Show & Tell with Mel Sunday

Okay - so many of you will probably think this is a cop out! (Or maybe not) I'm going easy route here and show off my new header for S&T (I still think that sounds a little sordid). The awesome and creative Calliope is responsible for the new look around here and on my other blog. (Warning: the link will take you to the other site - bear in mind it is very kid-centric, though the header is worth the click!).

First off - Calliope was FAST! I added my name to the long list of bloggers queuing up for her services and anticipated a wait - she emailed back in less than 24 hours; two days later, the new headers were up. Secondly - Calliope listens to you and gets a sense of you and then comes up with ideas for your new header. Lastly - she is sweet as can be and very patient (especially since I think I was a bit of an email "tweak this and that" pest. She completely nailed the header for my other blog pretty much right off the bat. With this one I struggled a bit. She incorporated all the things I was thinking and mentioned first - color, art, style - but it just wasn't right yet. So, I mentioned one thing to her - just a something that I had forgotten, but then remembered. Years ago in the thick of it all, I wrote a poem called "Handprint on my Heart". That is what I use to call the effect of my losses on me. The poem was cheesy and definitely doesn't show any true literary promise or talent for anything other than the ability to rhyme (I will only post it if you really beg me and then bribe me with lots and lots of chocolate, Mel's fudge or something, I'm really not that much of a poet) but hey, it was for cathartic purposes. A friend had sent me a pendant that depicted this idea for my 6th loss and after emailing those four words to Calliope - "handprint on my heart", I went hunting for the pendant. I was going to scan it and send it to her.

This is the pendant:

As you can see from the header that graces this blog above, this is what Calliope came up with. She sent me a sample header literally as I was attaching the scanned pendant to an email I was sending her. Like I said - she is awesome. She managed to capture the essence of what it was I was looking for, even when I couldn't articulate it completely (or at all) at times - she listened and caught me dead on. I could go on and on about all the things I love about this header - the handprint and heart of course, but also the ripples behind the title and the blurry water color effect, the colors - so much symbolism I see there on a personal level. When I opened that header up the first time - I teared up. The header she created for my other blog caused me to laugh, she captured us so perfectly there as well.

So yes, I'm showing off my Calliope created header art today. About 2 dozen of the visitors counted in my visitor counter are mine - just coming back to look at that header!