One Little Word 2017 : January

I'm taking Ali Edwards' One Little Word OLW workshop again this year. Although I didn't complete all the monthly class prompts last year, that's not the goal. The goal of the class is to connect with your word throughout the year. I am excited to see what happens with SHINE in 2017. I've already done a post about what SHINE means to me, and I have a Pinterest board too.

If you've been looking at my blog since 1st January you'll have noticed I've been keeping my word very present in my art so far. I'm thinking every day about what it means to Shine : sharing with others, being healthy, cultivating good self-care, practicing gratitude, and spending time doing what I love.

Ali talked a lot in her first lesson about Being Curious - asking questions to to create a deeper connection with our word. The January lesson is about setting the tone for the year. We start the process of getting to know our word through a series of prompts.
She encouraged us to include a self-portrait and I love both of these photos taken earlier this year - the beach is one of my happiest places to be, and I love the shine on the sand and waves and again later that day with the sunset

Ali shared digital cards for us to print and use for the prompts. I love to use old calendars for this and cut a couple down to fit through my printer. 

The cards are quite cool once cut apart

and even more effective once I added metallic pen for my SHINE details ♥

Love finding inspirational quotes to support my word. This was from an article by Brave Girls Club which I found after having chosen my word : We can always fly above it to shine the light....

There are lots of inspiring quotes about Shine on my Pinterest board. Although the calendar paper is shiney {haha on re-reading I should have used the word glossy!}, I used permanent markers and once dry they haven't smeared.

I thought for quite a while about how to do the background, and in the end decided sparkly scrapbook paper was an easy option (not a very good photo but it's all glittery and shows up better if you click to see it larger)

I glued the lighter papers down to the background pages and used the folded green as an extra centre flap so I could spread all my information out. Click on the photos to view larger.

And I went a bit crazy with various tapes to add interest and colour

These pages make me happy. I also filled in another couple of pages that helped me really think about my word and my actions/intentions around it, but they contain more personal information and are not so pretty to look at. I only mention them so if you are still considering this class you know you can dive in deep from the prompts if you wish. You get from this class as much as you're willing to put into it.
Also they're in a new journal which I will share in my next post!

See all my posts about OLW 2017 HERE, and my Flickr album which includes any art featuring my word as well as the class prompts HERE.