mini art journal challenge: weeks 50, 51 and 52!

Yeeeeesss!!! I made it, I got through this challenge!
It feels really nice to have stuck to making a card a week (well at least in theory, some weeks were more productive than others!), and at the same time I'm glad it's over. What do I take from this whole year of "art for art's sake"? Well, I'd like to keep making some kind of art, just for my selfish self. Now that I've achieved this goal, I'd like to set another of setting aside an hour a week for doing the same but different: painting, collage, making, sewing... Let's see what comes out of that!

Week 50: "The greatest gift". I took me a while to come up with something, shows that all these material gifts get forgotten pretty quick! Living far from family and friends, for me the greatest gift is having a loved one close by. My mum came over from France to stay with us for 2 months a couple of months back, to help me with the transition of going from one to two children. What a great help she was and how nice to have her to ourselves for two whole months. Tahi was in heaven, he loved all the attention and they bonded so well, it was beautiful to watch. She's very attached to her home sweet home, has her habits and  most of all likes tidiness. Needless to say she wasn't in her element at our house, and probably felt homesick more than once. She never said anything, but knowing this made me appreciate her stay even more. A great gift.

Week 51: "Made me think of you". Okay, this one had me stuck for weeks. I almost didn't finish the challenge because of this card. You'd think I come across dozens of things that remind me of people everyday, being so far away and all. Couldn't think of anything. My mind would go blank like I was back at school sitting a test. Anyway, in the end, I decided that the madeleine of Proust was more my style. My grandma used to make this beautiful chocolate mousse that made my mouth water at the thought of it. She passed away a while ago now, but I still remember the taste of her mousse. Unfortunately I lost the recipe and I've never tasted one that was quite the same. the recipe on the card is the one I currently use that makes a beautifully rich chocolate mousse.

Week 52: "Art". My last card! I had great fun making it, that's what art is about!

mini art journal challenge: weeks 49

This week's challenge: "time flies!". At a super sonic pace at the moment I might add. Miro is already 6 weeks old, I can't believe it's gone so fast! I always thought it sucked a bit to be growing old but now that I've got kids I'm actually looking forward to it and watching them grow, and hopefully watch my grand kids too! (am I getting a bit ahead of myself here?). The koru (the unfurling frond of a fern) represents that idea of life cycle so well... I also added some numbers which represent my age at significant stages of my life (I'm not sure the last sentence is entirely clear!).

mini art journal challenge: weeks 48

This week's challenge: "Ideas". Well, I don't know about you, but I feel like my head's always full of ideas... it's just finding the time to to bring them to life that's hard! My inspiration can come for very random places, which is why I chose to remind myself to keep my brain busy! Read books, observe my surroundings, live in the moment and cast a candid eye over everything!

mini art journal challenge: weeks 46 and 47

Week 46: "rejuvenation". I feel like I definitely need some of that! Traveling is a great way to relax and see things from a different angle for me, and since Tahi was born I feel we haven't done that enough. apart from the occasional trip to Wellington for Josh's work, we haven't been out of Gisborne much. We spent two days and one night up the coast at some friend's farm, and we all loved it. So I'll be looking forward to some more of that!

Week 47: "Your happy place". I kind of already journaled about that on week 40's card, so I deviated from the theme a bit and the "happy place" idea became my "place to escape". Even though there is no physical place, books have always been a great escape for me. I love reading a good book and feeling like I am there, part of the story and living it. I used to lock myself in the toilet for hours when I was younger, and every now and again I tend to linger in there with a book or magazine in hand. Tahi seems to show the same interest in books, and both Josh and I are glad he does. He can remember phrases from a book after having read it a couple of times, and often I can hear him repeat whole phrases while playing with his toys. It's so cute!

mini art journal challenge: weeks 43, 44 and 45

I've managed to catch up on my weekly cards, here they are!
Week 43: "sCaRy!". If there's one thing that's always given me the chills and made me shiver, it's cockroaches.
They render me completely helpless, I can't even move my arm to kill the damn thing!
I remember being really scared to go to the toilet at night as a kid because I thought cockroaches would crawl up from inside the toilet bowl... yuk!

Week 44:"Home". As I've mentioned in an older post, we would  like to build an earthship one day. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, a simple google should enlighten you.

