go through a solid wall. What does it feel like to be dead? "I don't know. But it feels warm on the other side!"

Be inspired by an egg shell. "Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project." - I highly recommend everyone to read Max Porter's book "Grief is the Thing with Feathers". Not only, because it is such a great fable about grieving, but for me it was also the starting point of an unexpected in-depth conversation with a librarian in London. 

Make a working musical instrument. This is a ticking clock (turn on the sound) - transforming into a heart beat at the end. See the video here. 

Use tin foil. This is a tin foil rock. Yesterday I learned about a good metaphor for grief: grief is like a rock - it takes ages to remove that rock, and after many years it is still there and visible.

Make something in a box. I did some research... ;-)

Find the video here!

Create an animal. May I present you the rant-ant. Very furious and upset with life, people, herself, the situation, the system, the universe... This ant is armed with a baseball bat and a cannon, but mostly with an exceptionally large curse word vocabulary.

Work with wood. What if I actually LIKE to dance alone? [acrylic on wood piece].

Go out of your way and travel to a place you normally would not go. I didn't have to "travel" long distance: I usually don't go to the garden (I live in a rental flat and the garden is for everyone, so I there is the choice between garden and privacy, and I always choose privacy 🤗😁). But I remember my grandparents' garden: each of as grandchildren had her/his own row of pea vines - and we loved to plant and harvest the peas! 😍🌱

Use a map. Is it only me who never finds the graves of the ancestors when back at home?! Here is a map of the (made up) cemetery in my hometown...and: apparently there is an app (of course there is an app) which is called "find a grave" to help you find everyone.

Work with a kit of some sort. This is a kit from a Kinder egg. And because it's about a little lion, I thought about THE most devastating death in movie history... For many, it's the death of Simba's father... For me, it's more embarrassing: it was the death of the main character's best friend in "The Far Pavilions" - I cried so hard!

Make something with bread. I made a sailing ship bread in memoriam my father's best friend who died a few month ago. Today I got a letter from bis family and I realised again: I miss him - not only for my sake, but for the sake of his family and especially my dad. I can't imagine living without one of my best friends...

Red on red. Current state of mind. And contrary to what you might think it is: It's red tea in the shot glass. 

Work with paint swatch samples. I worked with 50 shades of grey. Haha. But really: this got me the inspiration for today. Lets talk about sex, baby. More precisely: Sex and death. In French an orgasm is often referred to as "the little death". A few years ago I attended a talk about "Death and Sexuality" at the "transmortale" conference in Kassel/Germany and I was delighted, that there are (female!) scientists out there who research the still tabooed topics around death. Besides, how often do we talk about death and grief in connection with sex in everyday life? Probably not THAT often...🤔😎

Facial expression from the leftovers of a meal. This is a speechless broken crisps face. Today was one of these days: One minute my co-worker and I were laughing about silly things, the next minute she got a phone call that her dad was diagnosed with cancer. So "speechless" was the facial expression of the day today...

Spill something. I spilled Chinese Writing Ink on a piece of paper and then let it run. Sad face done. 🤗

Work with dirt. I was in the train the whole day, so this is a quick one for today. The last days, I visited friends and family and I think not only my actual luggage was fully packed, but also my emotional suitcase is now full of old stories, and new stories, memories, feelings, good thoughts and sad thoughts...and I now need some time to unpack. What is old and can stay in the past? What influences my way of life until today? How can (and should) I integrate all this in my current activities and plans?... 

...In the fogged bathroom mirror. I think this is really helpful to say to someone grieving, when you don't know what to say and aren't sure whether you should get in touch with them (a familiar feeling to me): "I want to give you space and privacy, but I am also worried about you, and I want to check in with you."

