Wasn’t that the perfect vision for the end of Breaking Dawn and the whole Twilight Saga? It wraps things up in a very nice way, huh? Well, my friends, it’s also time for Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge to wrap it up and shut the doors, too. Like an extremely good book, it’s hard to get to the end. It’s bittersweet. If you drag it on…it’ll ruin itself. Even still, it’s hard to let go.
We have had a wonderful time during our year and a half and I cannot ever begin to express my love for the friends I’ve made, the readers I’ve met, the projects I’ve seen…This has truly been a remarkable ride!It has never failed to amaze me how talented our participants are! And the friends on the forum!!! You ladies ROCK! Honestly, that might be a highly overused statement, but it’s the truth! You ladies really do rock!
I have to tell you this is a sad time for most of us on the team. There are many who might wonder why, why, why? And the simple truth is…it’s just time. Our challenge has been extremely specific to the Twilight saga and the end is drawing near.
Luckily for you, there has been an explosionof challenge blogs that cover all sorts of themes. There are so many great challenges out there and it’s so much fun to try new ones and old favorites. But, it’s also time-consuming and I think that this is an issue that many of us are afraid to talk about. Competing to get on design teams, win challenges, participate in multiple challenges—it all becomes a full time job! Last week, Jamie wrote this awesome post about it all. I feel what Jamie is talking about and she really nailed it well.
So! We’ll be doing two more Tuesday challenges and will end on February 16th. On that day, we’ll do a final blog hop among our design teamand give away some prizes. So please, come celebrate with us!
We are always so excited to see what our readers create and so we’ve decided to start sharing some of our very talented readers’ projects each week!
This week we started a new inspiration challenge to mix with our regular Tuesday challenges. Alison came up with some pretty cool Twilight colors for our first color inspiration challenge and we want to share the entries!
Thank you to all of the crafters who participated this week! Edward definitely approves!!
This week’s Fandom Friday discussion topic is music. I chose to highlight and review Blue October’s Approaching Normal album. I love Blue October so fiercely and I am proud to talk about this album because it is my favorite yet! In case you aren’t familiar with Blue October, the band is fronted by Justin Furstenfeld who openly shares his personal plight with mental health issues through his songs. The major difference between this album and the previous ones, is Justin’s sobriety, marriage and daughter. You might almost call it a coming of age project.
The songs are just as emotional and able to soulfully touch the listener as always, but this album also features some upbeat, happier songs that offer encouragement. Justin’s daughter, Blue, serves as his muse for several songs on Approaching—Jump Rope, Blue Skies, and Blue Does. All three songs are written for his daughter. The last one, Blue Does, was more of a personal song Justin sings to his daughter than a song he actually sat down to write. It’s moving to watch Justin talk or sing about his baby daughter. The love is undeniable and it’s so reassuring to see he has found something to ground him. However, even with his new found semi-peace, Justin still has to fight his demons—anxiety and depression. For anyone who has suffered from either and feels like no one understands…this music is for you.
There are actually two versions of the album, a “clean” version and the “explicit” version. Each version has a different track for the final song (#12). The clean version features my personal favorite song, Graceful Dancing. The song is encouraging and full of emotion. The explicit version features the shocker The End. It is extremely emotional and full of…red. That will make sense if you’ve heard the song! Anger, jealousy, and emotional instability rule the day on that one!
If you haven’t taken a listen to the album, I encourage you to do it ASAP! It’s a fantastic album!! I’d love to hear what you think of it and which songs are your favorites or really get to you.
Tonya | February 3, 2010
