Being born and raised in the south also means that I was born and raised with the Braves. Growing up I remember rooting for Chipper Jones, Javy Lopez, and Tom Glavine. I still remember walking into the Braves stadium for the first time, amazed by the gargantuan size of the stadium. As we approached, the stadium slowly blocked out the sun, making me feel as if I was at the base of a mountain. We continued towards the mountain and our family began to mesh with the thousands of other baseball enthusiasts filing through the gates. I remember being amazing by all of the games they had set up for kids, the firework shooting coke bottles, and the sea of red, white, and blue continuously flowing around me.
When I turned ten I decided rather than have a birthday party I wanted to go see the Braves, and my parents made sure it was a special day. They bought me a brand new Braves shirt, and my Dad shelled out to get two amazing seats, while the rest of the family sat in the nose bleeds. I still remember walking with my Dad to our seats, I kept thinking surely they must be on this row, or this one, it has to be this row, yet we continued to walk towards the field. Our seats were in the first section directly behind home plate, we had an amazing view. I can still feel my heart skipping a beat every time a foul ball flew into our section, wishing it would fly a little more to the left, and right into my glove. Despite not catching a foul ball, it was still one of my most memorable birthdays.
I don’t get to Braves games as often as I would like to, but I make sure to get to at least one every summer. It is always a highlight of my summer, and I still get the same feeling I did when I was ten walking into the stadium. This summer, 2010, was quickly passing, the school year started, and I barely had a chance to think about baseball while I was preparing for my upcoming classes. I hadn’t been to a single game that season, and I didn’t even realize it until my sister-in-law, Stacey, called about going to a game. I was so excited to hear she wanted to go to one, and even more excited when I realized I still had a chance to get to a game before the season ended. It was evern better when I found out that not only would I get to a game, but I also had the opportunity to go for free! Stacey’s work had extra tickets, that she quickly snatched up, which also included a parking pass and a voucher for food at the 755 club.
The day of the game quickly approached, and I scrambled to get my work done, and ended up leaving later than expected. I quickly pulled into the driveway at home, immediately hopped into Nick’s car, and had to change into my Braves wear on the way. The long work day took it out of me, my initial excitement for the game had waned a bit, and was replaced by heavy eye lids and continuous yawning. However, as we approached the stadium I began to perk up, the size of the stadium still captivates me, and I soon forgot how tired I was. We began passing our typical parking spots, abandoned lots manned by people holding homemade price signs, and we continued to drive closer, and closer to the stadium. We ended up getting amazing parking, I didn’t have to walk under bridges, dart across streets, or fend off homeless people. We parked, got out of our car, and it felt like it only took ten steps to walk into the stadium. I felt special as we walked up to the 755 club, we were waved through level of security after level of security. It was my tenth birthday all over again, but all grown up. We enjoyed good food and a good game in the comfort of an air conditioned room. We later walked out to our actual seats, and we enjoyed the rest of the game (or until my sleep caught up with me somewhere in the 7th inning) sitting in the warm summer air, cheering on my Braves, and watching the sky slowly fade from blue to black.
It was the perfect way to close the summer. School had just started, but I still hadn’t settled into my school routine. That last night sitting in the Braves stadium really signified that last night of summer. Another year had gone by, another season was quickly coming and going, I was a long way from my tenth birthday, but every time I enter that stadium it feels like I’m right back there, as if no time has passed.
SUPPLIES
- Visual journal
- Rubber cement
- Scissors
- Magazines
- Braves tickets
HOW TO
This page required little supplies but extra patience and planning. I love to create ripped magazine fades in my books, and I knew I wanted to do it for this page to capture the game progressing from evening to night. I went through magazine after magazine and ripped out any page with light, medium, dark blues and black. After I had a nice stack I ripped up each page into smaller pieces and organized them based on the color. I then took my stacks and arranged them from light to dark in a straight line. By setting it up like this is gives me an idea of how well my colors fade from light to dark, if there is a section that looks like it moves too quickly from light to dark, I return to my magazines and try to find the perfect color to help the transition. Once I had all of my colors for the sky, I began gluing them down. I started with the light colors and moved my way up. When layering images it is always better to work from back to front to create an illusion of depth, once I had my sky complete I worked forward, adding the flags, tickets, and field.
Once my sky was glued down I went through all of the items I had collected from the game day to see if I wanted to incorporate anything. I decided to glue down our tickets and parking pass, and I also cut out images of flags from a brochure. I put the flags down first, then the tickets, and then I began working on the field. I wanted a patchwork look for this section, so I pulled any image with green color and grass texture for the outfield, and brown, dirt texture for the infield. I also ripped these up and glued them down. To emphasize my baseball field I ripped up tiny pieces of white and glued them down for the bases. As usual, to finish off the page I added the words “take me out to the ball game” with a thin sharpie.
CHALLENGE
Create a page about a seasonal tradition, not including holidays. It can be a baseball game, football game, tailgating, corn mazes, building a snowman. Use ripped up magazines to create some aspect of the page. This is the perfect way to memorialize one of your favorite traditions, make sure it’s special.
I hope you enjoyed today’s post! Please help me spread the word about visual journals, share with others, e-mail, link over to it, tweet, like, and please comment! Thanks for your support!
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