Journal: LSNED Days 12-17

Hi, hi, hi.

I've found a way to make the 'every day' part of Shimelle's Learn Something New Every Day class work for me ... I don't do it everyday ...

I do make sure to think of that day's lesson on the day, but I save up a week's worth of committing it to paper for the weekend. These next pages have been completed for a week but I just haven't had time to photograph them before today.

Any day now you should expect my annual "Where's all the daylight gone? How am I meant to take photos now?" complaint mode to kick in! It's like I can either go out to work during the day OR I can stay home and make use of those precious daylight hours to photograph all my projects ... but I can't do both!  ;-)

Anywhoooo ... here's the pages I have managed to photograph in the light! There'll be more to come whenever the sun comes back out.

Sept 12: 'My Summer-time Life'

Sept 13: 'Just Ask'

Sept 14: 'Let's Share Toys'

I'm really enjoying creating focal points from the images I'd cut from fashion magazines long before this project, it's definitely helped me keep on track with LSNED. I think if I'd decided to take - and more importantly print off - a new photo each day ... it just wouldn't have got done.

Hey - alongside each day's lesson, maybe I've also learned how this style of art-journal-ish scrappiness really suits my haphazard nature! Do you think I can get extra credit for that homework?

Along with the fashion image this page also features an illustration from my current favourite 'retro kid's book to chop up and stick down' ... of which I have several:

Sept 15: 'Maybe ... September's not so bad.'

When I first decided to take this class it was, in part, to distract me from how much September generally annoys me. But now I'm thinking ... maybe that's not so true any more ... maybe ...

Sept 16: 'Just not for me'

I've never had a job which required me to stay in one place - in fact I rarely spend a day in one building, but one or twice a year I help out with the selection process for the new intake to my current job. Which means I have a room to myself ... and paperwork ... and official 'things' to do.

I love parts of it [ie: the clipboard, putting nervous hopefuls at ease, setting out paper and highlighter pens on desks ...]. But the same four walls? Not for me.

My highlight of the day came while showing one young eager man the way out after the test and his parting words to me were: 'Thank you for having me'.

And suddenly I felt like the host of a children's party!

Sept 17: 'At least we don't spoil two homes'

In one small seaside town we managed to browse around:

• a secondhand bookshop;
• a charity shop;
• an auction room;
• a vintage shop;
• a vintage market and
• 2 church bazaars [where we bought cakes and jam - how stereotypically British was that?!]

Right, I'm going to stop now, so I can get on with completing my LSNED pages for this week.

I'll see you very soon.

Julie :-)

Journal: Learn Something New Every Day

Hi, hi, hi.

First of all, before I launch into the pages I've made in response to the Learn Something New Every Day projects from shimelle.com I'd like to just say thank you to all those who took time to comment on my previous post - the Stampotique layout from the Art from the Heart blog hop.

I received the most comments I've ever had on a post. And I wasn't even giving anything away! I was a little bit overwhelmed at the response. Still am really.

Some of the remarks left in those comments have really got me thinking .... so you should anticipate plenty of future posts arising from all the food for though you gave me and ideally there'd be a series or a class thrown in there too ... but we'll have to see how that goes!

For now, I just wanted to thank you for taking time to let me know you liked my work. I am grateful for each and every comment I receive. Thank you.

OK then onwards ...

Despite [or is it because of] only ever having jobs in the Education sector, I'm not a big fan of the whole 'Back to School' atmosphere.

School holds no great warm memories for me ... but learning ... learning is possibly my favourite thing ever! I don't think I've ranted here recently about how one of the BEST things about my job at University is that I get to sit in on lectures. I attended a full degree's worth of Animation lectures and seminars, have years worth of Games lectures under my belt with a touch of Law, Sociology, Computer Science and Management modules on the side. [But he sooner we forget about that one terrifying hour of Graphical Mathematics ... the better.]

And, as much as I've gate-crashed lots of other people's studies, I've taken plenty of night-classes and Summer courses for myself where I've learned about everything from spreadsheets to screenwriting.

So, to combat the 'Urgh, it's Autumn' feeling I often get and to celebrate my love of life-long learning I decided to join in with Shimelle's LSNED idea. 

I knew there'd be no way I'd have the time, discipline or attention span to make a 'proper' scrapbook page for each day throughout September. So instead I'm filling a 50p notebook with snippets of paper, with journaling blocks and with additional 'bits' and letter stickers or words cut from magazines.

I sat down for a good proportion of last weekend pre-preparing most of my pages, putting in a basic structure of paper etc leaving space to add photos and images and more personalised wording once I sit down to write each day's unique lesson after it happens!

Where I've used photographs they've simply been printed with a PoGo.

Sept 1: 'Wan go beach?'

Sept 2: 'The Hair Cut'

On the pages, like this, where I'm not using a photo, I've turned to the bag of magazine clippings I keep for art journaling to find some of my favourite images:

Sept 3: 'Is it too warm to wear my new boots yet?'

This is the only day I managed to stamp the date upside down, which isn't bad going when I stamped all 30 all in one go:

Sept 4: 'Wow'

Sept 5: 'Project planning'

I hope to blog all 30 entries at some point this month but ... I'm not going to commit myself to that right now ... I'm always re-learning that I ought to "Promise little, but do much".

Which might just make it into today's journal entry ...

Julie :-)