JUST WHAT THE SHRINK ORDERED ...

I found this headline in one of the papers I regularly mine for possible material, and just couldn't resist using it!  (This is actually a page from last year that I haven't blogged yet).

Usual background of Caran d'Ache crayons plus the headline, and a stamp of a man who looks like a shrink (well I think he does).  It actually stayed like this for quite a few weeks, and then the rest came to me ....

I read this study that demonstrated how being totally absorbed in a hobby like crafting is really good for you and releases happy hormones!  We could have told them that, right?  For me it refreshes the parts other activities don't reach.

I've often wondered how people can live without a passion?  No not that kind, but some absorbing interest you can get really enthusiastic about, like following your team, collecting stamps, or crafting.  I can never WAIT to stop doing what I should be doing, and start doing my art instead!  Its not like that for everyone and I can't help thinking that for people who don't have an absorbing hobby life must be a bit .... well monotonous?  With my disability it just about saved  my life when I realised that my working life was over - if I hadn't been able to throw myself into making stuff I might have gone under.

I always tell people that when I was young I spent all my spare money on clothes, but now I dress from charity shops and supermarkets and spend all my spare cash (and some that probably isn't) on craft stuff.  But the pleasure it gives me is simply priceless ... and just look at all these j ournals and scrapbooks my grateful children will inherit!  Yeah, right.  I rather hope they might keep one or two anyway ...

The flying pigs are a stamp (who could resist) but pretty much everything else is drawn/doodled.  Have I mentioned that I rather enjoy doing that?

PS Any similarity in colour scheme between this and the page I blogged last week is entirely coincidental, they were made about a year apart!

NOT COMING OUT ...

You know those days ... the ones where you're all out of sorts with yourself and cranky? The days when you really can't be bothered to be nice to people or massage their egos one more time. You do? Well it was one of those when I made this page, and it had the desired effect of making me laugh my way out of the low mood! It doesn't feel too good in that place does it?

So I covered the page with red and orange (angry colours sometimes) and then drew my image on a separate sheet of paper. Its coloured with my trusty Promarkers (which I also used to do the writing, and draw wobbly lines around the page).

The eagle-eyed among you may spot that I patched in a section of the top of the wall - I wasn't happy with the hands (always tricky to draw) so I did them again. Doodling followed - I can't seem to resist, and its wonderfully soothing somehow .... Rain cloud just seemed to work, and I would have liked to write an even stronger message, but couldn't quite bring myself to write very rude words in my journal!
So if you ever have days like this (and who doesn't?) put it there sister. I can be nice, even very nice indeed, some of the time, but not all of the time, and sometimes I get cranky, or mad, or feeling badly done to, because I'm human. So I wrote about it and felt better. Marvellous therapy this journalling lark .....