Mini art journal challenge: week 10

Here's my card, I never thought I'd finish! This week's prompt: "Note to yourself".
As you can (hopefully!) read on my card, I chose to remind myself to "be happy". Easy I hear some say, I thought so too... until I had a baby, stopped working, felt sleep deprived from too many early mornings after late nights sewing sessions, lived on one (sometimes none) income. The list could go on. It's boring. Being unhappy and grumpy is so unattractive. And yet I feel that in the last 2 1/2 years I have let myself down too many times. Of course life is hard. What makes it even harder is to not have the same comfortable lifestyle I used to have and feel frustrated about it. I forget too often that 1- It was my choice, 2- There are so many things I love about my "new" life, 3- deep down inside I am happy where I am, I just need to learn to deal with those daily frustrations a bit better (like cleaning up after a 2 and 1/2 and a 34 year old!).

The background is a piece of japanese craft paper, painted over with white. The writing is sewn on black beads: took me at least an hour and not that easy to read (Josh thought it read "Le Harry") so I don't think I'll try that again. Lastly I sewed on a piece of lace from a sleeping gown I had upcycled. in all this card has a vintage weird look to it...

Tahi and I are making a puppet show out of a cardboard box (photos to come soon), and I did some sketches of how "we" were going to paint it.

And I've also finished one dress for a friend's custom order, I'm super happy with how it turned out. I used my friend's partner's shirt (he is VERY tall, so his shirts have lots of fabric. Awesome) and upcycled it into a sleeveless hooded dress, and even reused the buttons at the back.