Her story reads like a sad romance novel. Pia was the beauty of the family, the prettiest of my great aunts. In the late Thirties, she got engaged to an aeroplane pilot, but the Second World War put paid to her dreams. Her fiance was killed in action. She became one of the many widows before marriage.

Although Pia was still very young at the time, she never married. Whether she didn’t find anyone else, or didn’t even look, I don’t know. She died when I was still relatively small so my childhood memories of her are sketchy—I remember an old but cheerful spinster who was very much part of her wider family’s life.

Back then, I didn’t know about the death that had changed her life. But ever since I found out, I have wanted to tell her story, to make sure it is not forgotten. The Theme Thursday challenge gave me the excuse. So here is Pia before the war, stars in her big brown eyes, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. Beautiful, happy, and blissfully ignorant of the tragedy that time was about to bring.

Pia in the mid-1930s

Only die-hard fans of Thomas the Tank Engine (or the mothers thereof) will get the “nearly there” quote from the Spencer book, but I do feel much like Edward, a slow, old steam engine, trying to beat shiny new Spencer in a race to the duke’s summer house. Except that —in my quest to finish the little family booklet that will be my husband’s birthday present—I am trying to beat Time itself, so the odds are definitely against me. After all, there is no chance that Time will magically fall asleep just before the end of the race, thus letting me win with relative ease.

So I am scrambling to get as many pages done as quickly as possible. Here is the latest one, which is, unsurprisingly, another showcase for a picture of Caterina and Niccolo.

Proud brother

As with the previous page, I am also entering this for the Wednesday Stamper art challenge (create something that has a the word art, and at least one stamped image, in it). Although, if truth be told, the stamping here is very subtle—only the numbers 14 and 21, which are the children’s birth dates, and are from the Oxford Impressions range. Other than that it is mostly a hybrid collage—a digital collage as background, with a photo, some lace and the title glued on top.

Seeing it alongside the other, I am starting to think the book pages all look a bit samey, but then I am sure my husband will enjoy the subjects!

After last week’s wobble, Nicco is doing rather well. He still has a rough time when I feed Caterina—he usually does his worst to attract attention then—and occasionally overreacts to reprimands, but getting him to snap out of his mood is becoming easier. Or perhaps I am learning how to handle him (hint: give him as much attention as possible, and defuse any tense situation with humour; never tell him off unless he has done something absolutely unforgivable). Still, I suspect this will be a steep learning curve for both of us.

It helps that Caterina sleeps most of the time. This allows me to spend plenty of one-to-one time with Nicco—a result of which is that I have now become quite adept at making helms and armour. Archery, however, remains beyond me. Being thoroughly beaten by a not-quite-four-year-old is fairly humbling experience. Especially when he then adds innocently: “But mummy why are you so bad at all sports?” Hmm, perhaps because I read, drew and crafted during the time I should have spent exercising?

Talking of which (crafting that is, not exercising) I miraculously managed to find a spare minute or thirty to work on the family book I am giving my husband as his birthday present. Which is a good thing, considering his birthday is now just nine days away. Here is my latest page—now I only have four more pages to go, plus the front and back covers. At this rate, I may even finish the book in time.

Children in a pocket

Incidentally, I am also entering this for the Created by hand challenge, which is all about using textiles in your projects (I used lace here to decorate the tag that’s in the bookpage pocket). That’s because I no longer have time to make any dedicated effort for any challenge—beyond keeping Nicco entertained while I feed Caterina, that is!

Phew, it feels forever since I last entered a challenge. Of course I had more pressing priorities, but it is good to find a few minutes to do something unabashedly fun. And the 4×4 Friday theme—florals—could not have been better for me. I love using flower images in collages, and they make the perfect backdrop to show off a rosy-cheeked Caterina.

Five-day-old Caterina

The poor thing doesn’t look too great in this picture, but I love that she is smiling, so I used it anyway. No doubt she will never forgive me when she grows up!

Ohh, I am so happy. I have handed in all my articles and now I can rest and play while I wait for the baby to be born. Over the last few days, I honestly thought I’d never be able to relax like this. I didn’t even get (too) angry at the news that my long-awaited parcel with a bunch of Stampington magazine is delayed at customs (whyever for?) and won’t be delivered until tomorrow.

And look! I even managed to sneak in a collage. The prompt was 4×4 Friday’s families theme. It was the perfect opportunity to do something with one of the many lovely pictures of my grandmother with her sisters and their mother. I love those photos because they are a snapshot of everyday life—reading the papers, chatting, studying, sewing—and yet everyone looks so incredibly happy. You really get the feeling it was a loving, contented family.

My grandmother Nina, her sister Pia and their mother Chiarina reading the newspaper

It didn’t last of course. My great-grandmother passed away not too long after the pictures were taken, one of the sisters moved away to follow her husband, another bore a tragic loss. Which makes it all the more important for me to capture that moment of pure joy and shared love.

