It's been a very challenging week. January is generally the suckiest month of the year for me- the holidays are over, the sun sets early and it's cold. I HATE cold. In the past I fought the ennui with a good bike ride through Manhattan traffic- an extreme sport to get the ol' adrenaline going. But I had to put the bike away because Lola needs a Mom who can walk... So I'm sulkier than usual and it affects my ability to feel creative. My pages are taking longer to produce and the process goes something like this:
Denial- I'm NEVER gonna pull this off! This idea SUCKS!
Anger- I never get time to think!!!! OR I need to be ALONE!
Bargaining- Dave PLEASE give Lola her bath and her bottle? PLEEEEASE?
Acceptance- OOOO this looks good- I'm almost done...
I've had the Lola's Toys idea rolling around my head for a while. My Mom is always saying how she wished she had saved some toys from when we were kids so I thought I should try to document some of the Lolster's fave toys for her while they were still shiny.
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Toys
Materials used: K & Co "daydream" pad rainbow paper, Sassafras Lass Full Bloom paper cut outs, Citronella journaling card, Sassy Turkish Turquoise blooms, blue grid tape from Kate's Paperie, Sassy "Sweet Treats" stickers. EK circle deep edge punch, Basic Grey Eskimo kisses alphas with Glossy Accents on top. |
Isn't that doodly paper cute??? It's a TJ MAXX find! 6 bucks for the K and Co Daydream 12x12 pad! So how to beat back ennui? Using paper with rainbows in it helps. I really like this pad- it's got mermaids, smily suns, bowling pins, submarines and grids- lots and lots of doodly grids.
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| Pencil Lines sketch 220 |
And yet trying to come up with fresh layouts was stressing me out. So I used this week's Pencil Lines sketch by Jennifer Pebbles. Can you believe I had a hard time with this sketch? The simplicity was killing me- I love the idea of multiple square photos but then what? I fiddled with this page for days and finally I just started gluing stuff down. The finality of that made me focus and Ta DAAA- I finished the page- and I really like it. Funny how that works.
These doodlely flowers are cut out from a Sassafrass Lass Anthem paper- they are SO GORGEOUS!!!! I used the BG Eskimo Kisses alphas again. I bought those because they were a buck at my local scrap store and now I'm putting them everywhere. They are the perfect size for tight spaces. A little Glossy Accents makes them pop. I also took apart some Sassy Turkish Turquoise flowers and spread them out over the page.
Another ennui fighter? ATCs! They are tiny and take less "think" time so you can spend more time "doing".
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| Materials: Art-C Love ATC kit, Me and My Big Ideas postal paper (edges), EK Abstract flower edge punch, EK Deep edge circle punch, EK scalloped heart punch, German gold foil border from Etsy, buttetfly from RedLead.com packaging, Ranger Acrylic pain dabber, tiny bird is NEW Studio Calico paper I cut from a card they sent with an order |
Yet this ATC took 3 days just for the stitching!!! Why did I bother???? I really need to practice my stitching and I wanted to see if I could make it work like the Toys page. Alas it was not to be.
Not every project can be a home run (or even a base drive). I'm telling myself that this was a practice run. I used a photo as the template for the word "love" thinking that would be easy. It was exceedingly difficult. I kept getting lost in all the little holes- can you tell the "E" was the hardest part? I had to go back and fill in the empty spaces in between stitches because the word was barely visible otherwise but I got through it- the heck with ennui!
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| Lola visits Planet Hoth. She's lost her Tauntaun. |
I'm SO over writing this- Aaaa! ENNUI!
MuChOs SmOoChEs!
M.
