So it’s been a while.  Needless to say.

What you see up there, the Phoenix minikit, is the sum total of what I’ve actually finished, 10kH-wise, in the past two weeks.  There’s actually more — a megakit, full of hybrid books and art journaling stuff, but it’s been sitting, neglected, on the hard drive for the past week or so.

I do have a pretty good reason for it.  What I don’t have a good reason for is the fact that I fell out of habit of using the timers, and all the stuff I’ve sat down to “sketch out” (which is always how it starts, and usually ends with three or four good hours’ worth of work), I’ve forgotten to set the clock.

Oops.  I’m estimating six or seven hours.  I’ll claim six, just in case.  More practice is better than less.

I’ll get to the kit in a second here.

A couple weeks ago, I decided that a change was gonna need to come.  I’ve got all this stuff that doesn’t fit in with my life as it is, and honestly, I’m sick of paying for a storage unit.  (No offense to people who have one for a good reason, but for me, I feel like it’s a case of not dealing with reality.  Realities of space, of time devoted to caring for things vs. people, of excess.  I hate feeling like there’s too much.)

Since I was waiting for a replacement batch of labels to come in (got a whole pack that refused to stick once they were printed…), I figured that taking care of that backlog would make it easier to focus my attention more fully on devoted practice.  Lighten the load, so to speak.

I brought about a billion boxes back home (well, okay, not a billion, but it sure looked that way once they got into this small space), and dug in.

It’s a slow process, weeding things out.  I’m down to things that I kept for a reason — sentimental, useful, something — and it’s much slower than it was when I was sorting things out for the move.  Some stuff, I kept to scan, some stuff, I just threw out entirely.  (Including, and I know this makes the diarists among us twitch in unpleasant ways, twenty some odd years of journals.  I need a break from the past to focus on where I’m going, rather than holding on to a stack of books that were, literally, waist-high, that reminded me only of what was.)

I’m almost done with the first round.  Some days, I’ve worked on it all day long.  Some days, I’ve had other things to do for work and such, so it’s been slower.  But the twenty-some-odd boxes are down to five, and of those, I’m hoping to get it down to one.

Then we start over again with more stuff.

One of the things I did finally do is overdye some yarn that I’d been meaning to deal with for a loooong time.  It’s sock yarn, as would be expected.  Turned out kind of awesome.

Introducing Leap of Faith (green &teal), Creative Flow (blue/purples), and Passion (reds):

I need to get better pictures, but that gives a pretty good idea of what they look like.  I’ve got a couple left of everything but Passion (one left), and if you want one, email me.  I need to get ‘em out of here to free up more space.  ($20, US only, includes shipping.)

So the Phoenix thing.

I started this kit way before the L&V thing turned into Spooky Stalker Central(tm).  But it fits.

It’s a minikit — seven papers, three button elements in matching colors, a small frame, a phoenix element, the star, four bits of title art (renew, reborn, rise, and emerge), and one word art quote from Maya Angelou.  (Mini kits, by the way, are, well, mini kits.  There’s enough stuff here to work with, but not enough stuff to make it a full-on kit.  If you’re an art journaller, this means you can leave lots of space to draw and/or hand-letter things; if you’re a digiscrapper, you’ll probably want other stuff to augment the smallness.  Plus side:  it’s cheap.)

I did a little test page with a randomly-picked photo (I do wish I’d changed it.  Doing anything with my own mug on it makes me all eyerolly and squicked out.)…

I still suck at layout.  Maybe I should start doing actual journal entries with this stuff so you can see that, instead.  (My art journals tend to be a little more personal, though — I kept all of those when the Big Clear Out occurred, btw — so I’ve been reluctant to show those.  Maybe I’ll push past that in the coming weeks.)

Anyway…  :)

The minikit’s $1.50 US, and SHOULD be able to be downloaded from anywhere.  (The paypal thing is, largely, fixed.  After a few phone calls.  And being on hold forEVER.  And they know my address now.  After changing it three times.  I’m a little frustrated, does it show…?  LOL…)

Just click on the kit to be taken to the download. :)


The Phoenix Mini-Kit
$1.50USD

This week, it’s back to the 10kH in earnest.  With timer, this time.  And breaks to clear more stuff out of boxes.  Whew.  (There’s a REASON I called this thing “in which we come up for air”…..)