September has been a highly creative month for me, so I wanted to share what I have made and what I am still working on. I have been in a real slump as far as my writing goes, but I have been practicing my creativity in other ways. It's fun to see all the ways in which creative ideas can take form! I didn't even realize everything I had done this month until I started writing this piece!
To start, I had a plain white t-shirt lying around after my sister gave me a pile of clothes she didn't want anymore. I don't like to wear white, but I knew I could do something with it, whether I dyed it or not. After the school shootings in Georgia and Pennsylvania, my mom introduced me to a poem by Brian Bilston in 2016 called America Is A Gun. After reading this and sitting on it for a week or two, I realized what to do with that plain shirt. I haven't really done any embroidering, but I wanted to give it a try with some simple lettering, so I stitched "America Is a Gun" onto the t-shirt. Now, the hardest part is going to be wearing it out in public without getting harassed, but that's another story.
I still need to wash the shirt so I can get the pencil marks off and I can wear it out.
America Is A Gun
England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.
Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona's hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.
Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.
Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.
― Brian Bilston
I've also been much more active in my collage/junk journal recently than my written journal. A few days before my birthday, my parents surprised me with my own Costco membership and the same day, I got to shop there by myself for the first time. All I needed on that trip was pesto for the pasta dinner we were planning, but I also got myself a pack of bento boxes for lunch at work, which I had been thinking about buying for months. I took the receipt, some pieces of the packaging, and some other junk scraps and put them together to celebrate my first solo Costco trip. My mom thought "Baby's first Costco trip" was funny.
I also made two pages about my birthday celebration. I included pieces of cards and notes that I received, a ribbon from one of my gifts, a sticker from an envelope a card came in, and a piece of a flyer that I got at the restaurant we went to on my birthday. I love how these two pages came out.
I also got a tattoo and a piercing this month, and I put together a page and a full spread about those two experiences. Technically, the scraps I included about piercings did not actually come from my piercing session but from when I had to go into the same shop a few weeks before because the top piece of my belly button ring had come off. Either way, these two pages still represent my trips to the tattoo and piercing shops this month.
I made a spread about A because I have had a few dreams about him recently. This caused a lot of weird emotions for me, and that was well before I was actually able to speak to him a couple of weeks ago when he told me some big scary news about a couple of things going on in his life. I felt that the owls really needed to be on this page because owls are often seen as messengers, and it felt highly significant that he kept showing up in my dreams since it is not common for me to dream much at all.
I made a cute page where I used a strawberry-print bag from an antique store I went to recently as the background. I cut up a postcard I got from my old boss at one of my college jobs, and I included one of my antique photos that I have collected. This was one of the lucky ones where the name of the person in the picture is written on the back. Since that would be hidden when I glued it into my journal, I made sure to make her a little name tag to I would never forget that her name is Mildred. I'm very happy with how this simple little spread came out.
I also made a spread with a bunch of things that I collected on our family trip to the beach for Labor Day at the beginning of this month. I got several stickers; some I paid for, and some were free. I used a bag I got as the background for the spread and included business cards, a tag from a shirt I bought, tissue paper from something else I bought, and my fortune from the Zoltar machine, which I felt really hit home and resonated with me. This is not my normal style of junk/collage journal spread, but I really like how it came out.
The biggest thing I have been working on this month is my Renaissance Fair outfit, which is still a work in progress because the fair isn't until next weekend. The original plan was to go to a big fair with AP and AJ, but I'm not able to make it to that trip, so I'm going to a smaller fair with my mom instead. When I was planning to go with the girls, we had planned to coordinate our outfits so I would be a mermaid, AP would be a siren, and AJ would be a pirate. I had already bought all of my materials before I had to back out, so I decided I still wanted to put them to use and wear my mermaid outfit to the smaller fair. I'm not done yet, but I've been stringing beads to add to my dress, bedazzling shells for a hair piece and to add to the dress, and trying to decide if and how I should make a shell necklace.
The bead strings have been the easiest thing to make, and I love how they look with the dress. I originally had a different idea that involved some netting to make a cute hip piece (Pinterest inspiration included below). But then I realized that the dress has long strings that make the cinched part in the middle of the bust, and if I tied those in the back, I could tie my beads to them and let them drape in different ways. As soon as I tried it out, I immediately abandoned the old idea because I loved how this new plan looked. I have since made a third string of beads, which includes a few charms, including a mussel pendant I've had for years, a pink heart that came from something I can't even remember, and a medallion I got from the last Renaissance Fair I went to that has a hummingbird and a dragonfly stamped into it. I think all of these strings put together on the dress are going to look amazing!
This was the moment I decided to switch gears on the beads. Here is what I was orginally going for (image belongs to MermaidAthelas on Etsy)
The shells have been a lot more tedious. It can be very difficult to pick up some of the tiny pearls and put them where I want them. I have been using tweezers when I was doing gel nails all the time, but even that method can be challenging if you touch them with hot glue. Luckily, nobody will be looking too closely at them because there are tons of little hot glue strings that I just won't be able to get rid of, but when you look at them from a normal distance, they look really cool! I haven't finished bedazzling yet, but when I do, the next step will be to attach them to clips so I can wear them in my hair and on my dress.
Here is what I have so far: both finished and unfinished shells
I really would love to make a shell necklace to pull everything together, but I'm unsure of how to go about drilling a hole in the end of a shell without breaking it. I'm also toying with the idea of trying to wrap my string around the small end of the shell instead of drilling a hole, but I'm not sure if I will be able to do that in a way that won't easily fall apart. I also remembered that there was an idea to make some shell/pearl/" seaweed" earrings, but I haven't quite gotten there either. I have the earring pieces to make them, but I'm not sure how I'm feeling about that piece of the project. If I make the necklace, then I'll definitely make the earrings to go with it.
I am very proud of myself for being able to practice my creativity so freely this month. I never take for granted that this is something I am able to do now, because up until not too long ago, I let low self-confidence and perfectionism get in the way of bringing my ideas to life. It is so rewarding to be able to create just for the sake of creating, to get in touch with and process my emotions, and to share my creations with others.
Thanks for being here and engaging with what I have created!
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