What people are saying about The InterPlay Inspiration Deck

Posted by Stan Stewart (Sawyer) on December 3, 2009 under Anita Bondi | Be the First to Comment

In addition to the Cheryl Cutler quote, here are what some people are saying about Anita Bondi’s InterPlay Inspiration Deck!

I have been using the deck for my Hospice work… Asking patients or caregivers to pick a card and see how it “fits” them.
Inevitably, the card is just right for the moment.

Some of the families I work with have logged onto the Interplay
website as a result of the cards and have grown interested in Interplay.
It’s a beautiful deck of cards and such an easy way to show what
Interplay is.

social worker, Hospice chaplain

So I brought my fun pack of round cards.  I was drawn to the Loosely and Tightly card…..I am thinking take it loosely….yeah…relax…then take it tightly….yeah….strangle it…till it can’t breathe…..back and forth back and forth…loose and tight. And then I turned the card over……Loosely and Lightly.  Aaaaah.  Ok.  No strangling involved whatsoever….interesting concept.  I am having to rethink this whole thing now….soften my grip and relax.

hard-working Mom with a corporate job

InterPlay Inspiration cards are easy to use and provide sweet insight into the everyday challenges.

under-employed, highly talented and trained person

I love using Anita’s InterPlay Inspiration Deck and the way it helps me tap into my own inner wisdom.  The suggested exercies are also a great way to bring InterPlay into my every day.

Mom, fierce advocate for the weak, dancer

Circle of Inspiration

Posted by Stan Stewart (Sawyer) on November 30, 2009 under Stan Stewart | Be the First to Comment

20-some people sitting in a circle.  Each one draws a card.  Well, not everyone.  There are 21 cards.  Round cards.  The InterPlay Inspiration Deck.

The 20-some must be 23.  The last trio shares a single card.

We’ve been improvising (pure InterPlay) for hours.  Stories.  Movement.  Intuition.  As the card slides into my finger tips, I accept that now-familiar picture and story.  It’s the Practice card.  Again.

Each person in the circle, in turn, shares what the card brings out from their life or experiences of the day.  Many quote from the card.  I repeat the phrase (again): “She knows that to change your life, you just need to change your practice.”  I enjoy that the message is an inspiration, a blessing.  Not the heavy way that I’ve held this sentiment other times.

InterPlay Inspiration Deck display

The sharing is beautiful.  People cry.  There’s a tear in my eye.  Anita is across the circle from me.  She’s in the trio sharing the Incrementality card with two other women.  She is telling us her experience of seeing the cards used in this circle in this way.

I am inspired.

Practice art

Posted by Stan Stewart (Sawyer) on November 18, 2009 under Stan Stewart | 3 Comments to Read

There is so much in my “art world” to be excited about right now. Mandala Design Works has three shows coming up. Two in Pennsylvania and one in Seattle! Wellspring East annual holiday show and Lelavision shows take place the weekend of December 4-5. Mudworks Dutot show starts the weekend before that and continues for three weekends. I’ll be playing live, improvised music at various times at the Dutot on the two December weekends.  Hope you’ll drop by to have a look and a listen.

At all three of those shows you can see and buy our inspirational jewelry, mandalas, photos, music CDs and other handmade artwork. Each artist has new material since our last show and some of these are not up on the web site. Given the custom nature of handstamped jewelry and personal mandalas, this may be your only chance to see these pieces of art.

Meanwhile, Anita has released The InterPlay Inspiration Deck. These 21 round cards are a testament to her incredible creative talent. Each one has a word or phrase (an InterPlay principle) to inspire your moment. Of course, that’s not all. The word on the card is illustrated with an ingenious colorful picture on one side and imaginative story on the other. You will be inspired by this deck. I’m not just saying that. I keep a deck at work and it’s been an inspirational life-saver. Stories coming here soon.

For today, I drew the card for Practice with the great story about the goddess who “knows what is best for you … She knows that to change your life, you just need to change your practice.”  I don’t know about you, but I need to be reminded about the stuff I already know.  Thanks for the reminder, Anita.  It’s great to get these reminders with a picture, a color, a story and the tangible, tactile sensations of the card in my hand.

So, check out Anita’s new InterPlay Inspiration Deck and come see our art at an upcoming show.

Bless you. Bless me.

