Drawing Week - Day 1

I'm not sure how well I will be able to keep up with this, but I'm going to give it a shot. I spent about 30 minutes doodling tonight. Back in April for our wedding anniversary, we each got some books; one of the books I got was a set called The Art of the Doodle by Eleanor Kwei, and it goes over doodling and has a cute little book to fill in once you've practiced the principles in the guide book. I've been slowly practicing the things in the book. 

Today, I practiced drawing curved lines using my wrist and arm, drawing parallel lines in a draped manner, and doing some gesture drawing. I actually enjoyed this more than I have the past few times I've drawn because I wasn't worried about it looking really good.

Yoga Week - Day 2 & Drawing Week Plan

Yesterday, I started looking at yoga resources through the library and YouTube. I put tons of books on hold at the library, too. But as the day progressed, and I started feeling kinda crampy from my regular, daily activity, I realized that I don't need to be doing something physical right now. Being pregnant is hard enough on my little body, I don't need to add in a lot of extra work.

So today, I'm going to start Drawing Week. I got a little drawing kit from my awesome cousin Amber that I'm going to pull out today and start using. I know exactly where it is, so it won't be a big deal to get it out. And I think it will be good to keep working on things that challenge me artistically, especially because I don't think of myself as an artist.

Yoga Week Plan & Day 1

I've settled on doing Yoga Week. I knew I wanted to do something more physical, but I am pretty limited by pregnancy and funds.

At first, I didn't want to do yoga because I was worried about it being boring to post about, and I might lose interest. I'm not new to yoga, I've been doing it on and off for several years now, but I've always done the same DVD. I figure I can use the library and YouTube as resources to expand my yoga knowledge and explore the practice beyond the one DVD I enjoy doing.

I have a book that I've talked about before, You Can Do It!: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls, and one of its badges is a yoga one. In the steps they have, you take A LOT of classes, which I don't have the money to do. I am thinking about using it as a guide to what I look for using my free resources. It has a lot of good resources for obtaining information and knowing what to do, so that should be really helpful.

My plan today is to read through/study the plan in the book, and then adapt it to what I want to do. I'm also going to do some research to find resources for exploring yoga over the next two weeks.

My plan for the next two weeks:

• I want to explore the different types of yoga - Iyengar, Ashtanga, Sivananda/Kripalu, and Aunsara
• After I've tried them all, I will pick the one I enjoy most and then explore it more deeply.
• I want to try to practice yoga at least once a day, maybe even twice a day. 

SMASH*Book/Collage Week - Days 11-14 & Final Summary

The last days of this hobby went pretty badly. I was given a new video game that I've been wanting for months, and I just couldn't resist playing it, which happened during the times I would have been working on the hobby stuff. I am a bit disappointed in myself for not finishing up the two weeks. It was really more than just wanting to play a video game that kept me from getting things done. My inspiration had felt like it "dried up" and I just couldn't figure out what to do next. I enjoyed what I did work on, and I plan to keep my stuff out so that I can work on pages and ideas as they come to me.

I still haven't figured out what I am going to start tomorrow, so that will be a nice surprise as I work it out in my mind tonight. I have too much trouble with decisions...

SMASH*Book/Collage Week - Day 10

I work on anything yesterday! Partly, I was too distracted by video games and stuff, but I also don't feel "inspired" about any ideas. I don't want to just quit in the middle of everything, so I want to work on something tonight, but it's kind of hard. Maybe if I start sorting through different things that I want to save, I'll get an idea....

SMASH*Book/Collage Week - Day 9, Part 2

This is the piece that I've been working on for the past few days. It's an idea that's been in my mind for a good 6 or 7 months, that I couldn't figure out how to get down. I had tried Photoshop at first, but I don't have the skills, and it didn't have the right look. This didn't come out quite the way I originally envisioned it, but I like the way it turned out. It's a representation of the way I feel dealing with my Bipolar Depression, Anxiety, and OCD.

I found the images on Pinterest months ago, and knew that's what I wanted to use. I didn't cut clean around the girl because I wanted it to look separate. The background and girl were both printed on cardstock; I had to brighten the image of the woods because on the first printing you couldn't tell what it was. I roughed up the edges by rubbing them on the sidewalk and scraping them with my fingernails; you can't really tell in the photo, but I like the texture it gives to it. I used my metallic markers to draw the glowing light/door thing at the end of the path. Then I went to work on the thorns, which took the longest of the whole process. I practiced on a scrap paper at first because I wanted them to look "just right," but I couldn't get them to that point, and I finally just decided to go with what I knew how to draw and adapt it. I've been drawing vines a lot over the past few months, so I did that, but instead of leaves and flowers, I add thorns. After doing it all with just the silver marker, it didn't look quite the way I wanted it to, so I went back and did all the detail work with one of Mitchell's fancy Micron pens that he gave me. Doing all those vines and thorns was pretty therapeutic. By the time I finished that, I knew what I wanted to call it. I looked up "fancy lettering" on Pinterest, then I just kind of improvised until I liked the way it all looked. The last thing I added was the stripes/arrows down the sides. On them, I wrote out the things the thorns represent, the things the light at the end represents, and how I feel as I'm "running" toward the end. I feel really good about it all, and I'm excited that I was able to create something that has so much personal meaning to it.

