This year the two winter holidays of the Winter Solstice (Yule) and Christmas fall on different weeks of the KK calendar, so I'll be posting a theme for each one.
The two solstices and two equinoxes are
ephemeral—i.e., transitory, not lasting very long. As it rotates around the sun, Planet Earth never literally comes to a stop, of course, so those four times in the year refer to infinitesimally short points in that transit.
The adjective
ephemeral derives from an ancient Greek word meaning "not lasting more than a day."
The noun
ephemeron means any transitory, fleeting event—like a kiss under the mistletoe.
Ephemera, from the Greek plural of "ephemeron," has come to mean—in the context of archives, collections, and art/craft uses—(usually) paper items whose value is short-lived.
Here's a partial list of
ephemera: advertising trade cards & other advertisement materials (e.g., flyers for events), airsickness bags, bookmarks, catalogues, used greeting cards & postcards, used postage stamps, letters, junk mail, pamphlets, posters, prospectuses, zines, tickets for bus-train-ship-plane travel, movie tickets, lottery tickets, ration tickets, defunct or very devalued paper money, medical materials like old prescriptions & hospital/clinic notes, calendars, schedules, place cards, party invitations, package labels, packaging itself, snapshots, film stock, brochures, receipts, used office items like post-its & rolodex cards, old maps, old books, political materials, old ledgers... Also Nature's ephemera, like shed feathers, fallen leaves, shed insect or reptile skins, shed fur or hair, shark teeth, seashells...
This week's challenge is to make a collage either referring to or utilising something ephemeral, an ephemeron, or ephemera itself. It's not just a category of physical paper/plastic/etc. items: it's a concept as well. Go with it wherever your creativity leads you...
Happy Winter Solstice and have a Cool Yule! =grin=
