The Magical SoulCollage Slipper

Do you have a Magical SoulCollage Slipper? No? Maybe you do, and you don't even realise it! Here's mine:

Do you see the central image? The slipper? That's been part of my stash of images practically since I first started making SoulCollage cards in December 2003. That's 4 years and more, this little piece of paper has been in one or other of the folders in which I'd pile up images I'd clipped but not yet used. At each card-making session, I'd pull out these bundles of images, and one or other of them would frequently become the beginning-point of my next card.

That pink oriental slipper has been in my hand many times as I sought out the complementary images which would make up my next card, but until this weekend, each time it went back into the folder unused.

..

This weekend, as I sat with a group of 7 women in my sister's house, once more that image emerged, but this time, I put it with a bundle of other images out there for anyone to use. I'd decided that at this stage, most of those images weren't going to be of any particular meaning for me, so I let them go. My sister-in-law handled it. "Are you going to use that?" I asked. "No... it's pretty... but no... Maybe Zoe would like it?" It got passed to Zoe. "Mmm. It is pretty..." She put it aside. I told them how it had been a long time hanging around. How it had been in my hand at the start of gathering images for many of my cards, but had never found its way into a card.

We went on with the day. Around me, women gathered pages from magazines, moved scraps of colour about on cards, trimmed and pasted, mused about whether this or that image "fit" there. I was working on three cards, but my mind kept wandering back to that pink slipper. And suddenly, the meaning of that image for me became clear.

..
It was the catalyst for so many cards. It was the magic slipper that allowed me to find the images for my cards. Once I put it on, I moved into the SoulCollage space. Having found the images, I could put it aside until the next time... and the next time.

This slipper wasn't an image that didn't belong on one of my cards. It is behind many of them. This slipper is the way into my SoulCollage cards. It says:

I am one who leads you to magic

I am one who helps you find your way in to your cards

I am one who leads you to the next neter

I am one who skips away lightly when you have reached your goal

I am one whose meaning stays hidden until the time is right

I remind you to trust the process

I remind you that there is magic in the work

I remind you to tread lightly

...

What image in your stash keeps reappearing and acting as the catalyst for a card without ending up in the actual card? Is it an animal? A person? A tree?

What is your Magical SoulCollage Slipper?