UR A FLOWER

Here is the second instalment of Inside Korilakkuma's Head. I'm still enjoying this notepad a lot and I want a hundred more of them. I filled a lot of these pages in whilst watching a film, and you know, drawing stuff and watching a film at the same time can be so good. Sometimes the level of concentration is just right. I'm concentrating just enough to draw something I like, but concentrating on watching the film just enough to give me the perfect level of carelessness.

I always feel really pleased and smug when I can comfortably multitask. I just have to find two things that don't require my full attention and then I'm set. Sometimes I can do this with drawing, but sometimes it doesn't work. It depends.

I feel like a lot of my focus is on finding the right balance between pristine and messy. I mean, the notepad itself is so cute and perfect, but I'm doing some pretty scribbly things in it, and all the cuteness of the notepad in its natural state starts to blend perfectly with messy, doodly stuff. I guess that's my primary aesthetic. I like things wobbly at the edges. That's a pretty general philosophical attitude to life that bleeds into most things for me.

I can't get over this notepad though, it's so cute.

I like sticking little bits in too, it helps to break up the endless pink and add a bit more variety. And it saves me when my pens have bled too much onto the next page (naughty pens). I actually can't wait to finish this notepad, but at the same time I know I'll be a bit sad when I do.

Googly

I obtained two packets of eyes at a party recently, so naturally they are the prop for this set of scanner adventures. I wonder what it would be like to have a lot of eyes. I mean, I know I can find out about that based on available research, but that's very different to actually being able to experience the multi-eye lifestyle. I also want to do that exorcist thing that owls do with their heads. Sadly, I am limited to human experiences only. Not that I'm knocking binocular vision. It's worked well for me so far (despite being short-sighted).

I miss wearing big glasses with circular lenses sometimes. The circle is my favourite shape for a glasses lens, always. I stopped wearing glasses last year because my eyes felt a bit weird (it's sort of hard to explain, so please excuse me for not bothering), and it didn't take long to become completely accustomed to life without glasses. I can now see more or less perfectly clearly through an old pair of glasses I have with an old prescription, whereas the glasses I was wearing every day when I decided to stop are far too strong and hurt my eyes if I wear them for more than ten seconds. I realise, though, that having slightly fuzzy distance vision doesn't really have an impact on my life at all. I only occasionally wear glasses now if I need to see train departures or if I want to watch a film with a certain level of clarity. In a pinch I can always use the good old finger lens trick.

The old glasses I use nowadays have lenses in that irregular oval/rectangle hybrid shape that I've always disliked. I'd love to get some circular lenses again, but I can't justify getting new glasses when I already have some that work. I guess it's an eventuality I can look forward to.

Back to googly eyes though - aren't they just the best? I think they're a great thing to have in the bottom of your bag, because you just never know when you'll need some. They make any newspaper a lot more fun! Being given googly eyes at a party has warmed my heart. Thank you, googly eye gods.

Family History

I went to a family reunion last weekend and ate a lot of canapés, which was good. There were a few babies and two delightful sausage dogs (the dogs are obviously my closest relations). It was so hot and sunny that I'm slightly surprised that I managed to survive, but I've heard the family has a tendency to live quite long, so I suppose that explains it.

There was a big box of old photos to look through, so I spent a while going through them. I don't really know who anyone is yet, but it's fascinating looking through all this stuff. I've included a few little bits and pieces of information here, and hopefully I can learn more about who these people are and how they're related to me. It's quite nice, though, just to look at the photos without much context. You get that cool sense of mystery. So many old photos must exist without names or information attached to them. It's weird how information dies with people.

from left: Ted, Alice, Arthur, Elsie

Charles G Price

Alice Maud Price's brother Fred Clark (?)

Clark family wedding / Rose Clara Clark (daughter of William Herbert Clark) / 1935

William and Rose (?)

Same Idiot

Do you ever lie in bed at night and think about all the time you have occupied on this earth? And how you were once a small muffin with a love of Def Leppard? And how you are now a mildly larger muffin with a love of Def Leppard? Was that too specific to me? My point is, I'm sorta really different from me many years ago, but I'm also the same (also, Def Leppard are the greatest).

