I decided to submit a notebook as a personal challenge, as if my life wasn't already full to the brim. I realised the fullness related to being a mother to my 4 boys, and as a single parent, all the jobs fall to me. I needed something of my own, with sparkle and glitter and excitement. My notebook reflects me, it is vibrant and colourful, but also seems to have a sadness, and a longing for something I don't yet have words for, but it is a sense of completion or closure I am looking for. That closure isn't in the book, but what is there is opulence, iridescence, layers, beads, stitching, fibres, threads, paint, paper, feathers and intensity.

For me, there is something so powerful in a challenge to create in a world of domesticity and routine and everyday 'stuff'. To find that something that makes me gasp at its beauty, and to keep coming back to that piece I dropped on the floor, a piece of shiny paper, a wrapper, a torn label that gets added to something else and is transformed into something totally different. I create pieces that are tactile and reflective and beg to be touched. Beads found in charity shops, odd threads from Morocco and India, threads that evoke memories of travels down windy dusty streets with rose petals and incense and even the memory brings back an almost tactile sense. It is the bringing together of these things, the memories, the images and the sensory feelings that make me so content. In a world where we face so much negativity and stress, the importance of creativity has never been so strong, and for me, it has proved invaluable on a personal level, to delve deeper and to somehow remember who I am beyond being a mother. Thank you for the opportunity to find my creative sparkle again, and for the inspiration and the hope that I too inspire.