Week 45: "Self realization". I wasn't too sure about his one, so I don't know if there's a real message in this card!

mini art journal challenge: week 42

I just realized I still haven't posted a card,  even though I made it a couple of weeks ago (and I still haven't finished last sunday's one either). I've been lying low all week, my mum arrived from France (yay!) and caught the flu en route (boo!). She was very sick for 2 days then gradually got better. Unfortunately I managed to get it too, and have been feeling pretty tired and low in energy.
Week 42: "Grateful week". That one was easy, or almost. On some days I found myself wondering what I could be grateful for! Obviously I need some practice!

mini art journal challenge: weeks 40 and 41

Wow, I can't believe I'm almost at the end of this challenge.
week 40: "Not anymore". Ok, so we all grow up, mature, change... but I can't really say I am not something anymore. I see myself today as the result of my past experiences and what I've lived through. Sure, I've had good and bad moments, days, years. I am ashamed to think back on some memories, others I love to think back on, but really, everything I've been through so far in my life has made me who I am today. So instead of saying some part of me is "not anymore" I'd say that the present is the sum of our past experiences.

Week 41: "Magic carpet:. Again, this week's challenge has been so well timed with what I am going through at the moment. If I'd been asked where I would go if I had a magic carpet at any time in my adult life up until recently, I would have had a million destinations lined up. Right now though, I just feel like being here, at home. A few weeks back I was having a lie down on a rug in our garden, while Tahi had a nap, and I felt so at home, so cosy, so happy and content. I am five weeks away from my due date now, and all I want is the peace and quiet of our home (even though the kitchen and bathroom are still at the building site stage). I feel like this baby wants to be born here. For once in my life, I don't want to be anywhere else than where I am now!

mini art journal challenge: weeks 38 and 39

Week 38: "I wonder...". This is the last stretch of my pregnancy, and we chose not to find out what we were having, so the only thing on my mind at the moment is "what" this baby is! I love surprises, but the waiting is killing me. Up to recently, I thought it could well be a girl (or maybe I really want it to be a girl!). Now I'n not too sure. Whenever we ask Tahi, he says it's a boy. A couple of weeks ago I had a vivid dream: I was giving birth, a natural birth (yay!) by the sea, alone. I held the baby and then there was this close up of the genital: it was a boy! It doesn't get much clearer than that as far as premonitory dreams go... (or maybe it's the baby telling me something!).

(Flea is the nickname we gave the baby)

Week 39: "Someone spesh". It had to be my best friend, my sister, my childhood accomplice. We've known each other since we were kids, we grew up in the same town, went through teenage hood and then adulthood side by side. We've gone separate ways, she lives in Germany with her husband and I live in New Zealand with my (expanding) little family, but whenever we see each other, it's like nothing's changed. I am lucky, we only grow up once, and childhood friends are unique, you can't replace them.

Whenever I think of my best childhood friend, I have this song that pops up in my head (like in movies), it's a song we used to listen to a lot, and it was "our" song...

mini art journal challenge: weeks 36 and 37

It's been very interesting doing this challenge (and trying to stick to it!), I've found quite a few of the weekly themes related closely to my personal situation at the time. It's never been so true with the card for week 36. The theme was "strength". It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do, but I knew it would resonate.
When I was pregnant with Tahi, I got this condition called obstetric cholestasis. We only found out I had it the day before Tahi was born, and it kind of triggered a series of events that made my birth experience a bad one, or rather a non eventful one since it ended up being an emergency cesarian. I have to add that on top of that Tahi was breech, and even though we were ready and willing to have a vaginal breech birth (call me crazy), the obstetricians wouldn't have a bar of it.
Anyway, three years later and pregnant again, I knew it was highly likely I'd get cholestasis again, and I was wasn't looking froward to the complications it involved. It is considered "high risk" and as such has to be supervised by obstetricians and specialists. Since my first experience of a highly medicalized birth wasn't that great, I am willing to avoid having to deal with hospitals and doctors as much as possible.
When my liver functions came back high, I found it hard to think positively. I'd felt it coming back a few weeks before and had started taking some herbal remedies and watching what I ate (I'll get into more detail in a future post). Josh was away working in Wellington and I was on my own with Tahi, cycling everywhere since we only have one car. I was pretty tired (still am actually!). I knew this card had to help me keep my head cool. I think this is my favourite card so far. I stuck it on our computer, so I see it everyday and it really uplifts my spirits. Just for this card, I'm glad I started this challenge and managed to stick to it (so far!)!

