12 months of being 30

* This post is part of my 12 months of being 30 project, an attempt to record what happens during my 30th year on Earth.

Hello! Do you remember me, dear blog? I know, I know I haven't been around much. To be honest, I haven't been doing anything except working, in case you were thinking I've been having wonderful adventures somewhere exotic.
But here I am! A bit late, but I bring you a selection of the collages I made last month for my 12 months of being 30 project. I'm quickly realizing that my collages for this project seem to be more about what I need than about what I have. Even though I've been busy with work and various other things for weeks, my collages are calm and quiet, inviting me to pace myself and to do nothing.
Do you remember I promised to have a creative summer? Well, I've been making jewelry, sewing tote bags, embellishing my underwear (for real!), writing and making small books; I went to the Latitude festival and wrote about it at the amazing discounderwold magazine; I went to Blog Camp and came back inspired to make my photography better (and Spud is further inspiring me with her online photography club). I've loved doing every single one of these things, but now I'm plain exhausted.
I've been exposed to so many types of inspiration that my brain is full of ideas, projects, plans... Unfortunately, I can't take any of them past the initial drafting stage. It's time to stop, let the ideas settle down and think about which one of these projects I want to pursue right now, which ones I'll reserve for later and which ones are simply crazy ideas not meant to become a reality.
It's time to allow myself some space. To sit down and do nothing for a while. To pace myself. Which is exactly what I'm doing this Bank Holiday weekend.

In Blog Camp...

There were six bloggers, and two suspicious partners.

There were Nikons and iPhones... And photos of the Nikons taken with the iPhones.

There were only good surprises...

There was Blog Camp Jam, made by the hostess...

There were of course, stones....

There was exchange of lenses, and lots of playing with them...

And there were also many things that I can't show you through photographs. The interesting conversations, about blogging, about books, about life; the laughs, the random ideas, the projects, the plans to meet again... and that fizzy feeling, the realization that something good was happening, that friendships were growing, the knowledge that we would meet again, in the blogosphere and beyond.

Still a blogger...

Random photo not related to this post

I seem to have taken an unintentional break from blogging, but I'm still here. I'm still a blogger, otherwise I wouldn't be going to Blog Camp UK tomorrow. I'm so excited about seeing Polly, Julochka and Kristina again. I can't wait to meet Spudballoo and Bee, who is hosting this edition of Blog Camp, in her house (that happens to be just half an hour away from my boyfriend's parents' house).  We'll miss Seaside Girl and Extranjera, but no doubt would be cheering on their honour.

I know it's going to be a creative and fun weekend, because I'm going to be in the company of these amazingly creative and fun women!  Right, maybe I should finish the presents for them, then!

I'll tell you all about it next week!

Seeing blue

Did I tell you I started a photography club at work? A friend of mine got a camera (not a Nikon, sadly...) almost at the same time as me. We were both excited, carrying our cameras everywhere and taking photos of everything. We got talking about how we sometimes felt too shy to stop and take a photo in the middle of the street, specially when you have to get on your knees, or you're seemingly taking a photo of something irrelevant on the road and people wonder what you are doing...

So we got a group of friends together and now we choose a topic and go out once a month during our lunchtime to take photos around Oxford. Last month we took photos of blue things and next week we're expanding the theme to take photos of blocks of colour. We're going to submit the best ones to the Tate Liverpool Colour chart group in Flickr.

These are some of the ones I took last month. It's amazing what you see when you start looking, there was blue everywhere!

disco underworld & me

Hello, hello! It's been a while, forgive me! I've been on a staycation: A vacation where you stay home. I've always done and loved doing this, and people used to think I was crazy to waste my holiday staying home. However, this year, because of the recession, it's the cool thing to do and it even has a name!
It's been a busy staycation mind you. For a couple of days, I pretended to be a freelance writer and photographer. I took my laptop, my Nikon and my iPhone, walked around town taking photos and then walked to a nice coffee shop and wrote, wrote wrote. I tell you, it felt really, really good.
And I wasn't only pretending, as I was writing an article for the online magazine Disco Underworld. I wrote a review of the music at Latitude, focusing on music by women. You can now read it in the 10th issue of the magazine, which is dedicated to music. I really loved doing it! The photo on the cover is also mine! And there is more from me coming in the next issue... but I can't tell you anything yet.
If you don't know the magazine and the mastermind behind it, Stacey Childs, go and visit the website and her blog now. I really admire her energy and her endless ideas, she comes up with the most creative ways to promote the magazine!
And talking of women in music, I can't stop listening to Regina Spektor, who we also saw at Latitude and features in my article. She's so cute, I think she's my new woman crush (although I still like Zooey Deschanel). Here's a video of one of my favourite songs, On the radio:

During the rest of the week, I've been doing a course at a local school called Beginning Books, it was a mix of creative writing and paper crafts that I absolutely loved. I'll tell you more about it and show you some photos in my next post. In the meantime, go and read the story and tell me what you think.