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Here’s this week’s card:
It says: you are not alone, not ever. This card uses the Love Birds template by Dina Wakley for The Crafter’s Workshop (as well as a few others.). Gratitude PostCards is a weekly project for 2013. You can see a detailed post on my goal and the postcards I use here. Since I am really tired tonight, I thought instead of writing a thoughts-related post, I could share my One Little Word assignment. This month’s assignment was all about setting intentions for the year. I spent a lot of time thinking about mine. here it is as a spread:
The intentions I set are: January – Quietly Present – take a break. ponder. walk, don’t run. take it slow and steady. be calm. don’t yell. be quieter. listen. Here’s page one bigger:
and here’s page two bigger:
My goal for 2013 is to make three sketches a week. If I make more, great. If I don’t, that’s ok. Trying to keep the pressure low while still encouraging myself to draw. Here are the ones for this week:
that’s it for this week. Sketching is a weekly project for 2013. You can see a detailed post on my sketching journey here.
I had been looking forward to December for over two months. The months leading up to it were quite busy and rough for me and I knew I’d be taking about twenty days off in December and it couldn’t come soon enough. Each time I felt upset, I’d remind myself that the vacation was coming. The downtime. The time to relax. Reflect. Plan. Lounge. Snuggle. And then it came and it went. Just like that. Time’s so ephemeral. The days seem to pass so very quickly. I found myself worrying each day that I had one fewer day left. And then I’d step back and scold myself for wasting the precious time with worry. And on and on the cycle went. Even though I did plan some, lounge some, snuggle a bunch, and relax a bunch, I just didn’t feel whatever it was that I had decided December was supposed to bring. It didn’t meet my undefined expectations. Today was my first day back to “normal life.” My kids went to school and I went back to work. I woke up before the alarm this morning (which apparently was a good thing cause I’d forgotten to set it.) And I just felt the unease all day. I felt unprepared. Not ready to face the “real world” just yet. A part of me felt like scolding myself. I had just had one of the longest time-off’s of my career and I was not rested enough, peaceful enough, or prepared enough. I felt like I was being ungrateful. But instead of scolding, I decided to just go easy on myself. One of my goals with being present is not brushing away any emotion. I don’t want to sweep the crumbs under the rug. I don’t want to wallow either. I just want to feel what I feel and give myself permission for it to be OK. Whatever is it, it’s ok. So I slowed down. Way down. I did my exercise and got the kids ready. I took the kids to school without stressing about being late. I went into Nathaniel’s classroom and didn’t try to rush back home. I came home and slowly made some breakfast. A little bit of sketching and then I started my work day. Meetings, email, and a few little tasks. I got some work done. Not a huge amount but enough to feel productive. More than what I would have gotten done if I were busy scolding myself for being grumpy. Because I wasn’t preoccupied with my feelings and how inappropriate they were, I was able to focus on the work. And now we’re at the end of my day. I have a little time for art and a conversation with a friend and then it’s bed time. When I listen quietly, I can feel a small sense of peace. A little gratitude for the work done. I don’t feel euphoric but the heaviness I woke up with is gone. I feel like now I have a path through this fog. It might seem counter-intuitive to slow down but it aligns with my goal of being present. I am still doing all that I have planned for this week, so it’s not necessarily about doing less (though it could be) but just doing things more deliberately, not multi-tasking, not thinking about the next task while I am doing one, etc. Just really being present with each thing I do. I am not sure how long it will take me to get back into the groove of things. But in the meantime, I am taking this as a lesson in practicing my word. (Interestingly enough, my intention for January for the OLW class was to be quietly present. So far, so good.) There’s something magical in slowing down and living deliberately. Paying attention to the moments of life. It creates a lot of room for gratitude. And silent joy. In 2011, I did a weeklong daily art journal project that I loved. In 2012, I did a collage project that I loved. So this year, I decided to sort of combine the two and add the element of gratitude and celebration. I bought myself an A4 Moleskine Sketchbook and decided to use the right side pages only. My goal is to create some art on each page each week. Some might be collage-y and some will be more like art journaling. Whatever my heart desires. And then the goal is to update the page throughout the week to add 2 gratitudes each day from me, one from david and finally 3 things to celebrate for each of my family members for the week. Since I post these on Mondays, each page will go from Sunday to Saturday. Like most of my projects, I am not exactly sure how it’s going to work but I am open to playing along and letting it morph to what it needs to be. Here’s my first before page, I figured it’s best to start the year with my word:
and here’s what the page looks like with all the gratitudes and celebrations:
There we go. Just another excuse to create art and remember the present that is my life. I explained in this post how David and I decided to create Gratitude PostCards for 2013 as our project. We plan to mostly use stencils for him but also anything he wants. The cards are addressed to people he is grateful for and specific reasons why. I love this project cause it involves art, thinking, gratitude, and writing. Not to mention bringing joy to others. Unlike mine, I will post both the front covers and the back without the name/address. with that, here’s his first card:
and the back:
there we go. Here’s to gratitude in 2013!
Here are some snapshots from our week: Army men’s been a big hit.
David’s been teaching Nathaniel how to strategize.
he’s also been building more of his legos. This boat is from the Lighthouse which is awesome!
Nathaniel’s been playing with his toys, too.
finding creative uses for all of the toy’s parts.
we took a short trip to the Palo Alto Jr. Museum and Zoo and got to see bobcats, spiders, bees, bats, birds, fish, and many other animals.
and I snapped some photos of the kids, of course.
we played Blokus. Even Nathaniel’s pretty good at it.
our Christmas tree is still up and will be until mid January this year cause I will be away at a course next weekend and can’t take it down. Oh so sad. Not.
