Midlife Rebel

Three weeks ago I started the Good Habits badge from the Rebel Badge Book. So far I am not doing too badly with incorporating positive habits regularly into day to day life. First of all I listened to The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg on audiobook as suggested in the Rebel Badge Book. This was an interesting book which made me think about the various habits I have formed in my own life. Habits such as looking for a sugary snack in the cupboard when I get home from work each night. On a Saturday night my husband and I have got into the habit of ordering takeaway for tea and on a Monday morning we buy coffee from Cafe Nero before work. I look forward to and enjoy our takeaway and coffee habit though so that's not something I'm hoping to change.  Life Admin - Keep a diary of how much money I am spending As I am aware I have been spending too much money, the spending diary acted as a deterrent during the first week as I didn't want to write anything in it. Then pay day cam...

Yesterday I mentioned in my blog post that I have decided to work on the Good Habits merit badge for Rebel Badge Club so today I thought I would go into more detail about my plan for this. The criteria for the badge is to decide on a change you wish to make in four areas of your life and create positive habits for yourself over a period of at least 90 days. The four areas are - life admin, health and fitness, household chores and self care. The positive changes I am planning to make are as follows: Life Admin   - Keep a diary to track how much money I am spending I recently noticed that for the past few months I have been spending more than I have been earning! Luckily I have no credit card debt and have never used my overdraft so I must have been spending money that has been saved up in my bank account previously. I need to get this under control now especially with the cost of living crisis, Christmas approaching and a holiday to pay for that's been booked for my 40th birthday ne...

Upon completing my Artist badge for Rebel Badge Club, I wanted my next badge to be something which I could incorporate into day to day life more easily. Therefore I have chosen to do the Good Habits badge. In an effort to stay organised, I'm using a notebook to keep track of and plan my badge work. Check out the Rebel Badge Club sticker adorning the cover which I got from the Rebel Badge Store . I also got this Rebel pin badge which I couldn't resist! These small stickers are handy for marking off completed clauses in the book. I got them from Amazon. As well as doing the Good Habits badge, I have signed up for the November Challenge badge. The monthly challenges are in addition to the badges in the book and the details of which can be found on the Rebel blog and the Rebel Facebook group. The November Challenge is to write every day, for which I am writing haiku a short form of poetry from Japan. I will write more about this once I have completed the badge but in the tradi...

This afternoon, I have been sketching for the Artist badge. In the supermarket I found a nicely formed bright red pepper and decided to make this my still life subject. It was quite some time ago that I last drew from a still life object rather than a photograph. The sketching was quite enjoyable and I liked that it didn't take me hours and hours to do, unlike the Twiggy portrait I did previously for the Artist badge. Pencils have always been my favourite medium to work with. I feel a lot more confident with pencils rather than paint as it's easier to fix any mistakes or parts of a picture I don't like. On completing this sketch I have now earned my first Rebel badge. I am now the proud owner of the Artist badge!  

Today I completed this wire rabbit sculpture. I bought the wire rabbit kit from artist Zack Mclaughlin. It's worth checking out Zack's website www.paperandwood.co.uk as his creations are stunning. I have never made anything like this before. I hope I did his rabbit justice. The first step of the kit was the most difficult. I had to bend the wire into various shapes using a template. The wire was hard to bend into the correct shape and I could not do this as accurately as I would have liked. I really did not enjoy this first step and at this point was unsure if the sculpture was going to work out at all. The next stages of the wire sculpture were a lot more fun. I really enjoyed seeing the rabbit take form even though it was a bit fiddly at times having to hold parts in place when wrapping the wire round to secure them. I kept going and my patience finally paid off. The instructions were easy to understand, even for me as someone who can get confused easily! I would defi...

It has taken me a while but I have finally completed a second project for my Artist badge. I have drawn a portrait in coloured pencil of the iconic model Twiggy. I haven't done a full colour human portrait since my days at uni so my confidence was lacking and my skills a bit rusty during this task. I spent quite a lot of time on the drawing, completing an hour or two here and there. I struggle to focus on drawing for long periods of time and to be honest I didn't really enjoy doing the portrait. The only part I can say I did enjoy was colouring in the earrings as this felt more relaxing and required less intense focus. Another reason I found the portrait difficult was because the quality of the print out I was drawing the image from wasn't very good and it was difficult to see details in the image. I was looking at a digital image on my phone some of the time for better clarity but this was a bit of an awkward method of doing things. However, even though I didn't really...

 I have chosen the Artist badge to complete first for the Rebel Badge Club. I've done art all my life and studied creative subjects at college and uni so it was an obvious one for me. Doing something I am enthusiastic about is a great way to get me into the spirit of being a Rebel. I chose to do a mosaic first as this is something new to me but as I'm no stranger to craft work I was fairly confident I would be able to complete it without too much trouble. The part I was afraid of was doing the grouting so I watched a few YouTube videos before I proceeded with this step. I bought the mosaic kit from Moonrise Mosaics on Etsy. I am pleased with how the mosaic turned out and I quite enjoyed the process. The grouting part was a bit messy but overall I feel the end result was worth it.