Wednesday 28 April 2010

52 Weeks

Is a project in the making.

OK, anyone who is even vaguely familiar with me is aware my attention span is... limited. That's why I haven't taken over the world yet ^_^. I get distracted too easily and while I would love to spend the next year mastering some art of craft form to it's absolute best, we all know it ain't gonna happen. Not because I doubt my ability to do so... but because I get very distracted very easily. And bored. Let's not forget my capacity for boredom.

Add to that the fact I've spent the last four months largely working 14+ hour days and I really sort of need an enforced break. A few weeks off work isn't practical so I'll opt for enforced mental break... which brings me back to the 52 weeks project rather neatly.

It's really rather simple. I own vast amounts of items for innumerable different arts and crafts. I mean seriously, I have a shopping habit and magpie-like powers of resistance when it comes to shiny Stuff. I own stuff in the regions of tens of thousands of £££ purely because I have days when I thought "wow, that looks cool". This is not exactly laudable but it DOES mean I canuse the resources at my disposal to tackle a different craft/art/product/theme every single week for a year. I don't want to be too limiting so I'm quite happy to go witha broad "Jewellery" one week, an area specific "Precious Metal Clay" another week or an item specific "something using stamps" another. There are rules. Rule one is a minimum of an hour a day (average over the course of a week... so expect lots of frantic Sundays). Rule 2 is a write up of the week by the evening of the Monday. Rule 3 is post pics, including of the design process!

Why? For fun, for motivation, to feel vaguely justified in my purchases, to develop new skills and to remind myself of exactly what I own, amongst others. And curiousity. What can I come up with given self imposed incentive?

So... for this to work, I need to come up with 52 weeks of Stuff. And I will stick to the order or I'll waste far too much time trying to decide what to do in a given week. Yes I have everything on this list (or the materials for) lying around my studio/workshop areas ^_^. You see my point?

1. Wax Landscapes
2. Friendly Plastic
3. Fabric Fusing
4. Acrylic Medium
5. Blow Torch
6. Stone Setting
7. Cardmaking
8. Fabric Paints
9. yarn
10. Aluminium
11. Embroidery thread
12. Stamps
13. Stencils
14. Acrylic Paints
15. Devopatch
16. Printable Fabric
17. Pastels
18. Polymer Clay
19. quilling
20. Embossing crystals
21. Dried Flowers
22. Moulds
23. Egg Shells
24. Napkin decoupage
25. Mask decorating
26. Buttons
27. Paper collage
28. Fabric sculpture
29. Quilting fabrics
30. Silk paper making
31. Machine embroidery
32. Bondaweb
33. Coloured pencils
34. Chinese fabrics
35. Sead beading
36. Fabric art collage
37. Wax collage
38. Epoxy resin
39. Opal cutting
40. Piercing
41. Precious metal clay
42. Paper sculpture
43. Novelty cards
44. Embellishment pendants
45. Abstract watercolour
46. Gemstones
47. Watercolour fairies
48. Wood sculpting
49. Textural fabric collage
50. Wire sculpting
51. Bookmaking
52. Wire Crochet

So... week one starts on Monday 3rd May (it makes sense for my final day to be a Sunday in a given week - that's when I'm most likely to be able to find time to catch up).

Stay tuned for week 1 - Wax Landscapes. I've chosen that as my starting point because I love wax and I'm pretty crap at landscaping with it. So a few hours of actually working at it rather than giving up and trying something else will probably be good for me :o)