There is just a few weeks until Halloween when Zombie Fight or Flight's (a collaborative card game where player work together to get to safety) Kickstart will launch, and CLE BC's Negotiation Skill for the Zombie Apocalypse will use use the zombie metaphor and Zombie Fight or Flight to reach real work negotiation skills in a continuing education course for lawyers. As I'm working on preparing for both projects, my zombie related supplies have completely overrun my pysanky studio.
Pysanky, also known and Ukrainian easter eggs, is a folk craft in which eggs are written on with melted wax and dyed, in a resistance method similar to batik (the wax is later removed). It is a tradition I learned from my mother, who was taught her father and grandmother. Both my mother and I like to explore nontraditional designs.
And so before I could do anything else today, I reorganized my pysanky studio to make room for the zombies. Now, it includes my library of zombie and negotiation books that I used as reference to the zombie survival guide/course materials I am drafting. Red, greens and black paints are at the ready for painting zombie heads and hands as props for zombie events. Zombie figurines and finger puppets line the shelves.
Before I got "back to work" I let my self get out the watercolors and ink for some quick zombie "art," I hand tinted/ Zombie-fied a "pretty lady" from a vintage calendar. And used a homemade feather quill, I play with handwritten typography. I also put on display the Halloween pysanky I made a few years ago. I did not varnish those eggs, and so the color has faded one the chicken ones. They look old and spooky. The duck ones have also aged, the dye is still richer, and they look spooky as well.
I'd love to devote completely devote the next few weeks to see how far I can go creatively with the zombies in my studio. But with lots of deadlines, I need to balance my fun with getting things done.
