LifeBook Week 45: Swan Girl

Week 45 of LifeBook brought us the Swan Girl, courtesy of Tamara Laporte, originator of LifeBook. I skipped last week's lesson of painting a tree, even though I watched the video twice, because I couldn't get myself to start. I'm not sure why I resisted the idea, but it could be because I struggled with painting trees before and I may have been avoiding potential failure. I'm not proud of it, but I think that's what it was. I may return to that lesson some time later when I'm feeling more confident.

This project started with a warm-up exercise for us to use our favourite art supplies without any plans, just playing. Tam called it 'follow your happy'! Here's the warm-up sheet I created, which I later cut into pieces to use in other artwork. It was a lot of fun to make a mess and not worry about the outcome!

The Swan picture required a lot more control, although I could have chosen to do a double spread and play on the other side, but I'm all played out this week after completing Carolyn Dube's Permission to Play workshop (more about that in a separate post) so I decided to keep this just a single page. You'll notice that I used the heart from my warm up page, which ties the two projects together!

I can't believe we're already in week 45 of this year's LifeBook! Only 8 more weeks to go till 2016! I will continue to do some catching up as well as working on the lessons yet to be published. I already have enough pages to bind a decent sized book, so I'm not worried about falling short any more. Tam did emphasize that we don't have to do all the lessons. Once I allowed myself to believe this, I felt a whole lot happier! It was the perfectionist in me that wanted me to do every single lesson, but that just takes the fun out of it. Yes, you do need a certain level of commitment, but there's a lot between 100% and nothing. I'll be happy with about 85%! It's only play, not work. We have enough pressure in our lives to perform in other areas - no need to put extra pressure on ourselves because that would defeat the purpose!