Four Leaf Clover into Bookmark (by Brady)

From Brady's Tumbler blog:

I’ve been extremely bad at blogging. I’ve found myself to have an extreme lack of motivation at the moment.

 

 

In other news, I’ve had the play, and I’ve also done some holiday stuff. Lets jump back to March shall we. *Directs you to my time machine*

Okay, welcome to my messy closet. Now, as you can see, I’ve had these three phone books and 7UP bottles in there for a while now.

This last fall in cross country I was kind of a loner because all my friends from the previous year were seniors. They've all graduated and this year I didn't fit into any specific "group"… Let me back up though.



There was this really intense hill work out that makes me hyperventilate at the end of it, which I have never done on a workout before. As I was relaxing, I started to zone out on the ground into a clover patch. I then realized that there was something different about one of the clovers, so I snatched it up, and to my surprise, it was my first four-leaf clover! *Tangible excitement*

Well, that put everyone into a frenzy of trying to scour the land for four leaf clovers. I was so excited myself that I couldn’t help but look with them. Well as our coach was talking, I blurted out, “NO WAY!” and I plucked another four leaf clover from the ground. 2 four leaf clovers within 10 minutes of each other. Everyone was jealous, I know.

 

 

So, I took them home and pressed them. Going back to that loner thing in cross country, I actually found that it was more fun to look for clovers than talk to people. Okay, I’m actually a really social person, just didn’t like the people in cross country. Everyone kind of forms rank cliques, since those are who we run with most of the time anyway.

The girls kind of formed their own clique since all their workouts are separate from the guys. Then all of varsity formed a clique since their workouts are different than junior varsity.

And I was the only senior on the male JV, and the person I would talk to would be this kid named Nate, but he’s kind of weird and has a blinking turrets syndrome. I mean, I like him, but it’s kind of a chore to talk about something sometimes. I don’t really like guys anyway, especially since everyone was younger than me, I didn’t really like communing.

I fit perfectly with the girls though, but they forced such a strong bond with each other that all their conversations revolve around each other and I can’t jump in.

 

 

Okay, enough about me being a loner. Basically, I would start to hunt for four leaf clovers. I lost track of how many I found. It was probably 8-11. I managed to save 5 of them for pressing. So, in March, on Saint Patrick’s Day, I went to turn them into a bookmark.

First, I took them out of the phone books (I believe these were my first 2).

Then I cut the stems to make them smaller.

I promise you these are all four leaf clovers. It was hard to force the leaves to go directions before I pressed without tearing them, so on some of them, the middle leaves pressed half on top of each other, making it look more like 3. 

Then I made a little inspirational bookmark on the computer, and started my little art project of putting it on card stock and getting the clovers all nice where I wanted them.

 

 

I got a little side tracked and forgot to take pictures of the next parts, specifically the lamination. I freaked out during the lamination part. I didn’t glue the clovers down, I just assumed that the laminate would seal them in the book mark. But as soon as the laminate touched the paper, the clovers lifted right off. I was freaking out!! I had to peel my delicate four leaf clovers off the sticky laminate. Then I calmly glued them down with a glue stick, and then it was a much more peaceful laminate placing.

Then I trimmed off the excess laminate.

Voila. There she is, and that’s what I did for Saint Patrick’s Day.