Week 3

This week was mostly spent working on my book. I faced many obstacles during this project, and learned much from my mistakes. This week included printing out poems and what was supposed to be painting pictures of them. This appeared to be a challenge as glue is very messy and so are paints. I spent a good six hours fiddling with glue and paints before realizing how awful they made things look. It was then when I realized that I needed to go in a different direction. It was then when the tea bagging idea was brought to my attention, and I proceeded in giving it a try. By covering the poems in tea, it gave it a sepia/aged/distressed look, while keeping things simple. This was a breakthrough in the creation on my book. With the poems in the book, i proceeded in doing the same tea process with the pictures I had chosen to represent my poems. By this morning, all of the poems and pictures had been successfully put in their proper places and the book is now finished. This week I learned trial and error the hard way. It took much thinking and planning to end up turning the book into a success. Luckily it all worked out in the end and is presentable. 

Day Fourteen.

Today was another average day of progress, with tomorrow being the last day I will need to finnish. I woke up at an uncomfortable 6:45, drove into campus, had breakfast, went to the tech lab and language department to work out frustrating tech troubles with my spanish project.  THEN, I got to work on many other things. I started by rubber cementing the extra pages in my book to make it read better. While this was drying, I edited the first 9 pages of my history paper. After drying, I pasted in the poems, and hunted for pictures. I then cut out pictures and prepped for some more tea bagging! After spanish and lunch, I proceeded in some good tea bagging, then pasting, then barbecuing, then running, then blogging. Tomorrow all I have to do it illustrate one more poem and write a title and table of contents and all that jazz. Until then....

Day Thirteen

Today was much more positive. I got up at 7 and got right to binding the book. This was successful. After spanish and history, I started tea bagging my poems. With some hot tea dabbed on the poems, I was able to continue my project and make it look much better than with paint. There are still many more questions I have yet to answer regarding images, further construction, and which poems I would like to read during my presentation. Tomorrow I plan on gluing in the tea bagged work, finding new images for the poems, adding those to the book, go over the paper I have to write for this project, finnish a spanish project, and make major corrections on my history paper. Can't wait. 

Day Twelve: Ahhh.

Today was a frustrating day. I woke up at 7, went to campus, had a spanish class, then starting working on my book. I hit a lot of road bumps working on the book today. From glue and paints making the paper wrinkle, to glue getting all over the place, to glue making everything utterly god awful, it was a long day. Glue set me back six hours, $31.00 and we are now in a fight. Tape also made my life a lot more complicated. I am now in search of a user-friendly adhesive product.  Any ideas??? But... I am now smarter from this experience and now know what to do in the future. (I should say I know what NOT to do as I am still down a trustworthy bonding medium.) After this morning's learning experience, I set off on a six mile run and a trip to the weight-room to try and forget about it. I must have forgotten that I have to spend my evening re-thinking it and writing about it. Hopefully tomorrow will be a turn around and a re-acquaintance with success. Horay for learning experiences!  

Day 11: The Creation

Today was my longest day to date! I woke up at around 7, drove into campus, and got right to work. Today I started posting the poems into the book, and adding images to them. I spent a good 4 hours today doing so. I now have most of the poems into the book, and now I must add the pictures and paint over them. This week shall be very fun yet very much work. I have extra room in my book for more work, but as of now the poems that will be featured will be: A Drought, Early Summer, Youth, Mono, The Artist, The Edge of The Earth, The Itch, The Drowning, Charismatic Megafauna, and The End. If I get a lot of inspiration of the next few days i will most certainly embrace it, but I am not going to write filler poems (sub-par work).  Tomorrow I must find water colors as I have been looking for them all day. Along with water colors, I was looking for an X-Acto knife, glue, and a special ruler, all of which were locked up in the art closet. This is very frustrating as they do no good for anyone being locked up.  Until Tomorrow, 

Week 2

This was the second week of senior project. Similar to the first, I had many struggles as well as much success. My struggle this week was finding inspiration. Last week, inspiration came easy (as did much writing). But as I continued to write, I felt myself struggling to pay attention and devote 100% into what I wanted to convey (half the problem being I didn't know what I wanted to write about). Success: Last week it was more about writing new poems, and learning the basics of editing. This week, with more written, I felt I could "pre-edit" my work and really make improvements before sharing them with Ellen. This was a big step for me as it shows I am really getting something out of this project. Knowing how to write, properly punctuate, and edit poetry is a skill I would love to have for the rest of my life. Along with my writing improving, so has my organization. I started making better use out of my binder by properly placing drafts, finished work, ideas/brainstorming notes, and other authors work into correct sections within it. The third thing I spent my time on was brainstorming ideas on my book. It started as an unclear idea of a way of presenting my poems creatively. As I continued to think, the pieces started to connect in my head and there I had my book idea. Today I am off to some stores to get supplies for the project. I am very excited. 

Day Ten: Final Poem Written!

Today was a fun and relaxing day with much time to work on my project. I started off with a nice hummus and pita breakfast and a nice walk down to Elbow Pond.  Then drove into campus, went to assembly, then continued to work. I started off by organizing all the poetry I have written, double checked to make sure its edited, and placed them in the order I would like to present them. After this, I met with Ellen, did my time sheet, and wrote my final poem of my project. I was waiting to get the inspiration I wanted (not just writing about anything) and it finally came to me today. I can't wait to finalize this one as well. The rest of senior project will be constructing the book I have talked so much about. Saturday I am going into boston to look for fun materials and designs and then getting right to work!