I Go Out Walking...

A little while ago I showed the sneakiest of peeks of a project I’m going to be working on all year. Well, today’s the day for the big reveal over at Gauche Alchemy!

I always knew I was collecting postcards for a reason. (Apparently I have a bit of a thing for them.) Turns out this is it. I used to have hundreds covering my bedrooms walls at university – you know, the kind they give out as flyers or adverts or art – but they were long gone, recycled in one of my fits of ruthless cleaning over the years. Now, each time we go to a bar or museum or someplace similar we pick up the interesting ones, and the collection was starting to add up again. So now is my chance to give them all a reason to exist! Read on…

My aim for this year is to make up a mini book, filled with 52 postcards, each of which is scrapped with a photo taken during a weekly walk, with each photo inspired by a weekly prompt. The idea’s not new, I know, but I did think that the Scrapbook Challenges forum could benefit from a year-long project like this, so that is where you can find the prompts and members’ responses to those prompts if you’re interested in playing along (some catching up will be required by now, but the load is not too much. Besides, the prompts are guaranteed to get you thinking!).

I WILL stick to this project

this Gauche Alchemy boot wasn’t made for walking, it was made for adorning my mini book

go out walking - you might find dinosaurs (or other exciting stuff)

I’ve been keeping to the programme on the photograph front, and I’m almost up to date on the scrapping, too. Here’s what I’ve done so far, photograph-wise:

Thanks to Gauche Alchemy and their eclectic array of products, I was able to pick and mix and create a cover for this mini book that was perfectly suited to the theme of going on walks and taking photos. Here’s how the cover came together:

Products I used (all from Gauche Alchemy)

Color Kits – It’s All Gravy, Blue Streak, Purple People Eater

PVC Punchinella

Ouchless Cardboard
Mail Art kit
Nearly Nekkid kit

Regular Punchinella

I can’t tell you strongly enough how easy it is to come up with projects from the GA Color Kits – with them, a project pretty much makes itself. For example, I’ve nearly used up the whole Banana Hammock kit (even though it’s a difficult colour for me), and I’ve got a project in the pipeline using the (peach?) kit which is a colour I NEVER thought I’d use. On top of everything they’re great value because you get a lot of bits and pieces and some really unusual items in them. (I’ll tell you a secret… when I applied to be part of the Gauche Alchemy DT, they asked me which of their products I liked the best. I spent a paragraph gushing about how inspiring these Color Kits were – and that was just from the product photos in the GA Artfire store! Now I’ve got my hands on them – wow. I have not been disappointed!)

A Project to Stick To

Last year I made lots of resolutions – hardly any of which I managed to keep. This year I know better, and have only a few things I’d be pleased to stick to: walking, photographing, and scrapping – specifically, doing more of each.

A project I’ve seen bouncing around the forums was about walking at least once a week, and taking your camera with you. Nearly perfect, I thought – that’s got two of the three. But I thought more about it, and realised I could easily make it about all three. So I’ve set up a section on the Scrapbook Challenges forum specifically for this 52 Walks project. Each week I add a prompt word or phrase, and then anyone who wants to participate must take their camera out with them on their walk and snap something that is inspired by the prompt word or phrase. Then when they come home, they gotta scrap about it. The format’s nothing new, I know: it’s like Project Life, Project 365, December Dailies, that sort of thing… but for me the leading of such a project certainly is new.

I’ve decided to make a mini book out of mine – I’ve altered the outside of an old notepad and ring-bound hole-punched postcards inside to act as pages… and since I've used lots and lots of Gauche Alchemy products, I've turned it into a video.

the sneakiest of peeks

 (The full video – another stop-motion triumph – will be available some time next month!)

But I can’t just tease you with a sneak of the cover, can I? Here’s my progress so far – for this month, I’ve made it through 3 weeks of prompts, and am working on the fourth as we speak.

The photos:

Week 1: Out of Context

Week 2: Blue

Week 3: Reflections

And the decorated postcards (sorry, photos taken at night):

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

It’s a great project – small and spaced out enough to not monopolise my time, but still motivating and inspiring.

Want to join in? Find out what Week 5's prompt is? Back-daters are welcome! Come on over to the Scrapbook Challenges Forum and sign up!