This book belongs to...

AHH I AM SO BAD IN UPDATING THIS BLOG REGULARLYYYY DD:
All my sorry!

But I'm finally able to update- about the following page:

The first page of the journal. Dum-dum-duuummmm~!
Last wednesday (29th of august), on the first day of my new school year, I finally got around filling in this page! Which is pretty bad, since it's a pretty important page, might the journal get lost.

Seeing as this page is pretty simple, it's gonna be a somewhat short and maybe boring update. But ah well.

To fill in this page, we need...

Something to write with! I chose my color pencils (and a set of fineliners that's in the same case) since I like me a colorful page. All in blue or black is so boring.

First line asks for your name.

Well, there you have it! My name. (everyone can now track me down on Facebook. I maybe should've blurred it.)
From here on, progress goes pretty fast. Since I didn't really feel like making a picture of EVERY line I filled in.

Everyone reading this can now not only track me down on Facebook, but also look up where I'm living and start stalking me over the phone. Putting this online was a bad decision.
Halfway the page, I found I was doing it all wrong. Instead of below the "task", you should, every time, write your name above. I found this out when I was at the "Write your name using large letters" part and I discovered the space was rather small, for large letters. Whereas the space for my name faintly was WAY too big for its small task.
I decided to solve this te messy way.
Make an extra line in the really wide space for the large letters- which becomes the line for the faint one. Then just use all the space between the new line and the next one for your large letters. Which suddenly cover everything. And it was awesome.
Looking back, I kinda like the mistake. It makes that I filled in the page way messier than it maybe could've been. But that's what the journal is all about, isn't it?


Next time, I hope to be able to report that I threw my journal off the Euromast, here in Rotterdam! AAAHH, it would be SO awesome if I could!

Stay tuned! <3

Make a paper chain

Finally! After a blog hiatus from about two months, I'm back! And I'm terribly sorry... I had a really busy two months, it seems.

BUT! To make up for it, I talked a classmate and friend of mine into cooperating in this entry, so you're gonna have two hosts today! Hurray!

We went to the MangaKissa in Utrecht, yesterday evening, where we decided to do a page from my journal. It ended up being the "make a paper chain"-page, because on that one you could collaborate. C:

Meet Nancy! She's actually the person who gave me the journal for my birthday. She's awesome. And my partner in crime for this episode!

For making a paper chain, you  need the following:

Stuff to color with (at the MangaKissa they could provide us with markers and Stabilo pens), glue or tape and a pair of scissors.

We then start with cutting the strips out.

My lovely assistant Nancy is showing you how. (It's actually easier to first rip out the page before you start cutting it in strips, but hay, it's all about the idea)

After we've cut all the strips, we color them! For this, we need strips and stuff to color them with.

I am such a charming lady.

Next, color! YAY!
And when you're done...

Nancy and I highly approve of this.
We just let our fantasy run wild on the strips- they weren't that big, so we couldn't do any real artsy-fartsy stuff, so we had to do with colorful decoration stripes, mostly.

After this, we glue/tape the two ends of the strips together!

For this we need glue or tape and, ofcourse, them strips.

Don't forget to "chain" them together, instead of making only loose chains!

I ended up using tape, since there was only one glue stick- or at least only one we could find. But this is the idea. I'm sure everyone has done something alike in kindergarten once.

Nancy had the gluestick, so she was way faster with making her piece of chain, since she didn't have to cut pieces of tape also. So hers is way longer.

Two chains! And when two chains become one...

Long, colorful chain! We approve of this also.
Since it was kinda hard to get this back home in one piece- and ofcouse the question of who it should go home with, I decided to stick it on the wall in their tiny kitchen, between the other crafty artwork other people had left behind there.

... I feel out-arted. But hay! We made a paper chain! That also asks for some kind of artistic skill!

After the walk

I promised you a boring update, so there will be a boring update!

The day after our walk in the snow I already had to resist myself from putting up a picture of the horrible result up here. Updates on fridays is updates on fridays! A few days later, ofcourse, I forgot about it and tonight I suddenly remembered again. Too bad my camera's just a simple handycam (a Sony CyberShot) and the lighting here isn't all that good. Ah well, it's good enough.

So here comes a tragedy!

It's ok when she's just laying down.. Either the front or the back stands up in a somewhat unnatural way, but softcover books tend to have that more often. the pages look a little funny now, but it doesn't seem all bad, right? Well, it is.
... Okay maybe it isn't that bad.

The damage is showing better when set up right. It isn't as bad anymore as right after she came off the central heating, because I placed two huge cans with soup on top of it, in a desperate try to press her back in shape. xD
It worked partly.

The top. You can see pretty clear where I had her folded open to let her dry. Also, our kitten (Perry) decided to pose. Ah well, doesn't harm anyone.

