How things come together. Coincidence. God. Fate. Serendipity. Whichever you prefer (I've typed the word serendipity twice in the last 2 weeks - cool word), it seems to be working for me at the moment.
As you know from my last few rambling posts, I have recently decided to try art journalling. This week Shimelle offered to donate the cost of one of her classes to The Girls’ Fund , so, in the name of a good cause, I picked one I haven't done before; 'My Freedom', which includes some examples of art journalling option as well as straight scrapbooking. I didn't even know Shimelle kept an art journal, but the pages I have looked at so far are very recognisably hers. That's encouraging for me - they are allowed to be 'scrapbooky'.
Again coincidentally, the first prompt is Time; 'Keep a schedule of your daily routine' - I did that only last week! So, I have decided to make this my new project. I am going to work through the archived class at my own pace to explore the new medium of art journalling.
For the first topic of Time, Shimelle set us an interesting list of questions about our concept of time . I can't share them all, as this is a paid class, but the one which spoke most to me, in the light of A Week in the Life of Me, was What three things seem to take most of your time?
Answer: Classroom teaching time + prep+marking and admin= 25 hrs per week.
Blogging / emails / computer time=16hrs per week.
Preparing children's meals, sitting and nagging them to eat, then clearing up afterwards = 11hrs per week.
I continued the maths: 56hrs sleeping, 5 hours driving and 5 hours crafting in an average term-time week. (Out of an available 168 hours in a week)
I decided to go with this statistical theme and created this page, which I am quite happy with.
I drew the clock first on grid paper with oil pastels and cut it out. I was feeling brave, so I took a deep breath and covered the page with black acrylic paint. I then obscured the paint with a patchwork of patterned paper, but hey! This is about the process, right? After writing the journalling, I realised I needed transparent clock hands so bent them from silver-plated wire with my jewellery pliers. I don't think you can see them very well. Sorry! The chipboard numbers were inked and embossed.
I have it in mind to create a facing page about our holiday timetable, which is always much more relaxed, with similar colours and a matching clock but more flowing lines.
