Creativity

Well, I still haven't called the guru.  I think my hesitance is because I'm so afraid of what he's going to tell me.  Once I got the laptop working, the need for the desktop was less, though I still need it, even with only the mouse clicking available.

But yesterday was devoted to creativity.  My order of the double stick tapes arrived, which allowed me to work on the current SwapBot book I'm making.

I love these swaps, but they are often so frustrating. I put a ton of work into them (this particular swap involves filling a composition notebook...the one I chose is huge.  I have designed 70 pages and am just about halfway through the thing!)

When a book is finished, I send it off to someone I've never heard of before and she is supposed to "rate" me with either a "yes I got it" or a "heart," which means it was extra special.  Sometimes they leave a message.  Usually 'thanks.'  And then all my work is finished.

Nobody in my real life is interested in seeing what I'm working on.  I have offered a peek at some, who open a page, say "oh" and then hand it back.  All of my creativity for naught.

I used to take pictures of all the pages I did and post to Flickr, but that got really time consuming.  At least I could look back and enjoy the memory of the books.  But I haven't done that in a long time. 

Today I decided not to photograph the whole book, but some of the pages I like, like this one:

which used a couple of film strips I found, which I made during the time I was learning how to develop film (I can tell this is 1969 because Paul is the baby).  I also thought this one was interesting...

because it is stuff I found in a very old (1961) scrapbook, including a menu from a pancake place and our receipt (cheese cake, I see, was 40 cents!).

I found some stickers with sayings on them and liked this one, which included a Compassion photo.

and I always have something, sometimes several pages, that involve music.

(this one combined a birthday card background, a photo cut from a Compassion magazine, and two different types of Washi tape.  And I liked this one because it's from 1937 (came from the Big Bear Diner menu)

Last night I went through a few magazines and have a bunch of new page ideas I want to create and will probably photograph the ones I like best.  At least I can enjoy them later, then.

I probably won't call the guru today either....