She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.

I've been busy working on my BFA thesis, enameled dioramas, jackelope marionettes, recreating the Pony Express, and redoing my blog design while also working on a design for my sister, Ciara's blog.

Needless to say, I live in my studio. More or less. I love Fiber for giving me this spacious studio with plenty of room to make marvelous things. So while I have ink and tracing paper on my desk, I have an in-progress word map on my wall, paper doll pieces on my floor, and a thermos of broccoli soup by my side. And it's still neat and tidy. Or so I think.

Today I finalized Ciara's blog design. Well, finalized for now. Unfortunately I am very busy. And it's difficult to design when she hasn't posted anything yet. It's ok, though. She promised she'd update tonight.

I went into this knowing that it would be mostly original writing, mixed with personal entries and some posts about inspiration elsewhere. And knowing that Ciara is a bookworm. Her title she picked was from The Secret Garden. I still think of her as Mary Lennox, and she still thinks of me as Sara Crewe. Mary Lennox wore a red hat and Sara Crewe wore a green dress. So while working on our designs, I wanted them to correlate, and to at least mean something to us as sisters. So her color scheme features this rich autumn red, and mine is a lovely clover green. The links on the side (which, when you hover, reveal that they are pages titled About, Original Writing, Inspiration, Personal, and Links), are quotes taken from the novel as well.

Everything is animated a little bit, including this photo on her About page. Which I so graciously filled in. Ha. Ciara started college this year. She's studying creative writing. So her blog will be filled with beautiful words and wonderful thoughts. She also writes music. So maybe she'll post some of that as well. I sure hope so. She did the music for this animation of mine, after all.

So go take a look. And be sure to comment and tell her that her stories changed your life. Because I'm sure they will.