moving along

Well, I’ve not been working at this everyday, but I feel like these pages have reached that ‘done enough’ stage:

In a way I’m disappointed with myself, because I think the bunnies could do with some watercolour, but I just can’t be bothered. (I mean the bunny paperchain there, not the bunny sticker that is from the Flow magazine as recommended by Caatje) Maybe when I get the watercolours out to add background colour to more pages, I’ll try adding a bit to these. But right now, I’m going to work on the next two pages:

The milkshake picture is just tucked in at the moment, and will probably end up on the green page. I love the green-pink colour combo. There’s the prospect of going for a curry tomorrow, so it may get some work on the bus to Ashton.

It’s Winterval!

Birmingham City Council came up with the term Winterval back in 1997, and I don’t care if I am the only person in the two universes who loves the word. It combines winter, carnival and interval, which is what I want at this time of year. Because I’m off work but not going anywhere, it just has a very different feel to the rest of the year.

So, after my last commute of the year, this is how the journal is looking:

These pages feel a bit boring, but maybe that is just part of the un-finished-ness of them. My plan for Winterval is to keep working on the journal but to time box it to only 30 minutes a day. I can’t really explain why that seems like a good idea, but I don’t want to not work on it, and I also don’t want to burn out my enthusiasm on my first day off. We'll see how it goes...

done enough

Here’s how that first page is looking now:

I feel like it could do with some stickers or something, but it’s done enough as it is. It’s like, yeah, I could go back and add stuff if I come across something that would fit, but it’s time to move on to the next pages:

I hadn’t realized that the first page would be visible behind the following pages. I’ll treat that as a feature rather than a problem. The project is feeling fun now; I worked on it a bit when we were going for a curry this afternoon.

starting the art journal

I feel like I've not managed to do much with the journal this week. It hasn't kept my attention for an entire trip to/from work, and I feel like I'm spending more time thinking about what to do with it than actually just playing. Anyway, here's how it looks now:

It looks a bit bare at the moment, and I'm having a bit of an odd week next week, so I'm not sure when it will feel 'finished'. Hopefully I won't get stuck on the first page for a whole month.

I'm taking a trip to Utrecht next week and the plan is to travel very light, so the journal may just stay at home for a few days. I feel like that isn't in the spirit of having a journal, but I want to have room in the luggage to bring home Miffy stuff.

no novel now

My November novel writing hasn't resulted in a novel. At the end of the month, I'm still just reaching the climax of the story, and it is way too short. I love the nanowrimo's stats section, though:

You can see in this screen shot exactly when I caught a cold and went from just being behind to being way behind. Still, I did manage to write a bit almost every day, and I feel good about that. I want to try to finish the story, for completeness, but I don't want to stress out about it, I just want to relax.

I'm feeling particularly lucky to be alive, because one of the people I work with died of cancer this week. It's one of those sad things when a nice person dies young, and though we all knew she was seriously ill, it is still somehow a shock.

My next bus craft project is to start an art journal. I used to do stuff like this what seems ages ago, but more recently I've been in a mindset where I wanted to work out ideas or try to improve my skills rather than just playing with paper and colours. After reading a sweet little series of encouraging tutorials on Caatje's Artsy Stuff, I felt like it would be just the sort of relaxing fun I could do with right now. So this weekend I dug out an old address book I had already pasted some pictures in, and started painting background colours. I'm not sure how well this will work as a craft on public transport, but it seems like a good idea at the moment.