Have a ball, make a ball or make something with a ball. How lonely can one be? [post it on kohlrabi] (inspired by @morekompensationforthisnation and "Cast Away" 🤗)

Buy something at a thrift store and work with it. I bought this and the rest of the jeans at a thrift store when I was about 15 years old. And I loved these trousers, because they were tattered at the legs and everyone said: You can't wear a tattered jeans to this occasion or that event! And I felt quite rebellious to wear it anyway. 😌😎 I miss that jeans. 😢😊

Optical illusions. My grandpa loved to tell jokes and was fun to talk to. When we were small children, my brother told him "Grandpa, you are fat!" and he said: "You may think it is fat, but that is an optical Illusion: I just have lots of muscles there!"

Work as if you were a young child or baby. Today I met Jonas, he is 1 year old and we played with candy wrapper: Jonas enjoyed to jumble it up, crinkle it and throw it off the table...again and again. 😌😁 I was very fascinated about his endurance and determination... And I thought about how this might be also a metaphor for grief: jumble yourself up, crinkle in pain, falling and getting up again and again...?!

Make something out of a napkin. What's in the numbers?! I went to a restaurant with my family today and we all (and the staff) still remember what my grandparents used to eat (my grandfather died over 10 years ago!): No. 306 is sweet and sour chicken and 311 is coalfish in tomato sauce. Bon appetit! 

Palindrome Day!

Open a book on a random page and get inspired. I read an article about feminists reclaiming the colour Pink... And I thought about my attempt to protest against the pressure to wear black at funerals and to reclaim my freedom to wear what I want and with what I feel most comfortable. These are some fancy designs for funeral outfits...Subtext: wear whatever you want to wear. Don't ask for permission. BUT: Make sure whatever you wear has pockets!

Make something out of an old t-shirt and take a picture wearing it. Soooo...we have to talk about grieving and society's constant pressure upon people to self-optimize and to be strong, to move forward, to take the next step...or at the very least to find comfort in calender mottos... This t-shirt is my offer of talks! 

Inspired by insects. My ideas for today were full of pictures with insects scuttling out of human bodies... But I decided to take it easy. You're welcome! 

Work with time. So in this video there is my day in 1 min. (Side note: I never took so many pictures of myself in one day. 😱🙈) I tried to capture the facial expression and emotion I actually had and felt at that moment - and not smiling or grimacing in front of the camera. What I learned about my emotions today was: my spirit went up and down, most of the day I was really tired and didn't feel very well (that sneezing,... 🙄😕😷), smiling was exhausting, and taking pictures of myself without the chance to delete them is REALLY not part of my comfort zone. 😬😱😌

An invitation to an every day event: this is the favorite cartoon of a dear friend of mine, so I thought it might be a good idea to celebrate my random survival of another monday with this still life - you are all invited to do the same (in your own way with whatever food or drinks or persons you prefer)! 🎉 🎉 🎉

Work backwards. Working in front of a mirror, painting by looking into the mirror. I call this "Conversations with dead flowers": I really tried my best to keep you alive! Was there anything I could have done to save you? Is it my fault that you died? I didn't know how to cure you! Nothing helped! I tried everything! But in the end it was too late...I could only watch you die: first you lost all your colour, you turned so pale! Then you became grey and cold...

Ask a stranger what to do today. Soooo... I don't like to talk to strangers... BUT: Strangers really like to talk to me. And on weekends I usually try to avoid that. BUT: I found a test on this really useful thing called internet. The test said "What should I paint today?" and the answer was: Black and Abstract. Please have a look at the upper left corner. I did this for a dare: leaving a space on the painting without colour! 😱😬😨💀👻

The colour orange. 

- "We just wish you could be like you were before...?!"

- "How could I???" 😓

Make something with any screws or nails lying around. I wanted to make something inspired by the Dylan Thomas quote: "Do not go gently into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light."...well...this is the art for today, I guess...🤔😐

Write a letter to your future self. This is a letter to my dying and my dead self. I hope I won't need this letter any time soon, but just in case: these are 8 pages of my current thoughts on that topic. ✌😊⏳

Use coffee. Current state: pain. [coffee grounds on envelope].

