pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

Ready to talk about photos for this weekend? I thought so.

Well, you can go two ways: you can choose your confessions to match the photos you want to use, or you can acquire photos to match the confessions you want to use. Either way, you need one photo per confession plus one photo for the cover. Let’s start there.

For the cover, you might want to use a picture of you. I did. But I used a blurry photo that I might not use elsewhere. A photo that was accidental but I still liked…you know those photos that are not going to win any prizes for being technically beautiful but you can’t delete them because there’s something there you like? A photo like that. Plus I thought it would be kinda clever if the photo was a bit blurry, like there is something to hide. Matches the confession theme, right? In fact, I used this throughout my book so actually all of my photos involve some amount of blur. Some more than others. So that photo just stuck out as a recent one that I might not use otherwise. But you could take a picture on purpose—you could play with miming telling someone a secret or making a ‘shhhh’ expression, or you could just use it as an excuse to grab a friend and have a little photo session, where the goal is to get one photo each of you like of yourselves.

Or…you might not want to be a cover girl. In that case, choose a photo that you like, a photo that fits the theme…pose an artful shot of a diary for example. Or use a photo that you just plain think would look cool on a book cover. That is always allowed.

For the inside, you need one photo for each confession. I have five confessions so I have five photos. You can have any number of confessions you like—I have five because it is enough to make it a book but not so many that I would be working on it for days. I wanted a project I could put together off and on over an afternoon and have it completed. So five was right for me—choose the number right for you.

Starting with an idea for your confessions will probably be easiest…think of one little quirk you’d like to share and then a photo that goes with it. You might already have that photo—I used a photo from a trip we took last year for a confession about looking forward to a trip this year—or you might need to take that photo—I snapped one shot in our living room to match one idea I wanted to include. If you’re really stuck, you can even search Flickr as some photographers release the copyright on their photos and allow you to include them in your own projects (the copyright info on a flickr page is in the right hand column of fine print).

Once you’ve figured out an idea for one confession (you don’t need the wording to be perfect just yet) and photo pairing, hopefully the process will get easier. Think of a conversation with girlfriends – real or imaginary – about silly, innocent things that you do differently than everyone else. Things you would like to tell someone but you’re not sure how well they’d take it. I’ll share all my confessions on Friday, but in the mean time here are a few from anonymous others to get you thinking…
Do you hate it when people wear shoes without socks?
Do you stack your toast so the buttered sides touch?
Do you actually quite like ironing?
Could you live quite happily without a telephone (or any other modern invention)?
Do you have a chocolate stash for times of emergency?
Do you cling to something you have kept since you were a baby?
Is there one song or CD you put on repeat when no one is around (or one you would really rather never hear again)?
It’s okay if your confessions are in the ‘something about…’ stage right now. That’s enough to get a photo. Like ‘something about how I hate answering machines’ is fine right now. The wording can come later.

You can use colour or black and white photographs. I actually used half of each.

Remember that the pages of your book will be made from the photos themselves, so you may want to print at a size different than your usual habit. My pages are 5×7, but a 4×6 book works too or you could make a giant project at 8×10 if you really wanted lots of room to write and embellish. You just need one print of each photo, including the cover.

If there’s anything I haven’t thought to cover and you have a question, please post it in the comments and I’ll edit this post to include it. Otherwise, everything else will be posted here on Friday afternoon, British time, just in time for the weekend!

xlovesx

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You probably already know this: projects go so much faster if you know what you’re going to use and have everything ready to go. I’m not quite willing to admit just how much of my creative time is spent choosing what I’m going to use. That definitely takes more time than the actual construction! I can’t be the only one, can I?

So to help that little problem, here’s a supply list to help you sort that little problem out during the week. Click on the picture above to download the PDF, and that will help you with either fishing through your own stash or shopping for a little something new.

More to come, of course. So looking forward to all your books already!

xlovesx

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So what are your plans for next weekend?

Have time to fit in a little project? Here’s the plan:

*Today (and all this week) you can grab this badge for your blog or website and tell everybody you have something to confess.

*Tomorrow you can download a few notes to get ready…like what photos you’ll need and how to make this project from your own stash. You know you need to use up some of what you have right now before all the new stuff arrives in the shops over the next few weeks!

*This Friday you can download all the instructions to make this little book. Then make your book over the weekend or whenever fits your schedule. Then dance around the living room to your official ‘I finished a project’ song for as long as you want.

Here’s the deal: 2006 was fabulous. I want to start 2007 by saying Thank You to everybody out there who made that possible. So the first class of the year? It’s free. I hope you’ll join us!

More details tomorrow!

xlovesx

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Oh outside world, is this what you look like? Is there a sky? And do people wear things other than pajamas and have conversations without coughing up a lung? Oh outside world, I would like to rejoin you.

{Yes, this is merely to explain that I didn’t mean to disappear and I am rather behind with my inbox but the power of four days of sleep and vitamin C have started to help me out there, so I hope to catch up with everything soon, including something cool that I hope to post later today. Hurrah, and all hail superfoods!}

xlovesx

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Of course, one of the best things about a happy ending is a new beginning. And if you needed inspiration for one this week, there is plenty about. AEZine discusses a word for the new year. The funky effer girls will dare you to declare your intentions for 2007 and the UK dare girls are resolving too. This site inspires you to get creative with a daily inspirational quote (great for keeping a daily journal). Nichol’s done a tutorial for a fab resolutions book and Rebecca’s made this glittery piece to celebrate the new year. Just tons of cool stuff to see this week. I could hibernate in my studio and make stuff all week. Or rather, I certainly would if I could.