... And the pages itself when fully dried! You can see the "damage" a lot better like this. Most of the pages are at least a little wrinkled and there's really a small bit of them still intact.

And thus, this life lesson can't be said enough. Don't, no, really, DON'T take your book out for a walk in the snow! Your book won't like you much afterwards.

Go for a walk.

Today is the first day of real snow here in the Netherlands. And since it's a friday and the only updates I had for this blog were boring, I-had-no-time-to-do-something-else ones, I decided to profit from the weather! I still had a package to post, so I had to go out anyway. There was already one page that I wanted to do pretty badly, but with this weather it could only be better! We're talking about the page you see here ->

Which exact words are "Tie a string to the journal. Go for a walk, drag it." Perfect, right? :D 
But for this page, we need, ofcourse, a string:

I look very content with this string. *nods*
Now that we have the string, we tie it to the journal.

I pressed it between the pages pretty tight, to make sure it wouldn't let go.
Done! Next, we dress for the weather. Starting with something to keep my neck warm:

Fun fact: This shawl is originally my mom's. She has (more; had) two of them for at least 20 years already, and used them when she went riding on her motorbike (my mom's cool like that). About two years ago, these things suddenly were "all it" with the alternative youth here. I decided to go oldschool and stole my  mom's. B)
This is the second one. The first one, I have already worn SO much, it started falling apart out of itself. I'm still wearing them because they're incredibly warm and comfy.
Now that my neck is secured, I can go secure the rest of my body, by wearing a coat.

Warm, awesome coat! This already warm winter outfit should ofcourse be topped off with an awesome hat.

READY! Now, we grab the stuff we should take along.

OFF WE GO! But not before my kitten decided books on strings are excellent toys. And then we're off! Outside, we place the book in the snow:

STRINNGGGG, Y U IN FRONT OF CAMERA LENS? D:
This is where she still looked like the journal I got for my birthday.
Walking with her was pretty fun! Ofcourse, it's already a weird experience to drag a book along (through the snow) on a string- but you're definately asking for weird looks and reactions as well.
Somehow, the journal didn't want to get dragged along on her front or back, but only on the pages-side. Which got her collecting a LOT of snow between those said pages. Halfway the walk, I decided to empty her off snow, just to be sure- I don't want to throw her away after only one adventure!
After doing so, she looked like this:

This is where I started doubting this was maybe a bad decision. But alas, I said I'd drag her along, so I did!
(I decided to avoid the muddy, wet parts of the sidewalk like you can see here in the background, either by walking around it or lifting her up for a bit. These parts would've otherwise been completely catastrophic to her..)
And we walk on! At my destination (the post office), she looked like this:

This is a sad story. When arriving back home, she looked even worse:

I weep! ;^; It looked even more worse (is that even correct english? I don't think it is) when I picked her up.

I collect snow! But I'm definately not bringing all this snow in, so I shake it out before entering the door:

And this is only a part of the snow. There was a lot stuck to the pages as well, that I couldn't get out by simply shaking. Ahw damn! D:
The left page of the page I decided to do today, looked like the following when I arrived home:

There's still snow stuck on the outer lines of the pages, and some of it even infiltrated the pages further! Damn you, snow! *shakes fist*
And now, we let her rest on the central heating and hope she'll dry up fast and with not all too bad results...

While walking, there really were a lot of people commenting behind my back that I was walking a really strange sort of dog, or little kids telling their moms, "Look, mom, look! She's dragging a book!"
There was one group of girls on my (short though entertaining) road that laughed so hard about it, that I decided to explain. They and another bystander were actually pretty interested why someone would drag a book along, on a rope, and were actually pretty supportive when I explained the whole story. They wished me good luck with completing the whole book, and we both went our own ways again.

Long story short: DO NOT DO THIS IN SNOW. Not when you'd like to keep your journal a little longer! If I continue like this, I can get myself a new one halfway...
But it's definately a lot of fun to do! That is, if you don't mind looking like a total nutcase, for dragging a book on a rope.

Next week: a boring update. Probably. C:

About!

On my 21th birthday, last January, a good friend of mine gave me Wreck this journal. I already knew about the existence of the book for a bit longer, but only realised the brilliance and glory of it the moment I held it in my hands as my own and flipped through the book, reading some of the pages and realising how awesomely stupid, fun or difficult some of the "tasks" were to complete. Thinking of this, I suddenly thought, "if this would be awesome for me, why wouldn't it be for others to see me do it?". And thus, I decided to start a blog, dedicated to my huble little journal!

I'm gonna try to update on regular basis (every friday, hopefully!) here, sometimes posting only pictures of a task, but in the near future hopefully also full reports of how fun/tough/complicated it was to "do" a page, who was/were with me and the looks of the bystanders. If I'm gonna be able to keep this up as I hope I will, this might just end up an awesome project, both for me to do, but for my readers to enjoy as well!