Make a piñata. Today I thought about death in comics, Anime and Manga... Not that I am an expert, but my feeling is, that death is present in all narratives, but more like a threat or at a turning point of the story...Funny that the first thing that came to my mind was "Dragon Ball Z" and the death of Son Goku (my brother watched the series). 😌😁 So this is a Dragon Ball Piñata for today's prompt. 🤗

Work with bubble wrap and other packing materials. I witnessed a car accident today and got the inspiration for this poem: "Roses are red, violets are blue. There is no such thing as ultimate protection, sorry and thank you." [bubble wrap and gift wrap]

Make something with stuff from your office. This weekend will be full of art and museums - that is why I was inspired to do a statue-like "person in grief".

Work with a candle. A quick one for today: Here's to silver linings where you least expect them! 🌈 [wax on wax].

Decorate a cake. I waited so long to do this: I made Brownies!!! And I need help to eat them! Any volunteers?  

UPDATE from yesterday's 86 of 365: I shared the Brownies with my grief councelling colleagues. We had so much fun! And I love, that they can share my sense of humour. 

Me: "Do you want a piece of this cemetery?"

Them: "Yeah, sure!"

Me: "A double grave or just a single one?"

Them: "I'm optimistic: Make it a double!" 😂😂😂 

Work with soap. I painted a portrait of my grand aunt (my grandma's sister, who actually was like a third grandmother to me) with soap on my bathroom mirror. My grand aunt died 11 years ago - she was the first person I saw dead. And the past few years a lot of questions came to my mind  about how she lived her life, whether she was happy how she lived her life...these questions never came to my mind when she was still alive! Wouldn't it be nice to know the questions you want to ask a person ten years from today? ☺

Make a visual pun. Dead inside.

Invent an utensil. So this is a very handy utensil designed for everyday use. Today is #womensmarch anniversary, so this is a quick reminder: death positivity = feminist = body positivity = fighting for a good death for all people = smashing gender roles. As Sarah Chavez said: "Us morbid girls? We're going to save the world because we'll be fearless. If we aren't afraid of death, what is there left for us to be afraid of?"

Use erasers. I carved this in a technical eraser, thinking about my grandfather who had Altzheimer's: This is a terminal disease which in the case of my family was unsettling, baffling and we all hadn't enough knowledge about it to cope with it very well... Some days it seemed, there was a giant (and sometimes a small) eraser in my granddad's head, that deleted all the required and helpful information.

Try dyeing (or die trying)! Sorry, this will be the day of the puns... 😬😂 Attention! Attention! Important announcement: We are all dyeing (sooner or later)! 😱😍🎉 [watercolour on tissue] 

Search for litter in the street. I am spending my day at the airport due to a delayed flight and I only found this stain and turned it into a snail via smartphone... The snail symbolizes the slow and often invisible steps "forward" (what is forward?) in grief.

Make up a name and write a back story for a stranger. I visited a cemetery here in Madeira (of course): this is the grave of Vito Abreu Silva - he is remembered from everyone in his village as the man who always walked his dog "Pipo" along the road from his house to the churchyard, where he sat with the other elderly men to chat or more often to just sit and watch the people walking by.

Work with shredded paper. "What has that got to do with dying or grief?" "I don't know... Nothing... Everything!"

Make something you can wear on (or in?!) your ear. "If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive." (Brené Brown). 

Use chalk. I find it ridiculous to write "I was here" on public toilets, walls, hotel beds, etc. But it was the first thing that came to my mind when thinking about what to write on the Levada wall in Madeira. And it's funny: I never think about my own death as much as I do when I'm on vacation [I don't like being on a plane for instance 😬😌] So today I was thinking about legacy and leaving something behind for others to find when I die...you know...something that says: "I was here"...

Be bold: go to a restaurant and ask what they let you do. Soooooo...I am not the bold one it seems...but I went to a restaurant and made this camp fire [egg yolk, jam, Nutella, coffee on napkin]: when I worked with young people we used to do camp fires regularly and sitting around that fire always made the young people to open up. Often we talked about grieving and death. The death of the beloved hamster, but also being a witness of a violent death...this one goes out to camp fires, brave young people and social workers who sit with them!