I would like to start the crafty new year by thanking Making Memories for bringing something to the market that is affordable and sticks to the wall yet won’t get me in trouble with the landlord. These just come off the wall when I’m done with them. I won’t tell you how many I have at the moment. Enough for every room to have a saying. I’m going to let each room tell me what that should be. But this one I knew straight away. {Plus omg, I think I fall a little more in love with that big print every time I see it. It’s always the talking point of the room. Well, that or the chair.}

So when the first LifeArt challenge of the year dealt with finding a single word for 2007, I cheated. I’m command oriented, and I chose two words. Get there. And yes, I know where there is. And it’s a very, very good place. A particular vista that will unfold little by little this year.

And thinking of birdies made me think of Woodstock. And sparkles and guitar chords and a festival of life. It’s totally silly. And that’s totally fine. And with that, I’ve decided I’ll try to keep up with the Dares this year. I will try! {Those super tiny script letters are rub-ons by American Crafts and the scripty font in the middle is a stamp from FontWerks. Love both of these right now. I also wish the sparkle of the green glittery letters came through on your screen, but alas, no!}

It’s just one more little step in getting there.

xlovesx

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I am a total sucker for a happy ending.

You have no idea.

I do not watch soap operas because, aside from the difficulty that I don’t have a telly, they have neither happy nor endings. I will mentally edit books and films in my head to end the story fifteen pages or minutes from the end, at the one moment where everything was perfectly happy and blissful and no one knew a mack truck was just about to demolish the most delightful of characters. And although I am now the shameful owner of the entire six years of Dawson’s Creek on DVD, I will quite possibly only watch the episodes wherein the characters I like are happy together and thereby pretend there is no adolescent introspective depression in the middle.

Which means I’ll watch like three entire episodes. Pah.

This week has marked somethings that were not so happy. But it has also held some very happy endings for little me. Today marks the end of the Christmas Journal class for this year (and indeed the official end of the Christmas season). My journal this year is one that I would be quite happy to share with people (err, or rather, I have shared with the other participants along the journey…something I haven’t done in the other years). It is a very happy ending to see it sitting there, nice and fat on the table. I can’t put into words how much I have loved Christmas this year. Happy, happy, happy.

It marked the happy ending to my several-month-long desire to see Stranger than Fiction, which had an exceedingly limited release in the UK which shall never be forgiven. This movie made me happier than any I have seen in a very long time. When it comes out on DVD, it shall live next to Garden State and Life Aquatic, or rather, I will buy extra copies of all three of those films because they are the ones we feel compelled to loan out when someone says they have never seen it, then we decide to watch them and realise they are out there in the world serving their purpose of entertaining others. So yes, I think I will need two copies. At least. Whoever wrote this movie knew that people like me exist, in more ways than just combining cupcakes and space camp in the same two hour time period. Happy, happy, happy.

And indeed, I know that I could never write novels because I love the happy ending too much. More than one person tried to teach me that whole ‘love a character, kick him in the teeth’ concept. And I even pass it on to others. {My year 8 class are looking at just that right now with Flowers for Algernon, which seems to be the first thing they have enjoyed all year. More happy.} But I can’t do it. I want to celebrate the happy. And of course, how can you not be happy when you have knitted cupcakes in your studio? These were knitted by Jen for my Christmas pressie and I love them. And Prolix send me that happy yellow handmade journal. As a Christmas surprise. And handmade will always, always make me happy, happy, happy.

xlovesx

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The other day Ali talked a bit about her Week in the Life project. It’s an important project. I knew that.

I just didn’t know how important.

The page above is one from the week I chronicled in her class last summer. I chronicled the week beginning July 3rd, 2006. It was a week of working hard and playing hard…trying to get lots of done before end of term (school here goes nearly to the end of July), doing some extra little jobs I love despite their need for time (photographing awards assemblies and end of year projects, that sort of thing). A week wherein the 4th was an ordinary day but perhaps the 7th was not. A week with Orange Wednesdays, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Krispy Kreme.

It was a really good week.

On Tuesday’s entry, there is an entire panel dedicated to one student receiving his award in assembly and how much I had learned from him. A boy I taught when he was eleven years old and much like anybody else. A boy who went through something at twelve that no one should ever have to go through. How watching him go from the brink to winning awards, all with a smile on his face reminded me that my fights are small. That I am incredibly blessed. That there is so much to live for.

It’s something I might have thought about a little, but without this project, I wouldn’t have thought to record it. But I did. And it was hard to do without tears, if I’m honest, but if there had been tears, they would have been good ones. Tears from moments when we realise we can be very, very lucky to brush with certain people in our lives. People like that boy who stood in front of my camera with a certificate and a smile.

Thank you, Ali, for something you really could not have known you were doing. Not quite.

And thank you to another A, for everything you taught me in that short time. I promise to remember.

May you rest in peace.

xlovesx

Happy New Year from the knitting chair!

A busy place it has been, actually. A few days of no stress are good for getting things off the needles.

A scarf for the boy, a sparkly scarf for me and the cardigan I started last winter. I am rather excited about finishing that. I never thought I would, really. So yay!

And just to make you smile, I have also been making these.

I promise to be back with a post of more substance tomorrow.

Happy New Year!

xlovesx

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