One of the things I looked forward to most during the middle of my exams was all the free time I would have and I hoped and dreamed that I would be blessed with creativity and inginuity to make something come to fruition. Like redecorate and clean my room. I haven't seen so much on any of those fronts yet, since I only had one or two days after my final exam to prepare for going away for a week on the Australian pilgrimage known as 'schoolies'. When I came back though I did do the dishes, sorted out some of the dried laundry, put all my nice clothes on hangers and inside my monstrous wardrobe and scrubbed the shower recess. Nearly an entire week from all that frenzied cleaning and the only other thing I've managed to do is to chuck some of my nastier note books from Calculus and Physics into the recycling bin as well as organise text books to be sold. I still need to photograph all the clothes, books, bits and bobs to be sold on eBay and work out how I will represent the items pages, but that's a worry for January I think.
I have ripped into a few books such as the Diana + hard book issued with the Diana Dreamer camera I sucessfully won at online auction, although I admit some of the material was recycle in a newer edition which I had previously read. I never tire of hearing about the all plastic wonder-camera and how Andy Warhol despised it. I like the new stories though to go with photographs streamed online to the Lomography Society website. I managed to get a third of the way through Terry Pratchett's 'Johnny and the Bomb' yesterday while on the bus and inbetween working yesterday. Another book I've already read but I thoroughly enjoy Prachett and the characters of that particular novel are simply charming. Once I'm bored of vegetating on the couch and developing bed sores I'm sure I'll sooner or later regain my vigour for reading and sort out my bookcase crammed with issues of Vogue and Russh.Colour coordinating my bookshelves would really be lovely and perfect.
My desk looks like a bomb hit it, why can't it be neat and covered in pug ornaments? At times I have almost weakened to splashing out on ceramic deer figurines to decoarte my desk but there are a lot of neat things at my place of retail employment to inspire me as well such as figurines, tea pots and a yellow submarine tea strainer. I am bound to blow most of my earnings on stuff from within the store, had I the space for it in my bedroom.
Illustrations! Another thing I had to give up in the heat of battle in the war against exams! In the last few months I developed the most magnificant callous on my ring finger where my pen rested. Needless to say, extraneous writing and drawing became off limits so as to not exacibate the condition. But after a few weeks of laying off the pencil/ pen I might be able to return again with a vengance and draw to my little heart's content.
I like the way clothes and necklaces are hung on the white walls, it makes their colour seem even more bright. For my room though since the floors are hard wood and the walls are plain white, the space is ideal for taking photographs once I reorganise the space, figure out how to properly use it and place myself in front of a tripod. The best fashion blogs have people helping them to take photographs of their outfits and that's the kind of blog I'd like Secret Hipster to be, only I'm ashamed of my body at times and I don't flatter myself. I need more time to work this out and create outfits at the moment. For now, I will settle for showcasing amazing photographs of jewellery and fashion pieces with running commentary.
For the first time in my life I have a very cool diary but I haven't really used it at all and that's sort of depressing really. I've been very busy typing at the speed of light as my mother would say and cataloguing gorgeous brands, jewellery and fashion on my blog to fully take up the written arts again. Occasionally when suffering writer's block I'll set about scrawling notes in a book given to me on my birthday last year and then type those up properly but that's as far as things have gotten when it comes to writing things out.
Still, it would be nice to be able to write things out in my own hand writing and put together clippings from magazines as well as photographs. For my boyfriend, I filled in a book from Listography, 'My Love Life in Lists' and that was about one hundred and fifty pages to fill out but some of them weren't applicable. I have to fill in some more the next time I see him but I should write down some vague notes in my diary to jog my memory when I do have the chance to write in his book for him. That's about the most writing I've done this Summer, neatly and with effort.
I had aimed to accomplish so much this Summer as I do every year and though I always fall short, I accomplish something in some small way. I had meant to learn to roughly do water colour and write in cool fonts but that had never come to fruition really. There's still time though and not all hope has been lost. It will just be a little more difficult since I'll now be preparing to head off to university in the next few weeks as well.
The diary I had purchased for this year was from a company called Rebound books and they take old Little Golden books and splice them open, insert diary dates and spiral bound them to make into diaries. I got one mainly to keep up to date with university and since nothing really spectacular has happened this year so far I haven't had much to write in it sadly. There's quite a few blank pages so I suppose I should do rough drawings and sketches of things I blogged about during the week, or print out excerpts of my blog and stick it in with the date. I'm not too sure how much effort I can be bothered with writing the same things out twice, but at least it might give a little flavour to my diary and make it special. I want it to be thick and jam-packed full of stuff. If I had any sense, I would lock myself in my room and read through magazines and clip stuff out of them as well as try badly to draw things from my blog from a frozen screen.
I'm very tempted to turn the blank pages of my diary into something like this- while I doubt I will be graced with the good luck to find as many lovely looking magazine clippings as this if my family were to finally upgrade to a better printer than I could print out extracts here and there of this blog and do up the pages myself. I'm digging the pink and purple painted pages and the rough hand drawn borders, it's all very home made and sweet. I have been dedicating a lot of my time to writing online so I can share it with others who have the same opinion as me, but I can't help but feel that I'm missing the all important process of writing things for myself and in secret and getting to hug a diary close to my chest at night. I was never the kind of girly girl who wrote all her thoughts in secret under the torch of her bed sheets and the crushes of her names and what happened daily, but I wish I had been. Or that I could become that girl now.
While writing in three-dimensional clunky blocks isn't difficult, I can never really bring myself to finish writing say, a diary or writing in a notebook. I always give up halfway through because I have a change of heart and no longer agree with my ideas in it anymore or I hate my handwriting. When I first write in a book everything looks so neat and cute but as I get further into it I get lazy and careless. At least with an online journal the presentation is the same and remains in the same, neat font all the way through no matter how tired and worn out I feel.
This year I'm in half the mind to take on an additional TAFE course or an adult learning class on either an Asian language, Japanese perhaps or a photography course so I can actually hone my craft. It would be a lot of fun to learn how to write characters in an Asian language and when I see the advertisement for Apple iPads I always feel a pang of poverty. I would love to learn things as I go through the year and devote my spare diary pages to learning a foreign language. I think that should be my next task when I next go to the library.
YSL Arty Ovale rings.