Use your shoes. Memento mori. [pen on Converse].

Time travel: Make something inspired by another era. As it seems, I get to sleep tonight next to a human mummy... [I'll remove it before I leave the hotel room, I promise!]

Make a puzzle. In the light of current events: It's a blessing and a course.

Make something out of paper maché. I made a big tear with the words from Antoine de Saint-Exupery on it saying: "It is such a secret place, the land of tears." 

Ten-word science fiction story with illustrations. 

Go to the grocery store and find something new to work with. I went to the tea section and found an appropriate tea for grieving people: It's called "Inner Balance". A nice thought to sip some tea and then get your inner balance back! I tried some outer balance game with spoons, too.

The classic tangram shapes. Sad man walking. Find the VIDEO here:  https://www.instagram.com/p/BdiW4a7hAk2/

Today's theme is: It's all about me. So this is a self portrait with confetti and a crow.

Make a mask and wear it. An easy one for today: I printed the most famous funerary mask in the world from Tutankhamun and cut out the eyes. Done!

Make something with your dinner today. Once asked where I get my energy from in tough times I said: "Sitting on my red sofa in that specific spot between the second seat and the throw cushion on the right side energizes me." (And eating comfort food like pasta with pesto.)

Use only things you find in the bathroom. Happy Birthday to me! Here's to a new year and to old wishes that remain unfulfilled...yet! 🍾🍷🔮🎉 [toilet paper, tooth paste, nailpolish, Q-tips]

Document a shadow. This is a shadow of the past as Joan Baez sings: "Well, I'll be damned, here comes your ghost again...". 🎶 Every now and than I wished my younger self knew more about self-protection and setting boundaries...

Combine two things that generally don't go together. My grandma used to keep her yarn in perfect order. This is why this little yellow guy is slightly embarrassed about his whereabouts. 

Use a disposable plastic bag. Today's theme is: mourning your first car. My mum's first car was a sky-blue VW Beetle. She lost it during a car accident but it still lives on in her stories...

Make something heavy seem light. In grief the only way to make something heavy seem light is to wear a mask of serenity. 

Write an advertising jingle for something in nature. Want to hire the Professional Earth Worm Team? Now available at your local cemetery!

Make something with dots. Light in the dark with dots from candle wax.

The sense of smell. A cup of coffee was the last thing my grandma wished to drink before she died. The smell of coffee is also used as basal stimulation for dying people. It is a smell that is stored well in the human brain - plus: coffee powder absorbes objectionable odour that occurs in the dying process! ☕ 

Work upside down. The hourglass usually symbolises that time is running out at the end of life...

Make something that would not normally be considered cute or cuddly into something that is. First draft of "Kitten Coffin"! 

All white. Some new Christmas tree ornaments with snow flakes. I am going "home" for Christmas to visit my family who lives at the other end of Germany - the snowy part 😉. And it's funny because I never get homesick, except for when I am going home. 🤔 So the last days I am really looking forward to seeing everyone at home. 🤗

Quantity over quality: Work with a lot of something. I have a lot of postcards - some are over 15 years old. Some are from people that are already dead, some postcards are from people I haven't spoken in years... I think I keep the postcards as mementos... 

And there is a funny story, that some years ago, a friend stayed at my house and he was very surprised that there was a postcard from Brussels on my shelf - he couldn't remember that he himself send it to me! 

How tall can you make something that stands on its own? A suitcasetower. I have this thing with inheriting the suitcases of my ancestors: The red one was my great aunt's and I still take it on vacations. The little one under the red one belonged to my grandparents who took this suitcase with them when they went on their honeymoon - it was their only luggage (!!!). 

Work with flowers. Every Christmas my mum used to buy a bouquet of snow roses for my grandma. 

What can you do with faces? A face of grief. 

Use tape today. The human heart is a fragile thing...

Make something that lights up. Are you a giver or receiver of light in the dark? 

This was a not so easy idea to realise: or to be precise, it was easy in theory but not that easy putting it into praxis - a third hand would have been great. 