I'm considering attempting another collage of the same "type" for my next project. I'll probably decided as the day goes on.

SMASH*Book/Collage Week - Days 7, 8 & 9

On Monday, I was able to go get some metallic markers at Walmart. Then I got started on my collage project. I didn't take any process pictures because I just want to post the finished product of this one.

I was able to work a little bit on it yesterday (Tuesday), but not much because we were busy.

I was able to put the final touches of work done today. It was really just a lot of detail work, which is why it took so long. I just finished the page a couple minutes ago! I'm going to wait for daylight, though, to take a picture and talk about my process.

SMASH*Book/Collage Week - Days 5 & 6

I felt a little stunted the past couple days. Saturday, I decided to start working on one of my collage ideas, and I got a couple images printed out. I'm going to collage it onto one of the black pages in my SMASH*Book, though, so I need pens that will show up on black. By the time I realized this, it was too late in the day to stop by the art store.

Sunday, I couldn't quite get in the right creative mood for any of the other ideas, so I was struggling with what to do. I thought about trying a different collage idea, but there seemed to be too many distractions and too much need for my attention in other area, so I eventually gave up. Once most of the kids were in bed, I finally just started cutting phrases and such out of my big stack of magazines. I cut things that appealed to me at the time, but nothing with a strong theme. I figure they'll come to use some time in the future.

It was a bit frustrating that I didn't get more than that done, just because I wanted to do so much more, but couldn't quite figure it out. I'm going to stop by Jerry's Artarama today to see if they sell metallic gel pens, or something similar, in singles instead of big packs, since I only need a few colors and don't want to spend much money. I also need to find my little crafting caddy, which is in a box in the garage somewhere. It has my craft glues, which I'll need to attach stuff because my glue stick won't be strong enough for the cardstock I printed the images on. It's barely holding down the photos of Annabelle already! This feels like a lot of extraneous stuff that will get in the way of actually creating, but I guess that's just what happens sometimes.

SMASH*Book/Collage Week - Day 4

I had lots of time to work yesterday, and it was really fun. I took pictures every 15-20 minutes at the beginning, just to document the process I was going through to put everything together.

I pretty much just set things out in a layout I liked and then glued/taped them down one by one.

 

I wrote on the backs of some pictures, made notes around pictures, and put lots of documentation in.

I wanted to make it possible to look inside the card she made me. And I also stacked some of the photos like a little flip book, so I was able to have more photos on the pages than if I had just glued them straight on.

I added lots of little doodles and patterns around to make it look cute. I also threw in some little magazine cutouts of strawberries, just to add color and fill space. I wish the pictures were a little better so you could see all the detail!

There's a little empty space behind that last photo, but I haven't decided yet what I want to put there. I'm sure I'll find something stashed away to put there eventually, but I'm not worried about filling the space right away. I want to find something that is just right. I really like the way it turned out, although I'm still not sure if I like the ribbon behind the letters. I didn't turn out to match as well as I was hoping, but it's still cute, so eh... whatever. 

SMASH*Book/ Collage Week - Days 2 & 3

I was holding off on posting until each evening, thinking that would be better because I could report what I'd been doing, but by then I was too tired, so I'd fall asleep before I could post. So, it's just better if I post the morning after each day when things are fresh in my mind, and I'm a little less sleepy. (And forgive the blurry photos, the lighting is pretty terrible most of the time.)

I spent Wednesday printing and cutting the photos of Annabelle that I knew I wanted for this spread. I ended up printing way too many pictures (she's just so cute!), so I whittled them down by trying to focus on photos where she was wearing red or it was strongly featured. I think I only kept a couple that break that rule. I gathered up everything I could find that I knew I wanted for the layout, but by then it was bed time. 

I was thinking about the project all day yesterday, just excited to get to work, but I had tons of stuff I needed to take care of. I finally sat down to start working around 7:30 last night. I was just starting to figure out a layout when there was a huge avalanche of LEGOS and Charlie onto the floor next to the couch. He wasn't hurt at all, but there was a huge mess. While Mitchell and I were cleaning it up, we discovered a bag of foam letters that I'd forgotten about. I was pretty excited because I hadn't known how I was going to title the page. So last night, I was able to sort through the letters to find and spell what I needed. I also decided to use some cute ribbon with strawberries underneath the letters to make them stand out more. By then it was bedtime, so I had to clean up again.