I painted the card with yellow and red paint then cut out a fabric butterfly and sewed it on the card. I also sewed a cross I cut out of some nice paper I had, then stuck on a yin and yang sign, a tree and a foetus wearing a high hat (!). I used an alphabet ruler to write the words "believe" and "be positive".

Week 37 also helped upflift my mood: "life is beautiful". Nothing like looking at what's positive in your life to help you feel better. I realized I am pretty lucky to live the life I am living, sometimes I feel like I'm living on a little fluffy white cloud. I am blessed, in a lot of ways. And I am still two months away from my due date, which means I've got that much time to try and minimize the seriousness of my cholestasis (which I have managed so far!).

I cut out a drawing of a girl out of a magazine, then used some purple stars from some wrapping paper I've had for years (yes I'm a hoarder). I cut some strip out from a purple balloon left over from Tahi's birthday and finally sewed a cute blue heart shaped button.

On this note, I would like to wish everyone a very merry Xmas, filled with joy and happy moments with loved ones. We started this little family tradition of planting a tree (instead of killing one!) at this tiem very year. So tomorrow we'll be planting a Tahitian Lime and a Kefir Lime in our garden!

mini art journal challenge: weeks 30 to 35

Yes I am still doing my weekly cards! I didn't have a camera for so long this challenge seems to have fallen into a vortex. Anyway, I'm so far behind I won't comment much on them, just let the visual do the talking.

Week 30: "Count your blessings". I wanted it to look like these scrolls you can see hanging in buddhist temples.

Week 31: "No regrets". All I could think of was this french singer Edith Piaf, who sang a beautiful song about not having any regrets. I tried to draw her face from a photo, onto a background of a stone wall. Not exactly her but close enough! (watch the song here)

Week 32: "Quiet"

Week 33: "10mn". I thought I'd do better, this card is pretty plain an uninteresting.

Week 34: "Ha ha". Ok, so with this card I realized my drawing skills need to be polished, hopefully my sense of humour is alright though! Hair salons in New Zealand seem to like names involving a play on words, like a good laugh will make your hair shinier or something!

Week 35: "Draw something". Same comment as above. I tried to draw a water lily...

mini art journal challenge: weeks 25 and 29

Week 25 was "a photo that means something to you". Since I don't use my film camera that much anymore and we use a little digital camera instead, I chose one that was taken with the said digital and it took me ages to sort out the printing side of it. But here it is. One photo, no need to comment I think...

Week 29: "Define perfection". I can't see anything more perfect than nature. I have so many times been in awe of what nature can produce and how everything seems to have its own purpose, from the smallest microbe to the cycle of life itself. Nothing is wasted, everything has its place and the slightest change can bring everything off balance. Have you ever looked closely at an orchid or any other flower? There's millions of years of trial and error, natural selection to get to what we see, smell, taste and hear today. In my world, nature knows best.

I used a photo of a flower taken from a magazine, then cut out some letters from another picture and used a silver paste type pen to make the contour.

Mini art journal challenge: weeks 27 and 28

I'm back, but only for a short while. Josh is going back to Wellington for work in less than three weeks. Better get busy posting!

Catching up on some cards, here are the last two.

Week 27: "Junk mail". We all get it, and we all know it piles up no matter how much we try to limit it. I hate it, I can't help thinking about landfills whenever I have something that is going in the bin. I try to throw away as little as possible and reuse most junk, but the truth is, it will end up in a landfill at some stage, I'm just buying it more time. A friend told me recently about a guy in the South island who came up with a machine that can turn plastic into bricks, what a great invention! Read more about it here.

Here's what I came up with.

Week 28: "Goal of the week". That one was easy to come up with, since we were away for a couple of weeks and the garden was really in need of a makeover! This being spring and all, everything is growing at a faster rate and it is the time to get the garden ready for summer. So a lot of work! Luckily my little helper was here and we had a week of good weather (followed by a terrible one). Still a lot to do, but getting there. Over the week end, we all went for a mission to the beach to get some seaweed and sand, and we've got a new horse next door, so Tahi and I will soon be going there with the wheelbarrow to pick up all his poos!