InterPlay Inspiration Deck on my desk with the Practice card drawn

On Behalf Of

Posted by Anita Bondi on October 23, 2009 under Anita Bondi | Read the First Comment

Dawali is a huge festival in India. Atul, my Indian boyfriend (that is the joke my girlfriends and I share about him) has just informed me that they will be on holiday for the next 5 days and that is why he is trying to get the Inspiration Deck to Fedex before the end of the workday. Atul has been in my life since August. I do not know what he looks like, or what his family life is like. I do know what his voice sounds like though. He called me one night in September at about 9:30pm. I was getting ready for a big performance piece I was doing that weekend and had to run to Kmart for batteries. He was shocked that I was out so late and wanted to know why I was not at home? I decided it was because it must not be proper in India for women to be out so late. Plus, how do you describe Kmart to someone in India? I simply said I was at the grocery store. It was a funny five minutes or so with me trying to answer questions about my whereabouts at that time of the night with a man who works for the card printing company that is manufacturing my Inspiration Deck. Most of our e-mails were about paper weight, CMYK, telescopic vs. tuck boxes, and a host of other things unknown to me prior to this past summer. Now, here we were finally speaking to each other, and it was as if he was a relative concerned with my safety or someone intimate to my life and world. E-mail relationships can become that way, can’t they? When you share with someone (even just a few lines) several times a day for several weeks, you begin to get, well, comfortable, i guess would be the word. That is why my girlfriends began to call him my “Indian boyfriend.” I talked about him all the time.

“Atul said.” or “Atul recommended.” or,( and I think this was probably the clincher), ” Atul really made me angry today.”

Before the e-mail about the Dawali holiday it had been weeks since I had heard from Atul. The cards were suppose to have shipped two weeks prior and I was a bit worried about what had happened. His e-mail said that there was a delay because the 42 page, 2.75 inch booklet was sticking out a millimeter over the 3.85 inch circle cards, and that was making it hard to shrink wrap them. These numbers are important because they were the bane of my existence for weeks, as we went back and forth trying to convince the printers that we had the sizes exactly right to fit into our 4 inch packaging tins.

We, would be Marci (my friend and designer,) and myself. She has also worked tirelessly for months on this project with me! There would be no deck without her!

I began to panic! Why was the booklet sticking out? I had paid $1000.00 to have a special die cut for the circles to make sure everything would fit perfectly. Now, they were about to ship and they were not perfect? And, they were only at 50% heat for the shrink wrapping! ( Not that I had any idea what that meant.) All I knew was that it threw me into an immediate stress response that had me shaking. I just sat at the computer wide-eyed, vibrating and spewing a long litany of the details of a process that no one really wants to hear about; a process that has been too much of my world for too many months! Stan just stood there saying, “It will be fine.” He clearly did not understand. Finally, I calmed down enough to hear the voice of a much higher Self saying, “Pick a card. That is what you made them for.”

On Behalf Of is what I picked. At first I hemmed and hawed, still stuck in my victimization. Then I turned the card over and read the story:

“When you call On Behalf Of there is always time for a cup of tea and a bit of conversation. She will make time to stop and listen. If you are at her house, she will offer you special paper and a beautiful amethyst fountain pen to write down everything that is troubling or upsetting you. She places all the papers in a dragonfly jar on her kitchen windowsill. Every week she opens the window on a bright sunny day and sends the concerns off to the light…”

no more concerns!

There is more to the story, but that is the part that made me stop and exhale. I got up and found a beautiful piece of paper and wrote down everything that was troubling and upsetting and scary (okay, just about the card project!). I put the paper in one of the tins and set it on the windowsill. Yesterday, the sun was shining and it was 75 degrees! I opened the tin and put it outside on the deck. That is where I found it this morning. It is empty now and I trust that the beautiful paper with all of my concerns written on it, has been carried off to the Light!

The InterPlay Inspiration Deck Arrives (well almost)

Posted by Anita Bondi on October 22, 2009 under Anita Bondi | 2 Comments to Read

it is 3pm and still no cards….every time i hear a noise i freeze and wonder if the 9 boxes, weighing in at 318 pounds are about to be dropped off on my porch.  they were suppose to arrive yesterday, Oct. 21st at 4:30pm.  so, what was i doing at that time: sweeping the porch, of course!  what else do i do when i am nervous-i clean ( well, many times i eat but that is a whole different story)! so the porch looks great, clean floor, plants watered, and furniture rearranged.

it is as if they are long awaited guests that i have to prepare for-relatives that i have not seen in awhile.  my relationship to them is kind of like that though. for months and months they were so present to me, day in and day out they demanded my attention.  they required patience, dedication and time, in large quantities.  and then one day they left and went to a far away land for a very long journey.  we had some contact at first as they got settled in but then, nothing…….weeks and weeks of nothing.  i kind of lost touch with them, found it difficult to focus on them or even to think about them.

then on monday, october 19th, chris (who works for fedex), called from missouri.  as an aside, he was so friendly and chatty that for a moment i almost considered the midwest as a possible place to relocate.  i am, obviously, easily impressed.  chris is the one that is really responsible for the clean porch.  he is the one that told me that fedex was slated to deliver on wednesday at 4:30pm.  he was getting information from me so that customs in new delhi, india could release the boxes to come to the united states. they left india on monday, went to memphis, TN and are – according to the fedex website-intransit to delaware water gap, PA.  even though there are no cards, i think a picture of the porch could be in order……..as an added bonus, that’s me in the glass of the door.  stay tuned!