31 small mercies (by Jo)

I felt very excited when Elaine chose this project. I’ve put so many journal type projects on my crafting to-do lists but never quite got to grips with them. So this was my first effort and I was glad to have Kate Crane’s virtual hand to guide me through it.

I confess I’m not a finisher (believe me – I have plenty of evidence!) so knew at the bottom of me that this wasn’t going to be the first of 12 sets of pages. So I had half a mind to make these my index pages for a long planned holiday journal. But the form of the final project was determined by a rather grim start to the year. Christmas had been good but was followed by lots of sad news and spanners in the works which made January a very difficult month. I was obviously not alone. The other Quartet girls had their share of trials during January and I began to think the whole nation was suffering when I saw the BBC’s happiness challenge. One part of the challenge is to write down each day three good things that have happened to you. As I started to think about it I decided I could maybe combine this with my journalling project. I couldn’t fit in three things for each day of January on my pages so I have stuck to just one per day and I had to cheat for some of it because I was recording retrospectively. So my January journal became “31 reasons to be cheerful”.

I’m not very confident with acrylics nor any paint to be honest but the opening steps to create the background seemed straightforward enough. I was not best pleased with the results of my efforts though. I had decided to overprint with some bubble wrap to create texture and then use some abstract stamps with the pink and blue acrylic paint I’d laid down in the first step. But it looked pretty rough and I was a bit disheartened. I was poised to bin my pages but first I went back to the magazine for a way forward and read some good advice in Helen Chilton’s article. Although her piece was very different, the ‘tip’ which she gave for creating backgrounds was very relevant. It read, “Don’t expect perfection with these background techniques. The whole point is that these will be the starting point of your project.” I also had a brainwave when I read Trish Latimer’s article using sprays. It reminded me that I had bought a bottle of Craft Notions White Matte spray, having been told that it is great for toning things down. It did the trick for me and helped the dodgy blue and red stamping blend into the background.

I learnt through the process how bad I am at ‘letting go’. I resisted the idea of using lots of different colours in my project and started preparing the paper squares sticking to my blue and pink colour scheme. But the papers proved far too dark and I threw caution to the wind, choosing any colour that I thought I could write over.

I used several different stamps to put the page together. I had started using Inkadinkado’s Circles and Dots on the background. Then I cut out lots of ‘sun’ shapes stamped with Craft Stamper’s free stamp (the tea cup is also a Craft Stamper freebie). After using Elusive Images’ Retro Florals on the background of the January oval, I decided to add these to the background. This time I used Dabbers in Gold Copper and Denim and got a much better result than my initial stamping with paint. The ‘January’ stamp, numbers and days are from Inkadinkado’s Months and Days. I’ve been itching to use them. ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ is another Elusive Images stamp, this time from the Say it with Words plate.

I had underestimated what a long job it would be to stick all the separate pieces onto the pages. That alone would put me off doing a whole year in this way. But placing all the pieces wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. Or maybe I was just lucky.

The final very ‘busy’ result is very different from anything I’ve made before but very satisfying. As January went along I became more aware of the little things that brought me happiness. I’m pleased to say that February was a much more cheerful month but I’ve learnt a lot along the way in terms of techniques. I still have much more ‘letting go’ to work at but I’m now another step along that journey.

My apologies again for the appalling photos in this post. I struggle for good light at the best of times and it has been grim weather here for most of the week.