I used an old dishwashing glove and cut strips which I sewed onto the card to give a grassy effect to my card. Then I sewed some colored buttons to represent some flowers!

mini art journal challenge: week 24

This week's prompt: "remember when...".
I was stuck for a few days. All the memorable memories I can think of are ones I've already journaled... And then i tried to think back to before I started journaling, or maybe things I wouldn't have thought worth journaling at the time.
My brother and I used to travel a lot when we were kids. Our dad worked and lived in Hong Kong and he would take some time off to go on holiday with us. So we ended up jet setting around the world, going to big sky stations, staying in flash hotels and dinning out every day.This may sound pretty cool but when you're 10 you just want to be a normal kid who goes camping with their family somewhere you can get to by driving for a couple of days max.
At holiday time, we became UMs, or Unaccompanied Minors. We were experts at traveling by plane. We knew most major airlines, which ones were more comfortable, what goodies you could get, what the food was like. Most importantly, we stuck together. My brother and I were on our own, we only had each other and that drew us closer. We had some good laughs, an extensive repertory of private jokes and we hardly ever fought!
So this week's card is dedicated to my dear brother and our traveling adventures. I made a UM flight pouch (by memory), in which I will slip my card. We are in Wellington this week and the next and I think I forgot to pack my stash of cards... So phase two of this card will have to wait til I get back. This will involve a bit of writing, maybe some drawing on the card.

The pouch was made with some thick white paper, and colored in with an orange pencil. I used a piece of wool make the handle.

mini art journal challenge: week 23

This week's prompt: "Right now". It just happened that last sunday was father's day (in New Zealand anyway, I always get confused since various countries have various dates). So I thought I'd make my card based on this theme and honor Tahi's awesome dad and their close relationship. We moved to small city Gisborne partly because Josh wanted to have time to spend with his boy. And it had been great in this regard, for both of them. Tahi is so lucky to have a dad that can take him swimming, play with him and take him for a run on the beach. They read stories at night and recently Josh has even been able to put him to sleep (a big step for us!). Tahi loves his dad and when he goes he'll often say "Tahi wants his dad" (in french). It is so cute and always gives me a warm feeling inside when I see them together.

This card is very simple! I glued a photo taken about a year ago of Tahi and Josh kissing on the front porch at some friends' house (with my Mamiya, the film was then cross processed, giving it that etheral contrasted greenish look). I wanted to add more, but it felt like the picture worked on its own, so I just wrote "this magic moment" on a step at the bottom with a felt tip pen.

Here are some pictures of the finished hoodie and 3/4 pants I was making last week for a custom order. I think they're just too cute!

mini art journal challenge: week 22

This week's prompt: "What would you like to learn?".
There are many things on my list, too many! I have been trying to learn mandarin chinese on and off for 10 years, very unsuccessfully since I can hardly introduce myself. My dad is chinese, speaks 5 languages, my brother is married to a chinese woman (martial arts teacher too!) and speaks fluent mandarin. I went to China several time, but never long enough to completely submerge myself and speak fluently. I have books, even an audio course on my Ipod, I've met a couple of lovely chinese ladies keen to do some conversational chinese. But I'm still at the same point. I recently met a lovely chinese mum, and we had one afternoon of "conversational" chinese so far, but time seems to slip away and I've been so tired too, I just can't find the energy. Maybe/ hopefully this card can be a good motivator!

The background is from a chinese calendar, I wrote the text with a silver pen and stuck a magazine cut out of a chinese sign. Don't ask me what it say!

Mini art journal challenge: week 21

This week's prompt: "your redeeming qualities/qualities you aspire towards".
Hard one. I thought for a day about this, then decided on (a few) qualities. Then I decided how I was going to put it on the card and realized they weren't all going to fit (!). I chose two, more or less randomly but that I have been thinking about lately. 
The top one reads "intelligence of the heart". My best friend came up with this theory when we were teenager that everyone one was intelligent but in different ways. When I asked her what kind of intelligence I had she answered the one I wrote above. In that, she meant that I was sensible with people, listened and observed and understood feelings I guess. Looking back on it now, I think it still makes sense, well I hope anyway!
The bottom one is a quality I think I have but I would to develop and improve. I noticed I can loose my patience with people when they are a bit "slow" to understand things, and with Tahi when he behaves in certain ways. I wish I could have infinite patience and wisdom. There is a french word, "pedagogue", that resumes it quite well I think, although in my dictionary it translates as "be a good teacher" I see it as meaning more than that.

