I did the thing.
You know, the thing where you get excited about an idea, so you buy supplies to put that idea into action, and then just…don’t. You get busy and forget, or you move onto something else, or you suddenly can’t bring yourself to do it because other people are doing it better and it’s so much work and it’s overwhelming and OH MY GLOB HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS???
In March, I bought a combination ring light and tripod because I love watching scrapbook and art journal process videos on YouTube, and those are hobbies I do, so why not turn on a camera and film this thing I already do anyway? Community! Sharing! Vulnerability! If you’re not sure, it’s July. I haven’t film a single thing with that ring light. It was a great idea, except every time I’ve worked since my light came in, I’ve forgotten–until after the fact. Then I would see the light taking up an obscene amount of space in my craft room, sigh to myself, and wonder what made me think I could do it anyway.
Why did I waste the money on the ring light?
And then I made this art journal page this week. After the first night I worked on it, I looked at the progress I’d made so far and realized how much I wished I had thought to set the camera up and record it. I would have loved to have filmed the process and share it to YouTube. (Community! Sharing! Vulnerability!) I’m so proud of how this spread turned out, and I would have loved to be able to talk about the process, not quite in real time, but in a way that people could see and hear what I was doing as I went along.
There are parts of the spread I don’t love. I go back and forth about how I feel about those X’s, but I also love enough about the spread that I’m not going to try to “fix” it. It was more of a process piece than anything, with no end goal in sight when I began. I wanted to create something, make a mess. I wanted to play. I started with the colors, and that large center image was found only by luck as I was browsing through my ephemera envelope. It just worked, and it reminded me at least partly of why I wanted to give YouTube process videos a try. Am I pumped to figure out how to edit videos? Not really. But I figure if I can make editing simple and streamlined (i.e., edit as little as possible), then maybe I can make this something sustainable for myself.
I do know I’ll need to be a bit less chaotic if I want to start filming. Right now I’m getting up and sitting down and looking for certain supplies in the middle of a project and wondering, “Where the hell did I put my scissors again?” I like to think this will be good for my habits, though. I might like the look of the messy process–scraps across the table, makeshift paint palettes, smudges because I can’t seem to be patient enough–but boy does it make working a little more difficult when I can’t find something just when I need it.
I’m already thinking about how to go about this–a vague schedule, because I don’t want to force myself to make something when I don’t want to. I know I go through cycles in my crafts. But a general idea of how to go about it is nice. It helps keep me from feeling overwhelmed.
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