The young ones are at nursery today so I'm going to try and get the house back in some sort of order, just to have it wrecked tomorrow when I find myself surrounded by five hyperactive kids to deal with until Sunday lunch time. Yup the niece and nephew are staying over as my little sisters birthday and she's going out with her fella. I'm trying to get her to bite about the fact that she's just hit 30 but she doesn't seem to be that bothered. For me, it was a huge thing. It's not that I got really down about ageing or anything, but I think i hit an early mid life crisis. It was, for me at least, a time to take stock and get to grips with things. I'm still a way off being 'there' but it's slowly happening and at least I've put things into perspective a lot more now. So thinking about my sisters birthday I decided to finish do something that's been sat on the back burner for some time now.
The project was a very personal album. The class was from Maria Grace Abuzman. I hadn't actually heard of her before she taught a class at last years Scrapcamp. She is (or at least was) one of the garden peas girls at 2peas and her classes were certainly different than anything else I'd done before. This was a journal class using the bind it all but unfortunately I didn't get time to do anything other than some painting and inking at the time so it's been sat in a plastic baggie in the cupboard. Well, Wednesday night I was up til 4am finishing it (and haven't caught up with any sleep since!).
The concept of the class was to make a very honest journal about how you felt on certain aspects of your life at that moment using prompt words all starting with 're-' such as re-member etc.......as it's a snapshot I was kind of glad that I hadn't started any of the journalling so I could make it relevant to now. The covers were painted with acrylic and decorated with fontworks stickers, rub ons and some papers which I'm not sure of, in fact I don't know much about the supplies apart from some jenni bowlin rub ons, scenic route chipboard sentiments and lots of heidi swapp masks and ranger spray inks.
I love the concept and the album was very different from anything I've done in the past. I'm not someone who uses mixed media a lot so all this inking and painting was a bit baffling for me but I'm really happy with the results. I've never spent so much time thinking about the journalling. I mean I've religiously kept a diary since I was about 11 and it's always been very frank and honest...but to document on prompts was very different for me. It's given me the push I think I need to finally start work on my BOM though.
The prompts (spurred on by a few glasses of wine) certainly had me thinking. I suppose I'm in a place right now where I'm still looking for some answers, but I've stopped questionning every bloody thing that goes on and just accept things more without looking for hidden meanings and agendas. I am less tolerant of people though. If they piss me off, I'm not as afraid as I used to be to let go or at least let them know about it. Believe me, if I had learnt that a lot sooner than I have my life would have been very very different.The regret section was a hard one to do. I don't feel like I can truly regret things, as to regret something would mean that you hadn't learnt from it. There are things I wish I had done differently or at least had the courage to go through with, however if I had done then, what I would do now then maybe I wouldn't be the person I am today.......I could be even worse! LOL
I really do have to get some more family photos done though......think a trip to the woods is in order, try out taking pics of the girls together for the first time in ages now that they tend to be a unit a lot more often than when Freya was off to her dads every weekend.
One thing I'm still not particulary fond of though is the butterfly.....just dunno about that bit!I enjoyed using different sized pages, different types of papers including the transparencies, library cards and ledger paper. It just made the album more interesting. I really didn't think I'd enjoy the end product, but before i managed to massacre the covers at the end, I really liked it when I finished.
I did however, manage to completely balls up the bind it all. By the time I'd completed the covers, they were really thick to try and get in the bloody machine. I just about managed it only to find that the bind was crap and then i ballsed up the wires aswell. Think i may need a bit more practice with it! (By the way I have no idea why this is underlined and can't work out how to change that either.....I'm not great at this blogging lark am I?)
I do have another layout on the go at the moment which I'm hoping to finish tonight and then two books aswell. I want to make up most of the book for Emilys first term at school. Freya goes back on Monday and Emily starts on Wednesday. That just leaves Natasha who attends a nursery for one full day and one half day a week although that will be bumped up after xmas when she starts to get a funded place.......I may even be able to do a little housework then!
Emily went into town with my mum on Wednesday to get her nice new school shoes which she is forbade from wearing.....she wants to wear her uniform every day. She also got a nice new pair of pink boots which she picked out herself.....will have to take some photos of them before she wrecks them. The two little ones also have new coats each. I'm not usually into getting them the same clothes but my dad picked out such a nice coat for Emily that I had to have the same one for Natasha. However, she just will not part with a pink jacket that her cousin gave her........wait til it really is pissing down with rain and see if she swaps then.......on reflection, she probably won't do it then either.
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