The background is a stone wall cut out from a magazine. I used a ruler alphabet letter for the text, then sewed a heart with my sewing machine, free handed using several shades of red.

mini art journal challenge: week 20

So, with a bit of delay, here is my card. The prompt this week was: "change". Again, it took me a while once I had the idea to get it on the card, it's been an interesting process. When I started this challenge 20 weeks ago, I would think about the prompt then start making the card pretty much straight away. I thought it would only get easier as the weeks past and my brain got used to the "creative" process (ooo, I feel like an artist!). Yet every week I find it harder to get the concept for my card. It feels like I'm searching deeper for the real meaning I want to give, and I'm not sure whether it is visible or not.
Change is something I never get used to, and no matter how many times my life has changed direction (willingly or not), I have always found the first step to be the hardest. And there have been some big steps involved: moving town, country, taking on or turning down a job, getting married, having babies, being a home mum. I am an optimist though, and I try to make the best of every situation. After the first step, change has always been welcome and I learned to appreciate the good outcomes (or learn from the bad ones). I like to believe things happen for a reason, and I like to make the most of it.
I also have a compulsion to change the layout of our furniture when I feel it isn't "right" (call it intuitive feng shui!), as Josh can attest. It usually comes with little warning too! A few days ago I decided I needed to move the big wardrobe in my workshop (it was taking up vital storage space and the room is invaded by fabric at the moment). So I cleaned up a bit of Josh's mess room, even though I'd sworn not to touch it. But it's not going to sort itself out by magic, so well... So I moved this piece of furniture, then realized we could use it for our bathroom renovations, saving us time and money. Great change number one!
Then when we started moving the wardrobe, we realized it was too high to get through the door. So josh took the top off. Once the wardrobe was in his room, we both looked at the top bit and decided to use it to place the sink in (the top on the piece of furniture was falling apart). Great change number two!
And as a bonus, taking out all my fabrics I found some great ones for this week's project. Not the curtains, but some storage bags for Tahi's toys (photos to come).
So there we go, I believe change is a good thing!

I wanted to make my card one that I could change, so I used a chinese game I rediscovered this week and I used to play a lot when I was younger. It's called Tangram.

The Tangram square

Today's figure: a dancing lady!

I used some colored paint swatch cards (we took some for ideas on colors for the bathroom and kitchen), cut out the shapes that make up the Tangram then put blue tack on the back. So whenever I feel like it, I can change the figure on the card. the background is a drawing of a chinese woman taken from a chinese calendar.

Mini art journal challenge: week 19

It might feel like this mini art journal is all I have time to do, but I am working on other projects!
This week's prompt: "Surprise"
It took me a couple of days to decide exactly what to do and how... although it doesn't appear on the card!
As far as surprises go, I'm sure any parent will agree with me they happen everyday with kids, good or bad ones. This whole parenthood thing has been a huge learning curve for me, in a good way. I came across the words attachment parenting and wondered what it meant. Then realized I was following that path already. This card is dedicated to the philosophy behind the words. My biggest surprise was to discover that my preconceptions of babies, children and parenthood felt wrong. I thought being too lenient would only turn a child into a cry baby or a tantrum monster, I thought all babies slept through the night at 6 months and were meant to go to childcare, I thought breastfeeding past 6 months never happened, I thought births in hospital were the way to go. I thought all that then, surprise, I thought differently!
I am lucky to know quite a few mums who share the same philosophy. Some have older kids, brought up attachment parenting style. They are no different than other kids their age, they are independent, sociable, polite, quite normal really. And I've been watching Tahi, recently he's opened up to the world. A few months ago, Tahi would stick to me wherever we went, turn shy as soon someone would talk to him, want to breastfeed for any reason (unsafe, hurt, bored). Two days ago he was running around a hardware store saying "hello" to anyone he met. He's started going up to people at our playcentre and chatting to them. He just seems more confident. And it's great to see that he has got there himself. Maybe later than most, but he has nonetheless. When I see all these little steps my boy takes on his own, it makes me proud and give me confidence that he will achieve all those "steps" in his own time. Hopefully sleeping through the night is next!

Words cut out from a magazine, fabric hearts cut out with pinking scissors (my top op shop find of the week!) then sewn onto the card. The words attachment parenting were pasted on last.

