Did you know that Sunday, September 21 is International Day of Peace? Check this out to learn exactly what this is all about.
You may also already know this, but 2008 marks the 50th birthday of the Peace Symbol.
Together with licensing partners Books Are Fun, I created this note-card set commemorating that birthday, my Little Messages of Peace.
The coordinating patterns were super-fun to design, but for me this project was so meaningful because the designs came truly from my heart, the words and images spilled onto the paper from deep inside me...more so than most projects I work on.
Little Messages of Peace includes 12 different blank note-card designs in 3 decorative boxes, each box with a title theme: Imagine, Dream, and Peace.
For those of you not familiar with Books Are Fun, they are a direct marketer selling products through school and corporate book fairs and online. These are truly the highest quality product, every detail is manufactured perfectly...the box-flaps open and close smoothly with a handy magnetic clasp; the color reproduction, the paper and print quality, top-knotch; even the interiors of the envelopes are decorated with my designs...every inch is covered and beautifully done. I love these cards, and I hope you will too! If you don't already have a Books Are Fun representative, you can contact them to find out more.
Also, big news (well, to me it's sorta big)! I finally finished setting up my Etsy store...and the first prints I will be featuring are (you guessed it) my Little Messages of Peace.
They are available as 11 X 14" and 18 X 24" prints. More prints and goodies will be coming soon...
When you have time, definitely check out the Happy Birthday Peace website, there is a neato gallery where people from all over the earth have shared (and you can, too) their versions of the Peace Symbol, videos, and a blog. Also, if you've never visited, be sure to visit Yoko Ono's interactive online peace event, Imagine Peace. This is an amazing e-book you can truly lose yourself in, a beautiful worldwide tribute to John Lennon and his dream for peace. Really, you ought to check it out. And I do hope you join me, as one of the Little Messages of Peace designs says: "pray for peace, imagine peace, live peace, dream peace, be peace."
Happy Peace Day everyone. One last thought, a quote from the IDP website: International Day of Peace is also a Day of Ceasefire – personal or political. Take this opportunity to make peace in your own relationships as well as impact the larger conflicts of our time. Imagine what a whole Day of Ceasefire would mean to humankind.
Here's wishing each and every one of you real peace on every level, on this and every day!
PPS (Peace post-script!) added on September 22nd: Strangely (or maybe not) on Peace Day yesterday I was blessed to be the recipient of a random-act-of-kindness from a stranger, a true act of peace.
The kind gentleman who found (in the street, in the dark, on a rainy night) Husband-Guy's mega-phone (not like the big-horn-for-yelling-at-crowds kind of megaphone, but mega in that it has way too many keys...the entire alphabet and then some, and so many functions that require you to poke it with a stick because mere fingers are just too big) dried it off, figured out how to use the blasted thing (with the help of a teenager I understand) found "home" on it and called the number, kindly allowed me to come to his home to retrieve it...he may have known the significance of such an act on that particular day, but would have done it, I'm sure, whatever day it was.
As I scrambled to get dressed (was already watching TV in my jammies when the call came) and scurry out of the house to drive to the address scrawled on a post-it, I ran into my office wishing I had something to give him in return. What does one give someone who kindly saves a very expensive electronic gadget with one's husband's entire life programmed into it? A giant plate of freshly-baked cookies? A generous cash reward?
Not having either of those close at hand, I grabbed the first thing I saw...the Little Messages of Peace card set still on my desk after photographing it the other day for this post. I hesitated for a second, realizing it's my last set and wondering if that was a weird thing to give a stranger...but without a better idea scooped it up and ran out of the house, found his address in the dark, and ultimately shared a short yet warm, grateful, positive moment with a complete stranger who I may never see again in my life.
Upon returning home it hit me...that is what this day was about, and what true peace is about. Humans sharing random acts of kindness, to put down our arms (literal or figurative) long enough to connect with one another (too easy to forget how to do this).
Thank you, kind-stranger-who-stepped-on-a-phone-in-the-street, for the obvious...but also for reminding me what I've really been talking about all this time.