Purple seems to be cropping up rather often in online challenges. After the purple and gold combo for Mixed Media Monday a couple of weeks ago, Wednesday Stamper is now running a purple challenge.

This time, however, inspiration struck a lot closer to home than the improbable collage of dancer-turned-empress Theodora, which I made for Mixed Media Monday.

Somehow, purple’s imperial connection made me think of my great-great-grandmother Caterina, a woman so formidable her own family called her Caterina the Great, after the Russian empress.

Caterina the great

She didn’t have the easiest of personalities. An aristocrat, she had a hard time adapting to a world where titles meant increasingly little. She once confided to a friend that “a man who is not a noble does not look like a man to me.” She also sent away a hapless postman who had dared tried to make a delivery to Mrs Caterina (rather than Lady Caterina) saying: “There is no Mrs Caterina here—there never was and never will be.”

Her children had a healthy dose of respect for her, and if they occasionally forgot to treat her with due deference, Caterina was quick to put them in their place. Once, she met her son, my great-grandfather Raffaele Alfredo, in the street. He made the dreadful mistake of not taking off his hat when he approached her.

“What is your hat still doing on your head?” she chastised him.

“But mama, you take your hat off to a lady, and you are just my mother,” he said.

“And what is your mother—a dog?” she replied.

So here is my little tribute to Caterina, who had the pride and demeanour of an empress, if not the title. Well, this, and the fact that my soon-to-be-born daughter will be named Caterina after her.

Well, after the doom and gloom of yesterday’s piece, something altogether more fun and light-hearted (although I still seem to be hooked on a green colour scheme one way or another).

Inspire Me Thursday’s challenge was all about wallpaper. We never really had it at home except for a very brief time when I was about 14 or 15 and my mother went for a very sophisticated beige wallpaper in her bedroom. Our cat loved it so much it shredded it to pieces in a matter of days—and when I saw the wallpaper prompt I just felt I had to record that momentous event, which put all of us off wallpaper for the rest of our lives!

Kitten loves wallpaper collage

However, I was rather short of raw material for this collage, so I am grateful I could find it all online—the vintage wallpaper is from Stock Exchange and the kitten from Karen’s Whimsy. Other than that, it was just a question of designing the background paper (a digital collage) and gluing it all together. Lots of easy fun.

P.S.: some of you know I am a writer by trade and a journal-keeper for passion. Now I am considering running an online journaling class for artists and scrapbooking enthusiasts. Anyone interested out there?

Last Wednesday’s challenge at Wednesday Stamper sounded deceptively simple—anything featuring the first letter of your first name, as well as, of course, a stamp. Something personal, I thought. Except that I hadn’t banked on it being so painful. Perhaps it is because I am going through a difficult period in my life, but I found this extremely hard to do.

Hope this caged spirit will fly free again some time soon

Initially, I wanted to use a picture of myself, but it started cutting too close to the bone. So I chose a picture of one of grandmother’s nieces, a cute smiling girl, and wrote the journal entry to the third person—as if it had all happened to her. It made the piece slightly easier to work on. That said, I kept fiddling and amending, changing and tinkering for nearly a week. I wasn’t sure about the colour scheme, but I wanted to have a bleak black, for how I feel now, and a lively green to symbolise my hope for a better future. And I wanted to use both a bird flying free from the cage, and my son’s artwork, because I need to believe things will improve soon.

I am still not happy with the result, but it is time to let go—before it becomes even more painful.

P.S.: for curious minds, the journal entry reads: Look at her. Sunny, smiling, happy. She believed she could do everything and the world was hers for the taking. But then she changed. Choices and circumstances killed the spark in her eyes. Like a novel Sisiphus, she pushed the boulder up the slope only to see it roll down the other side one time too many. Now she is bitter, lost, adrift. Tired of fighting and of trying to rebuild. But perhaps the little girl is still alive inside her and one day her eyes will sparkle again.

After a few weeks of the blues I am starting to feel more hopeful again. Must be spring approaching. Or perhaps I simply resigned myself to what was inevitable and am ready to move on and make the most of the rest.

Hope has returned and I have decided to capture it into a collage

Now I have a few ideas and projects I want to sink my teeth into. Wish me luck.

I have a confession to make: I don’t much like purple (even though it is my husband’s favourite colour). So I just had to take up the Mixed Media Monday challenge to create something in purple and gold. I thought it would do me good to go beyond my favourite palette of browns, blues and pinks.

The combination of purple and gold immediately sparked an idea: Theodora. Dancer, actress, courtesan, she was born as far from the purple as she could be—but ended up marrying into it, and becoming one of the cleverest, most powerful empresses Byzantium ever had.

Theodora collage for Mixed Media Monday

So here’s my take on Theodora—a golden collage of her face (my drawing of the Ravenna mosaic) framed by sequins and stars on a watercolour paper base painted a deep purple. For some reason, the purple veered red in the scan, but it really is a deep purple in the original!