A bit of catching up

Winter is an interesting time. Everything slows down, or hibernates even! I am reminded of this everyday when I go for a walk in my vege garden (I like to do a daily check!). Since the cold weather has set in, growth pace has halved and we haven't got as much as I was planning out of the garden. By the time autumn came, we were still harvesting our summer crops and by the time I got our beds ready for winter, well, it was winter! Good lesson for next year!
Winter has got me into the same slow pace as well, and I am far behind everything, including this blog.
So first catch up, the mini card challenge. I am three cards behind, eeek, I was dreading this since I started the challenge. I did make the cards though, and the camera finally turned up, so here they are!


Week 16's prompt was: "Get someone else to contribute". I asked my best friend of all times, my soul sister, who happens to live in Germany and just got married. I was very very sad I missed out on the wedding.
She made a collage, which we used to do a lot when we were teenagers. This one is about me (!) and how she sees me now. I quote: the wood for my vintage side, the chinese screen, my ethnicity. I make babies (well, one so far!), I am an artist (glad someone sees me that way!!!) and a talented musician and I plant my own veges. Thanks for your contribution sister!

Week 17: "Your bedroom". This is the card that has taken me the longest to make! It was a cold evening, and I spent it between the couch by the fire and my cold workshop. Bedroom have always been important to me, perhaps the most important room of the house. When I was a teenager especially, since that was the only room in the house that was really "me". The card represents my bed, because when it comes down to it, that is what a bedroom is for, and to me it was like the womb, my safe place, cosy and warm. When I was younger I could spend hours in bed, even days (no joke!). I could probably still spend all day reading in bed if I didn't have a little wriggle worm. The colors represent my favorite colors at the time: purple and white. Those were the colors of my basketball team, and I was obsessed with it! My whole room was two tone: purple carpet (yes), purple and white wall paper, purple and white bed sheets... What a geek!
I wrote under the blanket what the bed represented to me, and on the little "me" doll (Josh calls it my voodoo doll) what I aspired to in those days.

Week 18: "Nature". We got given a swan plant last summer, which Monarch butterflies love, so we got lots and lots of caterpillars. Unfortunately most of them got eaten by wasps and praying mantis, but we managed to get some pupal cases from somewhere else and hung them on our plant. Hoe exciting to see the monarchs emerge! I took some photos of it, so I made a collage of these photos for this week's card!

mini art journal challenge: week 15

This week's prompt: "Your parents".
Well, as the story goes, they met, fell in love, had babies... Yes they did, and at the time it was quite an achievement: My mum's french (born in the French West indies) and my dad's chinese (born in Hong Kong). They met in England, while they were both spending a year there to study english. Then my mum moved to Hong Kong, a bold move in the pre-internet/ cheap flights years. They lived there about 7 years I think, had me and my brother, then divorced and we moved to France with my mum. We saw my dad during the school holidays and spent a month every summer in Hong Kong while we were kids. Not your typical family, but not out of the ordinary when we were growing up and certainly not now!
So I wanted to base this card around my mother, mainly because she brought us up really and because I owe her so much. I would have hated to be told this in my rebellious teenage years, but I probably resemble her more than I realize and I am so glad.
She is a strong woman who raised two kids on her own with a full time job, never seemed to complain and did everything she could to make us happy (even dump her at the time boyfriend!). I admire her drive and dedication to us, am grateful she raised us well, with strong values and a sense of honor and independence.
She was always open to our desires and ambitions and always respected our choices. She is a person who does not judge, accepts people as they are and a faithful friend.
My friends at school used to be scared of her, because she seemed so strict. She's only little, but still managed to make a strong impression on them! I was never a model teenage daughter, even pretty angry at times, but I understand now that her reaction was just her way of showing me she worried for me.
Now, the interesting thing about our family, is that my brother and I have followed the same pattern as my parents did: we both got involved with partners that come from far away. My brother is happily married to a beautiful chinese woman and I am living here in New Zealand with my kiwi lover and our son.
As hard as I find it now to live far away from friends and family, I can't imagine what my mum must have felt like at times, while living in Hong Kong. At the time, the only two ways to keep in touch with loved ones back in France would have been writing letters and phone calls (and the quality was very poor). Buying a plane ticket was outrageously expensive (although it seems to be heading that way again).
Anyway, here's my card of the week:

So the flower represents my mum (!), and the background is a piece with chinese writing on it (taken from a chinese calendar) that represents my dad. It's quite cheesy but since I had no decent photo of them to stick on the card, that's the best I could come up with! I wrote some more cheesy stuff in french about them.