Thursday, January 29, 2009

ALL ABOUT YOU IN 52--Week 3

This week's topic is "If you could have changed one thing about yourself, what would it be?" Again, I thought back to when I was a kid/teen/young adult, and the thing that would have changed my life the most would have been if I had loved myself more--thought more af myself--had more self-confidence. Back then, all I could see when I looked in the mirror was fat and ugly. So many people told me that I was cute and I didn't believe them or see it. Now, I look back at those pictures and cannot believe that I was thin enough, cute (maybe even pretty at times), and yes, I had a big butt, but I'm Italian and it runs in the family! No matter what I did, I was always going to have those hips! If I could have accepted my body features and embraced them, I think that would have changed the way I lived the rest of my life. I made poor decisions based on the fact that I thought I couldn't do any better or get anything better. If I could see then what I see now...I was 120-125 pounds, had beautiful eyes, a nice curvy shape--so what if I wasn't a size 3! I would love to be 125 pounds again! Sometimes you don't see and appreciate what you have until you lose it! I now see in those photos a beautiful young woman who wanted to be liked, loved, and appreciated.
I used a piece of paper from Basic Grey Fusion, cut the "mirror" out with the CM cutting system, beaded it with gold microbeads from PennyWiseArts.com. I also used a piece of easter basket wrap for the mirror affect. The mirror was created with silver and gold colored paper from CM. The hearts are from K&Company "Smitten" and letter is Cricut cartridge Schoolhouse Plantin.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

All About You in 52--Week 2



This week's suggestion for the All About You in 52 Dare is "What did you want to be when you grew up?" So, here is my layout. Did I end up becoming what I always wanted to be? No. I changed my mind when I was in high school, but from the time I can remember until I was 16 years old, this was my goal. I'll have to do another layout explaining why I changed my mind and changed my career choice!

Debbies Dare--All About You in 52




I decided to participate in Debbie's Dare this year. It's called "All About You in 52". It's a suggestion for a layout about you every week. I thought this would be a great gift for my daughter when she is older. I finished week one's thought, which is "Who influenced your life the most?" Now, my thought processes for this one mostly centered around since I was a baby until now, and I went with my gut/first instinct in the end. It turned out to be a two-page layout. I free-handed the background for both pages--the staff and huge treble clef. The brads came from Oriental Trading Company, I think. The cassette is actually a scan of my actual recording and inside the "cassette" is a booklet of journaling about my grandfather and me and our obsession with guitars and music and how this changed my whole life. The cassette album cover is hand-drawn by myself and 4 of the songs on the cassette are songs that I wrote. One song is dedicated to my grandfather, Poppy, and "How Great Thou Art" is dedicated to my grandma on my mom's side who passed away with cancer two years after Poppy died of pancreatic cancer. I know he would have been proud of me! I wish he could have met my daughter, and I wish he could have known that I would be getting my master's degree!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

The DORA Room
















I FINALLY finished my daughter's bedroom!!! It's taken me 3 summers of working on it to draw, paint and finish decorating my daughter's bedroom. It's a four-wall Dora mural including all of the DORA characters, except for Benny the Bull). Originally, my daughter slept in a train bed that we called "Azule" so we even had the train in the room, but now she's in a big girl bed.
Now that I'm finally done, she looks at me and said, "I don't like Dora any more. I want Princesses. All that work for nothing." My answer? "Dora will be here until you're 30, get used to it!" She has princess bed sheets!