Learn something new. Ask a friend for a new technique. This was the possibility to try what my friend W. taught me a few weeks ago: painting portraits with a bundle of toothpicks! Here you can see a self portrait of the artist: This is me, hiding from the world outside and the gloom inside...

Make something better out of junk mail. Collage: when everything is shattered, be on the watch for love and light in the shambles.

Think big. Big shoeprint. 17 years ago we were searching my grandfather who didn't came back from a walk. It was snowy and cold and it became unrealistic to find him alive... However we went through wind and snow for many weekends, but it was April until someone else found his body. The current weather reminds me of that quest.

Make something with yarn. Little embroidery on a patch. And a little reminder in times of grief: your rage is okay.

Make a haiku about something you did today. Cookie galore!  

"Cookies like armies 

Perfection made by grandma

Unrivelled since then."

Work underwater. Acrylic colour on the bottom of a plastic can filled with water. I had to be quick: the decay came immediately.  

The theme for today is Meat Loaf's "Not a dry eye in the house. After loves curtain comes down. Listen and you'll hear the sound. Hear the sound of a heart breaking." 🎶 I so love this head line: what a dry sense of humour! When you look around you in times of grief and heartbreak and you can't find a dry eye in the house... 

Make something with a stapler. "Friendship, that’s like home." Kurt Tucholsky. Some of you might know friendship bracelets one exchanges with friends... I have those. But I also have a friendship stapler! 💪😎🎉 (and friendship bags, friendship pins, friendship nailpolish, friendship magnets, friendship dresses...). And often, when I feel lost and I'm not sure, where "home" is, I look at these friendship signs and I'm better.

Make something old look new. This is a sewing machine pedal without and with glitter...In my theory, there is a correlation between today's date (6th of December), certain birthday girls and sewing: it was my late grandmother's birthday today and she was a dressmaker. And it's the birthday of my dear friend Fr. Kirsche who is the coolest sewcialist I know. Glitter and gold and a happy birthday to you! 

Create instructions. How to do a cemetery stroll. In 5 steps. Try it, it's easy!

Work with wire. The skyline of Grief Mountain. 

Work with pens. Me when I'm upset.

Make something ephemeral. Combining art with necessity: liquid cleanser on bath tub. 😁😎 Next week it was 17 years ago that my grandfather went missing and in April it was 17 years ago that someone found his body in the forest. My family planted a tree at the place of discovery. 🌱

Make a path. Mourning is sometimes symbolized by a labyrinth: every time you think "now I am getting out of it" - there is a turn to get you deeper into grief. Yet it might also be a symbol of coming closer to your midst (?!).

Make a disguise. Today: napkin doodeling, "grief comes in many disguises".

Use school materials. Little Laura (she's in 2nd grade) told me: "....and at Linda's funeral we had red balloons. They flew very high so Linda could see them and could catch one!" 🎈 

Inspired by a recent dream. Liberty or death: a flight through a tunnel with around 50 children, my brother and a guy called Tilman (hmmm...I don't know any Tilman)... Hello again, dear subconscious mind!

Make something portable which usually isn't. Hey Jude: "...And any time you feel the pain: Hey Jude, refrain. Don't carry the world upon your shoulder..."

Work with nature. Little flower skull.

Everything green. "When you work with (grieving) people, you are like a chameleon: You can easily adapt and change your colour, so that people feel understood, accepted and appreciated the way they are." - one of the best compliments I ever got. Find the video on Instagram! 

Something out of the recycling bin. A medieval death lantern ("lanternes des morts") out of an orange juice package and tin foil.

Make a bridge. Bridging feminism and death awareness is like being a Ninja Turtle driving a volkswagen beetle: it doesn't make sence to everybody straight away, but it does to me (and to a lot of other people, too!) ;-)

Ten word story. With illustration.

