Sock Monkey Saga

Every quarter I do a page swap with some of my great friends. I get new layouts, time with some really good friends, new ideas and lot's of STRESS. Self induced stress! Beside the fact that I am a perfectionist to the point of paralysis, I decided to up the stakes this quarter. I have been thinking about doing a page with a Sock Monkey and stupid me I actually mentioned this at the last swap and when everyone said "OOH, you should do that for next time" I stupidly agreed. Did I mention how stupid that was?

Now the pressure was on. At the time I thought there has to be a lot of paper piecing patterns, pages to look at on the web, monkey paper, etc., etc. Wrong! I think I found a total of 4 pages of monkey patterned paper (which I didn't like), no layouts, and no paper piecing patterns; sheesh, you would think Martha would have at least 6 paper piecing patterns. Martha, I am very disappointed you are after all the craft queen.

In the meantime I was at Roberts and found some great paper for 75% off and thought perfect, cute and affordable, can't go wrong. So now it is less than a week before the swap and I have not even started. I first started thinking of excuses of why I couldn't do the swap; such as I cut off my finger while chopping walnuts (I don't even like walnuts), I was called to jury duty, I shot my eye out with a BB gun, my scrapbook room was flooded, but alas none seemed good enough, I guess I was stuck making the stupid pages. While fighting back nausea and the trying to find the will to live I had the brilliant idea to look for Sock Monkey cards online. I didn't end up finding one Monkey that I loved, so my Monkey is a mix of a few different ones.

So now I have the Monkey somewhat figured out and I think the rest should be a breeze. Wrong again. I sit down with the paper I bought and went totally blank. How am I going to use a Sock Monkey on this wild paper? The colors are wrong the pattern is wild and my creative block is turning into a wall. So I ate 3 chocolate kisses watched some T.V. and closed the door on my craft room and walked away, so much for getting anything done. Now it is 4 days before the swap and I head back to my craft room and decide I am not coming out until I have accomplished something. My accomplishments were to eat 2 more kisses and pull a bunch of stuff out. Whew, that was tough; time to go to bed.

Three days before the swap the wall came down and it all started to come together. I think the fear of disappointing my friends outweighed my desire to vomit. My pages may not be the best but they are done and I think they might even be growing on me. The older I get the more I find I procrastinate. The closer the deadline the more my creative juices flow. What's with that? Fortunately, by the time my packets were done I was excited again for the swap and I loved getting all the beautiful pages from everyone else. I guess I will not quit quite yet, maybe.