About seven weeks into near-total isolation, I decided I needed a new creative project. My usual sketching felt uninspired, probably because I had stopped going anywhere new. So I pulled out some piles of old magazines and cleared the kitchen table for tearing, cutting, and glue-sticking to make a few batches of postcards to send to friends and family. I corralled clippings of tablescapes, vistas, and travel photography and brought them all together with some patterned golden columns that lined the pages of a Travel + Leisure feature. Here’s the series mid-assembly:

The first batch I made had no rhyme or reason to it: a mix of cartoons from old New Yorker covers, prosciutto platters, seascapes, and billowy fabric photographed from above. But I was experimenting with scale, with what to crop and what to include, and most importantly, with the idea of creating something new.

In this small creative act, I felt myself reclaiming some of the most aspirational images I’d clipped of exclusive places and luxurious things I’d never own or see. They transformed from marketing images to mailbox brighteners, repurposed as cheery, bite-sized vessels of hope—a friendly greeting in a dark time.

What did I learn? That I cannot resist certain color combinations: lime green, deep blue, teal, chartreuse, and poppy reds. That it’s okay to experiment if (and especially if) you have no idea what the end result will be—trust in the process and it will reveal the way. That I shouldn’t underestimate the healing, meditative process of making things.

And that it was worth it, and continues to be worth it, to save all those old magazines for “someday.”