David’s been playing with the Origami Yoda books too and practicing his origami.
We’ve also been playing with paper and punches. Tons of fun.
the dark weather hasn’t been helping my photos.
but I soldier on anyway.
and here we go. i hope your week was lovely, too. here’s to a wonderful, incredible, peaceful 2013! Weekly Diary is a project for 2013. You can read more about it here. As we approached 2013, I knew that I wanted to continue to do art journaling. I’ve really enjoyed making art each week and wanted to make sure I created an excuse to give me time to create regularly. However, I have a tough time keeping all the art I’m creating. My books are becoming bulky and this year I am trying to focus on learning to let go and share. I’ve had people occasionally approach me to ask if I sell my art. So I decided to combine the two and create this project. I call it SixBySix because I cut up my watercolor paper in a small square (it’s actually about 5.5″ by 5.5″ so it can fit into a 6×6 envelope to mail.) and I create my art on that paper. I will then sell each piece. There will only be one each week. The price will be the same no matter where you live (unless this becomes really costly, in which case I might add a shipping cost for outside the US.) Assuming I can find my scanner and am not too lazy (which is a big assumption) I might at some point offer prints too, but I am not holding my breath on that. Please remember, this is personal and hand-made and thus imperfect. If you want perfect art, do not buy mine. Also one more reminder that these are pretty small. 5.5inches by 5.5inches. That’s about 14×14 centimeters). You will just get the original piece of watercolor paper with my art and signature in the back. No mounting, no frame. I don’t want to misrepresent anything. I will put a paypal button under each (you can pay with credit card or paypal.) the button doesn’t update so you will have to click through to see if it’s sold out. I will try to update them as quickly as I can and remove the button if it’s gone, but just in case. Each piece will be $35. That’s US dollars. If you have questions please leave a comment and I will reply as fast as I can. Since it’s for sale, I will not copy any artist’s art. I will use stencils sometimes and create my own other times but each piece will be my own unique creation and idea. If I use a quote, I will make sure to attribute. If you find something that looks like a copy, it’s unintentional and please notify me so I can attribute, remove, or do whatever’s necessary. I’ve never sold art before and have mixed feelings about it. Depending on how things go, I might change my mind and not sell them or whatever. Either way, I will aim to create 52 pieces of 5.5×5.5 art this year. With that here’s my first one:
This one has some gold paint so here’s a slanted view too:
It reads: You already have what it takes to make your wishes come true. here’s an example of what it looks like in an 8×8 frame.
Here’s to hoping for more art in 2013. In 2012, I did my own version of Project Life. I decided to use the pages to tell stories and the pockets as two-up (or one-up) mini scrappy layouts. I also included my weekly art in the pages. When I was trying to figure out my plans for 2013, I decided I no longer wanted to use the 12×12 albums and I definitely didn’t want to have to make two albums. So, I came up with the idea to use the baseball pocket pages in 8.5×11. I already have a ton of them and so it seemed like the best plan. My plan is to use one page a week. So a spread will be two weeks. Which should mean that at the end of the year, I’ve used 27 page protectors. Which should fit into one album. I am not sure if it’s going to work out. I am also not sure how the stories will work out. I am not sure if I will include my art or not. My plan is to make it work. To experiment and find my way. For now, all I have is the cover page. Which is super-simple. That’s the plan this year: super-simple.
I haven’t even bought an album yet. I have one that I’d been using for my OLW, etc and will put my pages in there until I am sure I am sticking to the 8.5×11 format. Then I’ll buy one. Likely, the American Crafts Modern albums as they are what I use for my normal albums. Here we go. Nothing super-sophisticated. Just an excuse to tell our stories. Let’s hope it works! This year, I decided that I wanted to focus strongly on gratitude. I did a lot of gratitude-focused work in 2010 and 2011 but I feel like it sort of declined in 2012, so my plan is to bring it back front and center this year. I’ve created a few projects around it. The first one is Gratitude PostCards. When I was looking for a project for David and me for 2013, I ran across these watercolor postcards and decided they would be fun to do art on and send out to people with notes of gratitude. After I talked to David, he liked the idea, too. Then I decided that I also wanted to make my own cards and send them out to people for whom I am grateful. People who make my life so much better. And thus the Gratitude PostCard project was born. The watercolor paper quality in the postcards isn’t perfect (at least not to my personal liking) and I am still learning how to use it. But the goal here is not to create perfect art. It’s just to couple something I love to do (art) with something that will give me joy (gratitude) and hopefully show someone how much they mean to me. I will share the art part of the cards here with you so you can see what I’ve done. Since I am not selling these cards, this will be my opportunity to use mediums I haven’t tried, create similar art to what I might want to learn from, use my templates, and just have fun. Some will be great, some not so much. That’s just how things go. My goal is to keep them simple. With that here’s the first card I created:
it says: celebrate every single day. not my favorite one, but it’s the first one I created. Here’s to celebrating gratitude in 2013.
I picked up Starters after reading the blurb and seeing the cover. Computer chips?! I am a programmer after all. I had to pick it up. And I am so glad I did. It was absolutely fascinating. I read it pretty much in one sitting and then moved over right to the short story she wrote after it.
The Portrait of a Starter was fun, too. And the premise of these books is different than all the other young adult novels. It’s rare to find something new and different now and I appreciate it very much when I find it. So I loved it. And I look forward to the second one. My goal for 2013 is to make three sketches a week. If I make more, great. If I don’t, that’s ok. Trying to keep the pressure low while still encouraging myself to draw. Here are the ones for this week:
that’s it for this week. Sketching is a weekly project for 2013. You can see a detailed post on my sketching journey here. |
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