Hello friends. Wow. Crazy times, huh? When I was in India just six weeks ago I couldn’t have imagined that this is where we’d be now. At home, washing our hands dozens of times per day, office closed, masks, gloves, home schooling, news intensifying every day. It’s bananas, and surreal, and, yes, scary.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how can I be of service to my community at this time. I’ve had lots of people ask if we at Jungalow will pivot to making masks, but because we are a design studio, and not manufacturers, we don’t have the infrastructure to support that effort. (But kudos to all the folks who are able to!)
After some deep introspection, I feel like the best way for me to be of service during this time is to share as many ideas as possible of how to make your home a joyful, serene, healthy, sanctuary for you and your family, as well as fun, creative ideas and activities that you can do at home to stay inspired and productive. Which, doesn’t sound that different from how I describe my ‘regular’ job that I do on the day to day — my books, products, our social media content and everything here on the blog was designed for that very purpose. But now, in these trying times, my personal mission seems more important than ever. Helping folks reconnect with nature in their homes, expressing our creativity, and having fun at home can heal– and we all need some of that in our lives right now, huh?
Face The Foliage, a open creative project I started about eight years ago, (now the Instagram is lovingly curated by Sister Golden Shop ) and is one of the many creative projects I jumped back into in the last couple of weeks while at home. The basic idea is to go outside and forage some leaves, twigs, flowers, seed pods etc. and then bring them home and arrange them into portraits. I love this project so much because it costs no money, people of all ages and abilities can have fun with it, and it’s 100% compostable at the project’s end. I also wholeheartily believe that it is a therapeutic activity.
Creating new portraits, after some time of not practicing was a very illuminating experience for me. I have been on a single-line-drawing kick for a few years now, and that practice of drawing faces without picking up the pen from the paper influenced my new Foliage Faces. While out in my yard, I picked some nasturtium, and used mostly the stems to create a ‘line drawing’ Face the Foliage situation.
Anyway, I guess my point here is that now is a good time to revisit old projects — we’ve grown and changed over the years and how we do things now may look different from the last time we tried them. Now is a perfect time to put pen to paper, to write, draw, doodle and dream. Now is a great time to cleanse our homes and ourselves, rearrange our furniture and see if we can make it work better for us. Maybe we have time to paint, fill bouquets with freshly picked flowers, mend the clothing in that “needs mending” pile, dust off the leaves on our plants, repot the ones that are root-bound.
You can get more ideas for how to spend this time creatively and constructively through our newsletter (the Junga-lowdown). And while we may not be able to make masks, perhaps we can help shield you from bad vibes or boredom, help you to cleanse, rearrange and exercise your creativity at this time.
With love and prayers of healing to all in need of it
~Justina