Something out of clay. "There is a body burried within us: The body of the person we wanted to be with the one we loved." [Barbara Pachl-Eberhardt]

Floating. I discussed conceptions of afterlife with a friend a few weeks ago. Is there anything at all? Would we call it heaven?... One can discuss this endless because as a matter of fact (or in this case: no fact) we don't know it. But I think: if we don't know it, we can choose what helpes us put our minds at rest: For me it is helpful to think about a nice place (maybe with a bench where you can sit and chat) rather than to think about the great void, etc.

Make something with what you find in a car. "Call me. Something's happened." A short message from my parents that gives me the creeps: The last time I got that message almost two years ago when my grandma died. I grabbed my satnav, got a rental car and drove all the 7 hours to my hometown. 

Make something that goes over an eye. Rainbow.

Make a unique print. Inspired by the poem "Gone from my sight" from van Dyke: I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.

I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side.

And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone," there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...

Make something with paper currency. I started folding the banknote like this and remembered the night after my grandparents died, I dreamt about them standing like shadows in front of an open door looking at me...It was like a last greeting...In these instances I am very thankful for my subconscious mind... ;-)

Make something microscopic. The last days I thought about these tiny moments of freedom in the grieving process: laughter without feeling guilty, enjoying the sun and good music without feeling sad, going out with friends and actually having fun, being alone and not feeling lonely...

Make something with tea (bags)/ inspired by tea. I remember working with people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. One woman told me that one day she got really upset and overwhelmed with her feelings at a train station and she said she couldn't understand the reaction of the policeman who found her: "I was so upset and crying and that police officer brought me a cup of tea?! What was he thinking???" - I tried to explain the making of tea as a social ritual: trying to comfort oneself and the other person when you're not really sure what else to do (and when you know you can't do anything else!).

Camouflage something. Done it myself too often...

Use your nondominant hand. I listened to "Green fields of France" and "the Band played Waltzing Matilda" and the theme for today was found: Grief and war. I painted this with my left hand... I remember both my grandfathers used to paint with (and favored) their left hand (however they had to learn to write with the right hand in school). 

Next weekend I'll attend a workshop about grief and wartime children, I guess this triggered some thoughts...

Use only water. Diving in sadness. [water on cleaning rag]. See the Making-of video on Instagram.

Make something with your breakfast. I went a bit Wehrli ("The Art of Clean Up") this morning. But here comes my all time favourite muesli-metaphor in times of grieving: Grieving is like a muesli - lots of stuff you just eat because it's in it, some really odd looking things you're not sure they're REALLY healthy,... and you have to digg deep to maybe (and it doesn't happen every day) find a piece of chocolate or another good thing!

Transform an old book. I learned today: I really really can't cut into a book. But I did some sewing and hung the book on my lamp... I found this old copy of "Dead Poets Society" - a story full of grief and loss and guilt and anger but also full of love and admiration and about good teaching (!) and of course poetry. And I felt I should do some standing-on-a-desk today while reciting Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived." 

Make a stencil. This stencil says "mourning" and is shaped like a tear. I tried it on a shirt with textile colour and on a wall with spray paint which did not turn out well. The next stencil I make will be with more space between the letters! :-)

Make something out of the first fruit or vegetable you see in the kitchen. This is a very ecofriendly banana coffin for day 6. I am not very pleased with the outcome, but think I just go with it and take it as an exercise in unperfectionism. ;-) 

Make something with a collection: The broken one.

Take a 5 minute walk outside and create something with materials you found on your way. Grieving sometimes feels like walking a tightrope.

Experiment with paper without using scissors, glue, etc. Home and heart. Out of pages retrieved from the magazine of the (German) Federal Agency for Civic Education. I thought about losing home ("Heimat" in German) and making knots to memorize everything one had to leave behind. When I made the knot I saw that it resembled a heart...

My favorite animal: The grey haron. I find it comforting when I see one. 

Head and heart.

Ehem... I got a little overwhelmed with the thought of 365 days ahead. And I did, what I always do, when I get that feeling: I made a list. But I really don´t want to be too rational during this project, instead bring rational thoughts in line with my instincts and emotions. One can draw a parallel between that and dealing with loss and grief...