Saturday, November 27, 2010

I'm a Nanowrimo Winner!!



Minutes ago, just 20 minutes before midnight, I fished my Nanowrimo story and I have to tell you.. It's been another tough one.

The last couple of hundred words just did not want to get written. At all. I still don't think I got the ending right, and have already got tons of notes on how to rewrite. And even though I know I have said this before, I think this story might actually be worth doing a rewrite on. Zombies are the new vampires, right?

Other than the usual struggle with the writing, we had to deal with some major family stuff here the last week, which made focussing on something as trivial as a zombie story difficult. But everyone seems to be a lot better now, and hopefully this monday, we will get to see the latest addition to the family; two tiny twin boys who are currently in a London hospital growing bigger and stronger every day!

How about some statistics?
Total word count: 50101
Days of writing less than 1667 words: 4
Days of not writing anything at all: 5
Highest number of words ahead of schedule: 10 373 (on day 6)
Lowest number of words ahead of schedule: 3353 (on day 22)
Words written on Day 1: 5286
Words written on Day 27 (last day): 2212
Times I wanted to quit: a billion
No, really, times I wanted to quit: Never! I love Nanowrimo!

But you know what I love most about Nanowrimo? When it's over and done with. When you save your work for the last time, and can sit there and smile at the screen that says 'YOU ARE A NANNOWRIMO WINNER!!'

Congrats to those who have already won this year, and those still writing: best of luck on the last few words. You can do it!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Try It Out Thursday

Remember the Kraft tape I was talking about? I took it a step futher and made my own decorative tape!

Two weeks ago, Leslie Herger was doing her weekly Ustream show on turning medical tapes into decorative tapes by adding some paint, and I decided that I could not wait until I could get my hands on Micropore, but use my Kraft tape.

Here's what I did:

I started off with putting the tape on a cover of a catalogue I wasn't going to buy anything from anyway.


Then I painted and painted and painted, using acrylics paint in colours I like. Some I kept in one colour, some painted in a few different colours.


I doodled on some of them, others I drew lines on so I could write on them later.


I then stuck them to grease proof paper. Because my Art Journal has handy pockets throughout the journal, they're right there when I want them. I keep the catalogue covers in there too in case I feel the urge to paint some more tape.

Here are a few Art Journal pages I've used the tapes on:






It's highly addictive and such an easy project you could do it with children too. And don't stop at using the tape for your Art Journal, you can use them for scrapbooking projects, labels, cards, and wrapping presents.. I'm sure you can think of many more uses for these tapes.

I know what I'll be asking Father Christmas for this year: more tape!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Art Journaling - It's all good!



It's here! The second issue of 'Art Journaling - It's all good!', the 'zine allll about Art Journaling, is here!

If you liked the first one, you will love the second issue! It's full of articles, book reviews, it has a readers' gallery, tons of images, an interview with the amazing Tracey Moore, a piece by Dawn Sokol about Nanojoumo, tons of prompts to work with and even more. Over 50 pages of Art Journaling goodness!

Even though we would very much like you to join our online community Artjournaling.ning.com, you don't have to be a member to get your copy of the 'zine. Go here to order your copy, and if you haven't got the first issue yet, you can still order that too.
They're only $5 each!

Besides getting an amazing 'zine, you'll also be supporting our charity for this issue: the UCSF Art For Recovery project.

So, go on over here, click on the icon of the issue you'd like to purchase and follow the instructions. Please allow 24 hours for your order to be processed, Leslie has to do it all by hand so it takes a while...

Enjoy!!