Words, Words, Words - An Introduction to B.E.D.I.S.

Above all else in the world, I love working with my hands.  I love the click-clack of keyboard keys beneath my fingers.  I love the feel of kneading clay.  I love pulling things apart and putting them back together in some new way.  I'm just really terrible about taking the time to do it.

So, in an effort to really focus on these things, I introduce to you my latest undertaking, B.E.D.I.S.:

A lot of people talk about Spring as their season of renewal, but for a lot of reasons (namely that my face explodes into a fleshy mass of inflamed mucosa), I don't feel the same way.  Autumn is instead that season for me.  The sweltering months of Summer are ending, students are coming back to school, and of course, it helps immensely that I am an Autumn-baby.

That said, I'm really doing this on a whim.  In an effort to get back to blogging more regularly, my friend, SJH (who will also be joining me on this sojourn at his blog, A Tree in Wind) recommended I do a NaNo-type event where I spend an entire month blogging.  Instead of attempting a word count of 50,000, instead, I will write up a new post every day.  While it would be easy enough to just spit out some blah, I'm going to attempt to actually put substance into each post, as I would for any normal entry.  That means a comic, a project, picture-posts, and maybe an essay or a short story.  Who knows.  I can't say I really planned any of this out, but either way, the rest of you get to enjoy the train wreck it becomes.

Anywho, to kick this off, I thought I'd share a little something that I've been working on that is sort of in the spirit of this first post.  A little mix of art, words, and beginnings.

Ghetto plant is ghetto.

For those of us who aren't expert horticulturists, that is the sprout of Pyrus pyrifolia, more commonly known as the Asian pear, or one of those most delicious fruits on Earth.  I started growing this at the beginning of the summer, and while it seems healthy enough, its growth seems to have stunted.  My hypothesis is that the container I currently have it in is just too small, so I decided to upgrade it to....

An old Chinese takeout container.

Yeah, I know.  I really know how to splurge.  Hear me out, though.  I wanted a see-thru container because I was interested in watching the root formation once the apical meristems started reaching out from the center because, you know, nerd.  However, I don't really trust glass in my household because, you know, klutz, so I opted for plastic instead, and this fit the bill.  I wasn't really content to let it just look like a gross old wonton soup container, though, so being me, it got a little crafty in these here parts.

Originally, I was just going to hand-paint the entire thing, but after seeing this on Pinterest, I thought I'd try something similar-ish.  My plan was to decoupage a short passage about flowers onto the sides, using tea-stained paper, then decorate with ribbon and some other odds 'n ends lying around in my craft box:

And because I am a narcissist, the passage is an excerpt from
my own book.

It looked... ok at this point, but it really felt like it was missing something.  I then thought of some rubber stamps I randomly purchased a year ago in a dollar bin:

I slapped some red paint on them and went to town:

And, of course, because I am a child, I decided to stamp everything in sight, even the lumber:

Why do I have wooden boards just lying around?
Seriously - do you not know me by now.

Ultimately, this was the end result:

The soil adds a neat dark backdrop to the print

The plant, is of course, hilariously dwarfed by the rest of the pot, but if my hypothesis was correct, that will hopefully change in due time.  Of course, I have no hope of it ever bearing fruit, but just the sprout adds life to my dull apartment.  Already, it's standing straight on its own, which is a vast improvement.  Like me and this crazy month of blogging, this little plant is just starting out.

Here's to hoping I didn't accidentally kill it.

Until the next.