My best friend Sandra is a Christmas baby. Yesterday she had lunch with her family, then came to us for birthday dinner & wines and spent the night. Her dog Bruno and Faith sort of ignore each other in a friendly way – Faith isn’t well socialised to put it bluntly. Today Tony took her to Hawera to visit a few family graves. This journal page, using some of my more recent supplies, is about our friendship.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas … at least on my craft desk. As I said to my sister Ailsa last night, why buy 20 Christmas tags for 70c when you can use $100s of dollars of product and oodles of people-hours to achieve the same thing? I occasionally see a meme about crafting being cheaper than a therapist, and just as good for you. That’s just not true; if you buy enough supplies, it’s way dearer than therapy 😉
Also, Dimmie has hung our exhibition in Eltham for ArtsFest – thanks so much for all your hard work Dimmie. She sent me some quick installation photos before her phone ran out of battery.
Christmas? Yes, I’m making Christmas cards in July. Why? Because I can. Also, I don’t have the energy for mass crafting yet so but doing a card or two at a time is manageable.
I bought three new rubber stamps recently, designed by Jo Firth-Young. These are only ATC size so the cards will need more than just this image (I think…) I love their hand drawn quality. I tried a couple using Copics but prefer colouring them with pencils.
I’m thinking of torn embossed borders, layers of patterned paper, ribbon, or mounted on plain kraft cardstock maybe? Who knows how these will turn out…
My best friend Sandra gave me an mdf Art Tray from imagineif.co.nz for Christmas and some lovely wee things to go in it. In the end I kept the bits for my art journals, and used the tray to create something for my office wall as a reminder of what’s important to me. This has some tiny details in it, and I loved making it.
When life changes sometimes the impacts are obvious, and other times there’s what a friend would call collateral damage that keeps on appearing for ages afterwards. Last year I had my birthday on the 11th December, Mum died on the 15th December and, to be honest, I have no recollection of Christmas Day 2012 at all. By New Year’s Eve I was at A&E as a result of damage collateral damage to my wrist, caused by injury to my shoulder in a car accident 6 months earlier. This year my sister, brother-in-law and nephew came down for early Christmas on the 14th and we out Mum’s ashes in with Dad on the 15th.
So what does Christmas Day mean to us now? I’m not sure to be honest. A phone call to Tony’s daughter and grandson, to my sister and her family, and Tony’s brother. Connecting with a few people via email and Twitter. My best friend’s birthday. What does all that mean to me? Not a lot really. I could phone them any time, and do.
I’m not a Christian, I have no children of my own, and none of our extended family lives close. We choose to stay home because of our pets, as we don’t think it’s fair to ask others to housesit at this time of year. Really it doesn’t mean a lot to me, but I guess over time we’ll find ways of making it special for us as a couple; with Tony unwell our guess our focus is on other things.
What I do have is a greater understanding than ever before of how hard Christmas can be for some people. A Twitter friend, a librarian in Australia, said as someone who suffers from depression she started the day “bawling at 7am”. My heart goes out to her and all those who are feeling similarly lonely or sad. Whatever today means to you, stay safe and be kind to yourself.
Cath Sheard Art 