I'm excited to get into more layout stuff, and actually putting things down today. Maybe I can get better pictures in a different room, especially if I work during the day instead of night.

SMASH*Book/Collage Hobby Plan

I decided I need to have a bit of a plan to guide me through the next couple weeks. I am going to work on a hobby for a 2 week period, this time around, to give myself more time to explore. Originally, I was thinking I could do a spread per day, but I realized that is way out of my abilities, so I'm going to pick a few different ideas that I want to try out during the next couple weeks.

The first layout I want to do is pretty definite; I want to do a 2-page spread of pictures of Annabelle with a sort of fruit theme tying it all together.

I got some ideas from a challenge on Pinterest, and then some of my own. The ideas I want to try are:

• a magazine/photo collage: girl running in woods, my "perfect" afternoon
• All About Me
• Dream List: all the things I want to do in my life
• Inspiration Board
• Joseph page: Star Wars themed, of course
• Charlie page: I'm not sure what I'd do for his yet, maybe Power Rangers

I know I won't be able to do all of these, but at least I have some ideas now, so I won't get stuck when I finish the pages I'm working on now.

SMASH Book/ Collage Week - Day 1

Today was not the greatest day for working on stuff because I had appointments and I was really struggling with my moods. But I got some stuff done!

Yesterday, I pulled out all the supplies that I currently have access to.

I started picking out stuff for my first spread I want to do. I knew I wanted to do something fruit- related because I got some cute things from my cousin, Amber a few months ago. I gathered the things she gave me, plus some images of fruit I had cut from magazines (also a donation from Amber). In fact, the SMASH*book was her Christmas gift to me; isn't she great?! There was an image I kept remembering of Annabelle from almost 4 years ago on July 4th, in which she's wearing a watermelon dress; that let me to decide on making the spread about my sweet Annabelle. 

Nearly all of our photos are on our external hard drive, and they are very disorganized. I spent over an hour organizing them by year and month last night. And another hour or two again today. I don't have them all organized, but I think I found most of the photos I want to use. I was going to print them, but I recently started using Mitchell's computer because it can handle the games I like playing, but it can recognize our new printer! So I need to hook up my old computer to the external hard drive to print the photos. That, however, was beyond my energy level today, so I'm saving that task for tomorrow. I originally wanted to try down a page per day, but I don't want to push myself too hard and end up giving up right away.

I'm grateful for the support I've received on Facebook from friends; between today's struggles, I almost did give up, but I remembered all the support and decided to stick with it. I do feel excited to show more progress. 

Searching for a Hobby, Take 2

A little over 2 years ago, I started this blog, hoping to help myself discover my passions and talents. I got a little sidetracked after a bit, and stopped doing it. For a few months now, I've been wanting to come back to this blog. I still want to discover my passions and talents. I've learned some things about myself in the past 2 years. I've changed a bit in the past 2 years. I've realized a bit about what works for me and what doesn't. And I've decided to try doing this blog again. I'm going to come back with pretty much the same list that I started with before. I'm going to work on a hobby for 2 weeks now. And I'm going to be a little more lenient with myself, and more exploratory with the hobbies. 

So the list:

• photography
• gardening
• singing 
• piano 
• cello
• running/marathon training 
• yoga 
• sewing
• scrapbooking
• cooking/baking 
• cake decorating 
• crocheting/knitting
• beauty 
• get a pet
• painting
• drawing/sketching
• woodworking
• dance
• beading/jewelry making
• pottery
• home design
• home repair
• housework
• reading
• writing
• crafting
• travel/sightseeing
• learn a language
• family history
• blogging
• journaling
• cross-stitch
• video games
• watching movies/tv shows
• quilting
• fashion
• party planning 
• hiking
• rock climbing
• martial arts/kickboxing
• model/dollhouse building
• film/make videos
• cycling
• weight-lifting
• swimming
• auto mechanics
• computer/technology stuff
• camping
• calligraphy
• aviation
• teaching
• hang-gliding
• volunteering
• activism - charities, politics, causes, etc.
• antiquing
• surfing
• scuba-diving
• ballooning
• learn a new instrument
• landscaping
• candle making
• other art - 
• collage
•  pastel,
• sculpture
• etc.
• acting
• shooting
• hunting
• floral arranging
• stained glass
• story-telling
• psychology
• chemistry
• astronomy
• nutrition/diet science
• art history
• architecture
• boating/sailing
• roleplaying/cosplay
• board gaming/ card games
• collecting
• puzzles - word, picture, number, etc.
• play pool
• horseback riding

This is enough stuff to take me more than 3 years!! But, hopefully, I will figure out my passions before I work through the whole list. Many of these things I just find interesting and intriguing, although, I have also tried many of them at some time or another. 

For my first hobby, I'm planning to work on collage because it's been in the back of my mind for awhile now. I'll write a post on it in a bit.