Creative Week and Car Returned
We had our car delivered back to us yesterday morning and the hire car 'mercedes' collected today, its finally over, the nightmare that was someone vandalising our car on Thursday 22nd December by yanking off the electric wing mirror, we still cant work out how they actually get it off like that. If I put all my body weight on it and push down really hard, all that happens is the mirror springs back into place when I let go so some considerable force was used to break it off the way it was broken. Anyway, the little fiasco cost us two lots of £50, one for each of the two hire cars we had the use of from the insurance company whilst ours was being repaired, a further £75 which was the insurance excess fee and now this morning we got a bill for £35 for fuel we didnt put back into the first hire car because they turned up unexpectedly to collect it, we didnt know they were coming and it wasnt even 9am it was well before that the guy was banging on the door and then living room windows. Not sure if I want to argue the toss over it but truth is we cant really afford the fee on the bill sent to us today, its one of those things though, if we need to call the insurance again we'll only get stung for the fee at that moment before they'll do anything else so I am thinking about it carefully before deciding whether to state we didnt have a chance to fill up the car as we didnt know it was being colleted, ours wasnt repaired and actually because they took it back prematurely, we then had to pay another deposit for a second car so instead of just £50 they had £100 off us already.
I've been avidly trying to stay focused on positive things, not letting unnecessary negatives creep into my brain and ruin things again. Regularly when things are going well, something will crop up to ruin it and I'll sit there over-thinking matters winding myself up until depression does rear its ugly head and the cycle starts all over again taking a good few days to evolve back round again so that I can function in a more positive way and handle things properly. So rather than wait each time for the cycle to start, evolve and place me back to a position where I can deal with the issues, I'm simply not allowing things to build inside my head any more. That way I figure, if I dont have all the anger, depression and other negative emotions swirling around, it has freed up enormous pockets of space for good things like creativity, my family and ME.
In all my adult lifetime I've been having babies, looking after my family and dealing with things that crop up by myself with little practical support from anyone. So now my youngest 'baby' is about to turn five years old in six months time and knowing I wont be having any more, it is giving me the space to decide what 'I' like, what 'I' want to do, what things make 'Me' feel happy, all of which feel like a really good place to be right now.
So on to creativity, this week I finished drawing the background of the first entry in my new year's Strength journal. 200 flowers all drawn with Inktense and Graphitint pencils, neocolors and pens then doodled with gel and glitter pens. The double page spread was completely covered in pretty flowers with hardly any spaces between them, many of them were overlapping. It took several nights to do the detailing, my eyes kept paining but it was worth it. Yesterday having finished the flowers I covered the pages in torn white tissue paper which I then sprayed over the pages and tissue with Smooch shimmer inks in grape, cherry ice and copper smudging with a tissue. This evening having left the journal open to dry, I gessoed over both pages using my brayer, it was extremely satisfying to watch the texture emerging with flowers poking through the torn tissue paper, the odd sheen highlighted from the spray spritz inks below. Its all drying now but I cant wait to add the portrait to it later or tomorrow.
Kids have been doing loads of art work and creative things themselves too, Ivan has been doing mandalas, Imogen sketching houses and Angelica has been working on noses this week.
One of the things we all love about this house is the ability to spread our craft stuff about and leave it out, its made a huge difference in the projects the kids can do for their home schooling as well as general crafting.
I've started loom knitting my fingerless mitts using A Dragon Called Karma handspun yarn, love the way its striping and cant wait to finish them.
Harvey is so cute, two evenings ago we found him in the living room, white yarn and large round loom on the carpet and hook in his hand, he announced "I cant come yet I'm knitting" and sat there winding the pegs trying to work out how to hook the yarn off. If only he realised it needs two lines of wrapped pegs he'd have been actually knitting for real, I am going to show him properly when he gets home after dropping Angelica off to the Fire Station, she is doing a fire safety course for six weeks which started tonight.
This week was also th epostcard challenge, country for week 2 is Spain, I finished my card last night so will post it here tomorrow along with how it goes into the book.
I've left Imogen at the table gluing the bookmark shape cut outs together for me, they are going to be made into a prompt book of some kind to be hung up in the lounge so anyone stuck for inspiration can look at the book to see what random page they open at. Hopefully that will encourage them not to state they are bored when its raining :)
I've been avidly trying to stay focused on positive things, not letting unnecessary negatives creep into my brain and ruin things again. Regularly when things are going well, something will crop up to ruin it and I'll sit there over-thinking matters winding myself up until depression does rear its ugly head and the cycle starts all over again taking a good few days to evolve back round again so that I can function in a more positive way and handle things properly. So rather than wait each time for the cycle to start, evolve and place me back to a position where I can deal with the issues, I'm simply not allowing things to build inside my head any more. That way I figure, if I dont have all the anger, depression and other negative emotions swirling around, it has freed up enormous pockets of space for good things like creativity, my family and ME.
In all my adult lifetime I've been having babies, looking after my family and dealing with things that crop up by myself with little practical support from anyone. So now my youngest 'baby' is about to turn five years old in six months time and knowing I wont be having any more, it is giving me the space to decide what 'I' like, what 'I' want to do, what things make 'Me' feel happy, all of which feel like a really good place to be right now.
So on to creativity, this week I finished drawing the background of the first entry in my new year's Strength journal. 200 flowers all drawn with Inktense and Graphitint pencils, neocolors and pens then doodled with gel and glitter pens. The double page spread was completely covered in pretty flowers with hardly any spaces between them, many of them were overlapping. It took several nights to do the detailing, my eyes kept paining but it was worth it. Yesterday having finished the flowers I covered the pages in torn white tissue paper which I then sprayed over the pages and tissue with Smooch shimmer inks in grape, cherry ice and copper smudging with a tissue. This evening having left the journal open to dry, I gessoed over both pages using my brayer, it was extremely satisfying to watch the texture emerging with flowers poking through the torn tissue paper, the odd sheen highlighted from the spray spritz inks below. Its all drying now but I cant wait to add the portrait to it later or tomorrow.
Kids have been doing loads of art work and creative things themselves too, Ivan has been doing mandalas, Imogen sketching houses and Angelica has been working on noses this week.
One of the things we all love about this house is the ability to spread our craft stuff about and leave it out, its made a huge difference in the projects the kids can do for their home schooling as well as general crafting.
I've started loom knitting my fingerless mitts using A Dragon Called Karma handspun yarn, love the way its striping and cant wait to finish them.
Harvey is so cute, two evenings ago we found him in the living room, white yarn and large round loom on the carpet and hook in his hand, he announced "I cant come yet I'm knitting" and sat there winding the pegs trying to work out how to hook the yarn off. If only he realised it needs two lines of wrapped pegs he'd have been actually knitting for real, I am going to show him properly when he gets home after dropping Angelica off to the Fire Station, she is doing a fire safety course for six weeks which started tonight.
This week was also th epostcard challenge, country for week 2 is Spain, I finished my card last night so will post it here tomorrow along with how it goes into the book.
I've left Imogen at the table gluing the bookmark shape cut outs together for me, they are going to be made into a prompt book of some kind to be hung up in the lounge so anyone stuck for inspiration can look at the book to see what random page they open at. Hopefully that will encourage them not to state they are bored when its raining :)