Instagram Collective Vol.2

It's been a good two months since my last Instagram update. I have to admit, I've been cheating on my Instagram a bit recently by using photographs from my big girl camera and editing them, but these are all photos which my good old HTC One has taken. A recurring theme, most of them revolve around Tower Bridge because I'm there every day and I do see some spectacular sunsets that are too good not to 'gram.

The quality of some of these are extremely variable and that's one thing that I really dislike about Instagram: using their editing software seems to completely bodge the quality. You can definitely tell which ones I have used vscocam for (yep, I've become an Instahipster, help me), especially that moody latte art shot.

At the top in the centre is a rare breed of photo from my Instagram - something other than sunsets, architecture or a latte art moment of pride, but something which points you forward to another upcoming scrapbooking blog post. These were not cheap to print but came out in a beautiful matte finish and the perfect size to make into pages, write around and add a little something extra to my scrapbook, otherwise all the cherished snaps on my phone would never leave the abyss of the internet.

You can follow me on Instagram if you would like - @mosaicofantonia. Give me some links to follow you! My favourite kind of Instagrams are those which don't just indulge in poorly lit selfies and endless hashtags of every single word that you want in your caption. There is a girl in Australia who I follow who does the most charming shots of coffee and of her in floral crowns and I feel like she is living a fairytale through her Instagram. I've journeyed through her Instagram for over a year and honestly would quite like to be a penpal of hers. Her name is @athenagracee and I thought that she probably deserved a little plug as she has pretty much inspired the way I used Instagram.

Who inspires how you take photos and capture your life via Instagram?

-Antonia

Collecting memories

The most popular blogpost that I have done since September is by far the one showing you the results of my Summer Scrapbook, and so as I started to collect all my memories from my time in London (this blog included), I decided that it would be a fun project to document that process. I wanted this scrapbook to have a different feel to the one about summer. I feel like that scrapbook, with all it's girlyness and pastels was almost an ode to the bliss of summer which isn't really a reality. It is full of exciting trips and events and picnics but nothing about the grind of life. It was also my last summer after school and I had no idea what I was getting myself into this year or how I would mature so much, so fast. This scrapbook about my time in London intends to be slightly more documentary, a little darker in tone generally, and less frilly altogether to leave that teenager firmly behind me.

It took a lot of time to discover what kind of scrapbook I wanted. I looked on A Beautiful Mess and coveted their eco-scrapbooks, chipboard and all the rest. I used many blogs and scoured bloglovin' for people who had shared their scrapbooks for inspiration and tips on how to start. I went to an exhibition at the ICA in London which had a room with a few artists' scrapbooks in, too. For some reason, it was harder the second time around! However, it was worth it, and I have to say that this scrapbook is a lot more planned that before. One thing I didn't need to learn, however, was to hoarde the most random things. For years, I have kept all sorts of cards and letters and eventually had little use for them: this year was different! All those cards wishing me well? They have the most wonderful messages which are being pasted in next to images of London that I took in the first few months, or they will be pinned to a surface by a paperclip so that I can still keep each page looking neat and balanced. Even birthday cards from October that contained the blandest of well-wishes were useful. Some had coloured pages or prints that I could use as a mount to frame some of my photographs, some simply had amazing cover designs which I could cut up or just use as cute quotes to sit alongside some of my favourite pictures.

One thing I did learn was to plan my pages. This is something I did not do before at all, but this time I got my blu tac ready and once I had collected and sorted my initial pictures of my first few months, I started to pin down how I wanted them to be presented, and then found bits of cards, letters etc. that would fit neatly alongside them. For some reason the printing company I used but a black border around every picture which I had to cut out and then... I went a little crazy and cut some of my pictures into interesting shapes. This meant that the layout itself had to be pretty simple for some pages.

I also tried to group some photographs by theme. The page below all has blurred elements to the photographs and are some of my favourites of London. I have put a white piece of paper with the words "London is a blur to me" to give this page some cohesion, as well as it being a reflection of my feelings at the time and a homage to a blog post that I made on these photographs. I later added a bit of paper reminding me to actually write up an except from that blog post in that blank space. I am trying to create a way of tying in photographs which distinct memories and feelings and hopefully this starts the process of doing that!