I mean obviously this is a thing. I'm not enlightening you to a new concept. We grow up and change but still remain effectively the same human. I know that, you know that, we all scream for ice cream. But I wonder how much I am the person I've always been. Was my current enjoyment of One Direction somehow ordained from birth? I mean, there's lots of things about myself and the past that I don't like. I talked a bit about that in this post about mistakes. There's also lots of things I'm happy about in terms of changing and becoming a better person and understanding things more and stuff. But it's scary, because if I grew between then and now, then I'm probably gonna grow in the future. What if my future self doesn't like my present self? What can I do?

I guess I can answer that, because whilst I know that past me got some things wrong, I don't hate her. Actually I probably just feel sorry for my past self, because she has yet to go through all the trouble of figuring it out. She's an idiot in a hundred ways, but she's trying to understand a lot of things and doesn't yet. So I guess it doesn't really matter, because future me will probably just be glad she understands more things, but it still freaks me out. I feel like a series of matryoshka dolls. Maybe I should think of myself more like a caterpillar - y'know, doing that whole cocoon thing. So my advice to myself would probably be "calm down, have a cup of tea, and maybe listen to Photograph a few more times".

Art Journal: Melon & Mountains

I've got about half of an old lined notebook to use up, so I've just been scrapbooking various things in there and using it to take lots of quick notes and stuff. I kinda like to hop between the nicest art materials and ones that force me to be a little more inventive. So just because this notebook is lined and has a spiral binding, I have to use it in certain ways. I guess I probably like using a certain amount of different things so that I have that variety.

I also find that using cheap notebooks indiscriminately somewhat encourages me to have a loose attitude to whatever I'm doing and not take it too seriously (which is pretty much the most important thing to me). I always want to have that attitude of play to some extent when I'm journalling.

This notebook does have very thin pages, so I keep feeling like I need to be really delicate and cautious. I'm trying to shake that off, but it's hard! I think a certain amount of collaging also keeps me going. Stick more things to things!

Diary: Family Reunion / Drag Me Down

This week has been quite eventful - as in, I attended some events. A friend's birthday party and a family reunion. Almost a barbecue too, but I wasn't really in the mood. There was also a blogger's market going on that I was interested in going to, but that clashed with my family reunion. After that stuff I feel pretty well practised in talking to strangers. At one point during the party I started saying loud things in German. Before that, though, I got really excited about geology and sang Chaka Khan with a friend. Chaka Khan and rocks are both amazing.

Other things that happened this week include some sudden heavy rain (I appreciated this a lot after an intensely hot Saturday), the release of a new One Direction video in which they are readying themselves for space travel (it's basically a big Nasa advert and I can enjoy that as a kid who totally wanted to be an astronaut for like, a week), and me being a sleepy little bug as always.

Inside Korilakkuma's Head

I got this cute little Korilakkuma notepad (gifted) as part of my Blippo review, and since I recently finished another art journal I thought it was time to ruin this one by actually using it. I gotta say I love the pink pages, and I love the irregular shape of them, and basically I love everything about drawing in this notepad. I'm glad I decided to use it sooner, rather than trying to preserve its pristine beauty for as long as possible. It's so perfect for using a lot of colours in. I kinda thought using such a special and super cute notepad would make me feel a little guilty, but actually I'm just really pleased to get to use it. Cute notebooks are pretty much my life.

Owl Texture

I was just thinking about how much I love my little owl and how its lavender smell makes me feel really cosy and calm and I looked across at my bedsheets and saw the light and shadows running through the creases in the fabric and I decided to take some shots of some of these lovely little textural details. That was quite a run-on sentence. I hope you don't come here for perfect grammar decisions.

Still and always, whenever I feel down or grumpy one of the things that helps the most is noticing the physicality of things. The shape and feel of fabrics is like a kind of magic. Fuzzy soft stuff makes everything good.

One of my favourite parts of the owl is its little feet. I like to squeeze 'em.

It's nice just to look around and notice how the light dances and fills up space. I notice it a lot, but it never loses its lustre. Owell (that's the owl's name - sort of like Orwell, sort of like owl, pronounced like Dan Howell without the Dan and the H) and I are adventurers in a large and mysterious land inside a duvet cover. Or I just need to take a nap again.

Either way, I feel nice. Like my blood is made of glitter. Cool.