“Put yourself in the way of beauty.”

That line from Wild by Cheryl Strayed has stuck with me since not reading the book and seeing the film last winter. It’s uttered by the mom character played by Laura Dern (wasn’t she SO good?!) as she watches a sunrise with her kids. I like sunrises, too, but what I like even more are glossy fashion magazine images. Which brings us to this attempt at beautifying my “home office,” which, let’s face it, is really a glorified nook in my apartment. Eye-popping pics have been imbedded in my head since my pre-teen days when I would devour copies of Sassy, Mademoiselle and Seventeen from cover to cover. And I loved me a collage project. Carefully choosing and clipping out images, preserving their beauty, melding them together with other shots that spoke to me without saying a word. But I didn’t just want to read magazines, I wanted to create them. I had no idea what  that meant at the time, but somehow with a combination of luck and hard work I found my way into that world. I still get a thrill from paging through the latest issue of too-many-titles-to-list-here magazine. And clearly I still love a lil’ cut and paste project. You never know when you might turn the page and find a wall-worthy image staring back, when a bit of beauty will put itself in your way.