I haven't planned what kind if backgrounds I want to use yet. I have some old wrapping paper from christmas (yep, I'm that kind of hoarder!) as well as some paper bags from shops that I plan to rip/ use as a mount for framing. You can see in the picture about that I found a gold patch on the back of a card and have used that to mount a photograph, too. I want to try and 'find' as much as I can: not only to save money, but to try and make this project which uses up so much paper a little bit more ethical! I have only planned the first few pages but in my break hope to do a lot more (including ordering another term's worth of photographs!)

Do you have any scrapbooking tips?

-Antonia

Photographs of 2013 // Part Two

So on New Year's Day here comes some more photographs that remind me of all the fantastic moments that 2013 has graced me with, and hopefully some ones that have not been featured on this blog yet! We start in July, which was perhaps the busiest month of 2013 as Summer was in full swing..

JULY

July was a fantastic month. The first two pictures are from a day where I tripped up to London to see my sister for lunch while she was on work experience, and instead of heading back home, just wandered around the area. This was two days before I knew that I would be moving to London this year and it was around a 15 minute walk from where she was to my new home, so this stroll proved to be very useful. The most exciting thing, however, was stumbling across the Museum of London which has the most fascinating exhibition where you walk through the whole of the history of London. The first image was taken from a section of quaint mock-ups of shops selling toys, pawnbrokers and barbers, and was probably the only section where I could get away with snapping a photograph because it wasn't guarded. Next we have Disneyland, which is pretty self-explanatory. It really was quite magical and it was my first holiday with a friend, too. I spent far too much money on food - there are no cheap options if you want to avoid chips everyday! My favourite part of the trip was most definitely the light show. I filmed the whole thing on my phone and to be honest, the quality of my HTC pictures are better than my Nikon D3000. I do, however, love the grainy photo I took on my Nikon of my phone recording with all the audience and the light out of focus. I have to say, we got a great position because everybody in front of us sat down and our 'row' stood up, and we were bang in the centre. It was an unforgettable moment. A week after I returned from Disneyland Paris, I went on a three-week long and thoroughly exhausting Beach Mission, where Christians from up and down the country go to beach resorts and primarily run a kid's club with songs, Bible stories, games and quizzes. I've done it two years in a row and not only do you meet fantastic people, but you get to share the most important thing in your life with total strangers. From my first year I started writing to a young boy and saw him again this year, which was such a beautiful moment. I worked on two beaches in Wales: for one week I was in Benllech, Anglesey, with my friend Lucy (pictured looking ravishing) and the second two were in Llandudno. Wales in these photographs looks surprisingly sunny! Unfortunately the pictures that really show what it was all about are off limits here because I wouldn't want to upset anyone on my team by uploading them without permission. The photograph that makes me laugh from that collection is the newspaper article, where you can see all the team in red at the end of the beach hopelessly waving around a parachute trying to get people to come and play. I don't remember the seaweed smelling more than the fact that it was just everywhere! Our team actually did the council's job for them and cleaned it up. What I loved about Beach Mission was my early morning Bible studies on my own by the beach, watching the sunrise (when the last photo was taken). Tranquil moments like that are rare in London, now!

Tweets of the month: One day all the facebook mums who post pictures of their babies with cringe-inducing captions will face the wrath of their teenager.

In a room full of royalists watching Will and Kate present their sprog to the world. No Simba moment yet... we live in hope.

AUGUST

August was lovely in so many ways. The bottom photograph shows the leftovers of my Beach Mission when we went on our weekly afternoon out and we sat on top of a hill and watched the pier. I also attended another wedding at my church of one of my youth leaders. Not only was it Hobbit/Lord of the Rings themed (she ripped out pages of the books and used them to make origami flowers), but there was such a beautiful story of patience, frustration, let-downs, doubt, but ultimately love behind her story before her husband came into her life. I love this picture of my sister, mum and I: it is very rare that we actually get pictures as a three even though we spend a lot of time together. Shortly after that -with A-Level results sandwiched in between- I went to a Christian festival called Soul Survivor to gain signatures for the Open Doors Save Syria petition. Working on a charity stand is hard, and extremely hot. This was also the week that I started to drink tea (I am pretty much a fail of a British Citizen), which proved to be very useful when working at the Cafe. We were on a really small team of four among thousands of people so it would have been pretty alienating and lonely had I not had friends from my school CU with their youth group, and I spent some chilled afternoons with them and got to know them so much better, which brings me nicely to our school CU meet up. I don't think many of these people actually went to the CU but this was pretty much a gathering of Christians before we went to Uni. We ate food, played games involving throwing cups of water at one another, and prayed for each other before everyone departed for University. And lastly, it was my friend Kat's 19th Birthday, where we ate my homemade Double Chocolate Pavlova and larked about with my camera, hence my ridiculous face in the top picture.

