I have been doing crafts, I promise

My crafting has been lacking.  Thought I would do the usual and shame myself into keeping it moving by posting here.  I am so determined to finish projects, well, I just can't even say.  It is so much fun in the beginning.  And then it gets boring fast.  I have to be mindful of that while I'm conceiving of projects.  I am terrible at editing and always want to do more.  But I'm tired of leaving half completed projects. 

My California scrapbook project is painfully slow going.  Its fun to work on it when I have nothing else to do and need something mindless and crafty, but I am determined to get the darn thing done this month.  We're going on another trip and I am already hatching something scrapalicious to do for it.  As always I have no clue what I'm doing.  Its so big that I've added a hundred pages and posts, and still have like three sections to go.  I still question what the purpose of this is, but love it and ultimately don't care.  Posts below show a finished page, a page in progress, and a page with random stuff ready to be used.  I think my next challenge is coming up with a better way to document our next trip.  All I have right now is a moleskin notebook and a big fat book on England.  Hmm.

The Winter 25 Scrapbook has also been hard to complete.  I really enjoyed the Fall 25 Scrapbook, but not so much with the Winter one.  The Fall one was novel, whereas the Winter was not.  While the Fall one did the trick to ward off the Winter blues, they still showed up in small little ways.  With the Winter one, I wasn't into the to-do items in the same way, and didn't do them with the same creativity.  And so, it lacks the pizazz of the Fall one.  I completely replaced multiple items, and half did others.  But some things were lovely:  finishing my quilt, capturing Spring and taking a very cold walk along a frozen Charles River all rocked (photos below).  I'm also determined to finish this one by the end of the month because I REALLY want to get started on my Spring/Summer one!

This is all I have for the Spring/Summer album so far.  Its a different size (5.8 X 8) and has a binder inside.  I have a list of to-dos (mostly things to explore in New England - a total road trip all summer!) but don't want to follow them in the same way, if at all.  For the Fall and Winter, I documented according to the items, but for the Spring/Summer, I want to make dividers for each month and document chronologically.  For example, for the month of April, I have a date night, the Boston Marathon, and pictures of the spring.  I want to put together a narrative and somehow document it all together.  And for May, I already have our water adventure that I'd like to put together with a story.  I've been gathering and taking photos, so we'll see.  I have no idea how this is going to work out, just that it needs to be different from the Fall and Winter ones.  Hopefully it will keep me invested and exploring and doing things.

So I promise, I am doing things.  Just very very slowly.

25 Things: Winter

I'm still wrapping up my Fall 25 scrapbook, and one of my last tasks is to complete my Winter 25 book. Finally finished it tonight! I just need to print some more photos from Shutterfly, and my Fall 25 will be done.

The Winter 25 is the same format as the Fall 25, with the title printed on a transparency and layered over scrapbook paper attached to a index card divider. I picked pages of blues, a smidge of red, green and gold, with some snowflake-like graphics.

I've since realized that the to-do list is a work in progress, so this will change over the next few months, which is totally okay with me. As long as I'm doing and making, I'm good.

25 Things: An Update

The 25 Things To Do scrapbook has ended up being one of the best creative ideas I've been able to pursue. Not only has it actually worked in keeping my mood up, we've been able to do some really cool things over the past several months! I've been taking lots of pictures, collecting random stuff, and having fun scrapbooking it all together. It keeps me actively creating, its easy to do, there is always something to work on.

To make the whole collection a bit more cohesive, each task has a long label with the task number stamped and the task handwritten beside it. Each page has a round label with the date stamped on it. I used silver and black sharpies to write all over everything, and used all the random stuff collected to help dress up the photos. If a task only used the front of a page, I used the back to journal about it. Tags and index cards work wonders for this. And who cares if its cheesy. So no laughing.

25: 8 down, 17 to go

I've been working on my Fall 25, and found that there are some that just aren't going to be possible, or some things that I want to do that I didn't put on the list. Its my list, so I went ahead and made some changes!

The biggest "change" was to include getting cupcakes from my local favorite cupcake place. I had to validate it somehow...

25 Things

I have posted here on my relationship with my nemesis, Winter. I am certain that my mood changes as the light wanes (for information on SAD), and so this year, I am working to prepare myself to do battle against my adversary. This plan includes light therapy, hour walks, and a list of 25 things to accomplish -- dares, a scavenger hunt, and a chance to do, make, think, journal. I made a little book (see my blog roll for many inspirations) and a list of 25 things for both the fall and the winter. I generously asked my husband for input (he will get dragged along on most of these things anyway), and tried to include all the things that we say "oh, why didn't we blankety blank this year?!" And even cooler, I've been telling everyone at work about it, and other people are making their own lists! But my hope is that I will not find myself trapped inside our apartment all winter, wondering what happened to the weekend. I want to make sure I am learning, active, living.

The book is constructed from the dividers that are used to sort index cards. The dividers are covered by cool paper. I printed the title on transparencies, and the list on white card stock. Both were designed in Illustrator. I learned the hard way that the printed transparencies do scratch, and so placed an additional transparency over the cover and the back, to protect the paper.

I cut out several types of paper and cut outs from my magazine stash to fill the book with pages. These pages will hold pictures, random things and info regarding each successful task. Truthfully, I'm not sure what I will need, but I think I made about 25 pages. The whole thing is held together with book rings from Staples. I'm still trying to decide how to sort and label each task once completed, but I'm thinking about these file labels I have, or mailing labels, and of course, my favorite date stamp.

And a sneak preview of the winter one: