I belong to a creative writing group which meets fortnightly. For the last session of last year we randomly chose the name of someone else from the group and wrote a piece for them.

Denis got my name and wrote a lovely little piece about me in which he imagined what I must have been like at age 10. I was touched, and it also got me thinking about what I was like at that age. So I created these pages based around my memories of when I was nine and ten years old. I had some not very good black and white photos (we’re talking mid sixties here) which I photoshopped so they looked sepia because I love that sepia vintage look. I’m telling you this so you don’t think I’m older than I am!!! Anyway I had recently bought my first book of scrapbooking papers which had a School days theme, so I used bits of these papers and took my colour scheme from them. First I painted the whole page a creamy colour, than did some stenciling over it with a brownish red. It looked too bright so I gessoed over it with a cream tinted gesso to tone it all down. This was better, so then I collaged down some photos. I had a go at creating a pocket from my year 5 school photo and I folded Denis’ piece of writing and popped it into the pocket. I had quite a few memories I wanted to write, so I didn’t bother with doing fancy writing, just did my normal hand printing.

I have an unformed plan in my mind now to make a whole journal of memories of my life, perhaps starting even with my parents life before I was born. Two of my sisters have been writing some memoirs, but I suspect I don’t write as well as they do, I’m probably more visual. So perhaps a Visual memoir might be a good thing for me to attempt. It could become quite a big project I suppose. Maybe I’ll use an old book for the purpose, will keep you posted!