Tweet of the month: Mulan is such a babe

SEPTEMBER

Ah, September, you were a little crazy. Obviously, I have put most of that into my one month review but there were some little gems I hadn't written about, the first being my little send off before I left. Every year, at some point during the summer, my Dad's side of the family meet together for a Garden Party held at my grandparents' house. I have ten cousins on that side, plus spouses so it is a lot of fun to see them again until Christmas. Most of us are pictures in the bottom photograph playing a game we have played every single year where you have a bottle filled with water to the top and two soft balls. Standing in lines, you roll the ball to the person opposite you and try to knock over the bottle so that they lose water. It is basically an elimination game and has a lot of cheating each year. I have never won, and my aim gets worse every year. This occasion was a perfect family send off, complete with tea in posh teacups. The photograph of the blurred family picture was taken at my first Garden Party when I was 1. Every time I go over to their house I laugh at the 90s hairstyles (pudding bowl was a favourite in our family) and garish outfits. After I moved, all my friends went off to Uni, but two of my friends weren't leaving until October and they came up to London one day and we went to my Cafe and then travelled by bus to the other side of London to have cupcakes and pink lemonade. At a time when I was feeling pretty lonesome and a little lost, it was nice to catch up with familiar faces and obviously, eat food. 

OCTOBER

October kicked off with my Birthday, where the highlight was Google congratulating me for turning 19. It was a bit of a sombre occasion because I was missing my friends and actually, many of them were so busy with University that they quite forgot about it (I don't publish my birthday on Facebook to remind them). I went home for the weekend only to find that I spent it taking advantage of the good WiFi ie sitting in my bed on my laptop. I did have a lovely meal with family, but there was definitely a shadow cast over it until I returned to London and was greeted with a cake and Lindt chocolates by my housemates. October also signalled my first trip to Spitalfields and the general Shoreditch area, courtesy of someone who I have the pleasure of working with who lives in that area and gave me a tour. She is one of the most lovely, genuine people I have met and it's a jolly shame I don't see her more often. I particularly enjoyed the Rough Trade store because of the text on the wall and the random street art dotted around that area. The other picture is just of my window because October was lacking in photographs that I hadn't already used in my two month review

Tweet of the month: Procrastinating in Asda. Dodging women with buggies.

NOVEMBER

November was the month I decided that my room needed a bit of sprucing up and put all the letters and papers that I had on a wall next to my bed as a little documentation of my year. It was also the month I revisited the Museum of London and stood in a box which had a map of London covering the entire thing. I told you I enjoyed that exhibition! I walked back from the Museum of London and took a shot across the river on the way home. I also got the tube at some point, hence the bottom photograph, and also saw the Houses of Parliament and took a photograph when it was raining. Yep, once again November was pretty well covered in my three month review. 

Actually, that pretty much covered December as well, and we didn't take any photographs over Christmas apart from a few grainy Instagrams:

Yep. Very grainy. I'll save the other photographs for another post (strange laugher commences here).

I have quite enjoyed this 2013 round up, and although it is New Year's Day today and many people stop looking back and start looking forward, I don't think I've had my time yet. I am quite a reflective person and so I really like to relish this time of the year when it becomes a lot more acceptable to evaluate your past and become ultra-nostalgic. Of course, there is a time to look forward, and New Year is typically a day to do that, but I am a firm believer that if you want to change something about your life or work to a goal, it doesn't need to be set when the seasons do or when the times change, merely when you decide. New Year isn't all that important to me: it creates unnecessary pressure to dramatically change your life or improve yourself. As a Christian the idea of 'improving myself' is completely counter to what I believe, yet New Year and the media surrounding it saturates all these images and ideas that actually make me feel rather down in January. So, throughout January I shall still be looking back in thanks to God for my year, reminiscing good memories and rejoicing that the bad times taught me something valuable that I can take with me in many years to come.

Future posts include '13 songs of 2013' and '13 videos of 2013,' and I am so excited to write them!

-Antonia

P.S. Happy New Year, I guess.