Happy Holidays

I hope everyone had a happy holiday season.  At the last moment we decided to pick names out of a hat and I was lucky enough to get my sister's name for the gift giving.  She had admired my sketchbook that I submitted for the project so I came up with the idea of creating a planner or journal for her based on the ideas that I used for the sketchbook.  This came to me when I was taking a card class at a local art store.  They were offering a planner workshop that was designed to use photographs to create a scrapbook like planner as a Christmas gift. 

As part of the workshop kit, you got an 8"x8" binder and enough 2 page per week spreads for the entire year plus extra pages for pictures and memorabilia.  There were also some embellishments and scrapbook papers included in the kit.  The spaces for photos were 4"x6" which I thought would be suitable for smaller reproductions of some of the sketchbook pages I had created using quotes from Rumi and Lao Tzu.

I signed up for the workshop but then Mother Nature intervened and Sarnia was hit by major snowstorms and we were under a state of emergency for almost a week.  That set back my plans a bit.  While I was house bound without the kit I did gather supplies and create watercolour background, as well as scour magazines for text expressions and dig out my favourite rubber stamps.

When the snow lifted enough to travel, I collected my kit and spent several hours at the store, stamping in the 2011 calendar onto the planner pages.  With that task accomplished I was ready to create my gift in the remaining week before Christmas.  Santa's elves had competition I can tell you.  I was burning the midnight oil or should I say electricity.  I had so many boxes of supplies open around the floor that it was like the day I unpacked my workshop.  The cat was having a field day with the scraps of thread and paper.

Bit by bit the planner came together.  I tried to make sure that the end result would be functional as well as interesting and thought provoking.  Some page just seem to build themselves.  Text excerpts from four or five different magazine ads would come together to express a completely new thought which would fit in perfectly with a quote or a picture or a painted background.  You know those moments that seem somehow meant to be... The planner seemed to be filled with those.  As if I'd been saving some of these bits and pieces for just this project, for just this time and for just this person.  As they used to say on the A Team, "I love it when a plan(ner) comes together."

In my zeal to get everything completed and wrapped ---- I forgot to take any pictures of the construction or of the competed project for that matter.  But I was pleased with it and I'm glad to say, so was my sister.  She paid me that supreme honour of silence when she first saw it and then she put it to one side and said she needed to be alone to savour it when she first looked at it.  You can't get much better than that, now can you.