Review of 2022 and plans for a creative 2023

I always like to do a creative review of my year. It's great to celebrate everything I've done and I loved gathering projects from around my studio to take this photo.

Check out my Instagram or FB artist page to see photos of all the projects and play I've had this year since I do give some of my creations away. What follows are my favourites in a bit more detail.

At the end of last year I was admiring the small monthly Daily Creative Practice journals I was seeing around (especially Willa's collected from 2021 HERE) and decided to make my own version.I did manage to create a book a month for the whole year. By October I was flagging creatively with doing the same format every month so joined Megan Whisner Quinlan's class Journal into your Art- it was fun to take a different approach to my November and December journals and I'm so happy I completed the year.

I love that each journal is a reflection of my month last year - the techniques from classes I was doing, the amount of creative time I had, the seasons and important events. You can see all my posts about the individual journals by clicking here. 

I decided to cover a box to house them and happily I was gifted the perfect size for a secret santa gift. Just shows you shouldn't plan too far ahead. I just cut the top flaps off, ran masking tape over the 2 raw upper edges and then went looking through my papers. As soon as I saw a leftover strip from my snippet rolls I knew that would be perfect. I added a few more centimetres of stitching and love how that looks glued to the sides.

I put a scrap of underpaper on the bottom so I could keep the details of this project (including my personalised stamp)

The inside measurements of the box is 12.5cm (a whisker deeper than the width of journals) x 13 cm across the front. The finished journals stand 18cm high.

I've done other journal projects in the past that last a whole year but I'm going to take a rest from that in the 2023. I've been really interested in Wendy Solganik's blog series about Finding your Artistic style. There have been some things that have really resonated there, the most recent being Tamara Jones : When you are taking a class and you think, “Wow, I could make a 100 of those.”  Listen to that voice!  You just found YOUR style!  Something that is part of you!  When you take many classes and keep hearing that voice with multiple different types of art, they are ALL your style. 

I felt like this with many of the book projects I made this year - this one is truly an example of my style : 

And this

And this 

And this is just the base but I adored this class and want to spend time on filling it in my holidays.

One of the things about Instagram that I love is that if I look at my page, I can see my style on display with the common colours and things I love to return to making over and over - books, including stitch and found words, paua colours, fabric and paper together, stencils. 

In my last project for 2022 which I shared here I was limited to not include as many layers and texture, but it's still a book form and it's still my colours and words. 

As I start 2023 I am continuing with Fodder School 2 but not signing up for anything else at present so I am free to try anything that feels inspiring to me as the year unfolds. The only exception is that I keep thinking it would be great to have a small stitching project to take to my Monday night quilt group (since you may have noticed I didn't do any quilting last year!). I did start a stitched roll in 2020 but it was too much for me alongside everything else that happened to me that year. I have recently seen Roxy's Journal of Stitchery for 2023 which is a themed large snippet roll called "Down the garden path". I have the base photoraphed here next to a mixed media roll I completed in 2018.

The project begins on the first Wednesday of January and there will be a new video each Wednesday from Rachel and Sarah with new prompts being announced every 2 weeks until June.  

See the project intro and gathering supplies videos on YouTube here. I'll share if this becomes a project that I love. 

You may have come across the Word of the Year concept. You can find yours with Susannah Conway's guidance free here (password delight) or through Ali Edwards who has developed a year-long course. My word since 2017 has been SHINE and I change the focus slightly each year as I use it as an acronym. 

As I continue to Shine in 2023, I am supplementing my definitions for my words of Self-care, Home, Intentional, Notice and Ease with the word Sustainable. So far it's led me to ask : Will I be able to keep up this weekly or monthly challenge or do I want more freedom? Do I need to buy that thing or do I already have something already in my cupboard that I can use or alter? I want to continue to find value in what I already have.

I'll keep sharing my main projects on this blog, and probably an end-of-month review, but please check out my Instagram or FB artist page for more regular updates of my projects in progress. What are your creative plans for 2023? I wish you creative joy and discovery in the year ahead.

November review

We've started December but I needed the break of the weekend to do my November review. I have been loving the warmer temperatures and the joy of roses that November brings. This was my first bunch picked on the first Saturday of this month

Although I'm sharing lots of creative joy in this post, I want to be real (cos this is All of Me) and say it's been a rollercoaster of a month : busy overwhelm at work but I love my job and am blessed with supportive colleagues; my eldest son left home to move to Wellington with his girlfriend - thrilled for them and it's time, but we were very close and I am missing his presence; hassles with bad neighbours; continued frustrations with insomnia and migraines and times of feeling utterly unmotivated; too much rain. I am grateful that art continues to be a way to work through issues, to find joy, and to make new discoveries. As I gather this monthly review, there is a lot to be grateful for. I loved this reminder from Liz Lamoreux on Instagram : You can feel grateful AND other feelings. We get to feel multiple things and no one can take that away from us. You can be grateful and still be grieving, or angry, or whatever you have to deal with that you are not grateful for. There is room for both.

On to the creative reviews : I got some new supplies - I found these lovely New Zealand bird stencils in Warehouse Stationery for only $5.99. I adore fantails (top left) so I'm sure that will get a lot of use - and wonderful to have a stencil rather than a stamp since I can play with them facing each other. .

For a while now I've been thinking about getting a custom-made stamp for my cards and book gifting so when I saw the suggestion for our December Fodder School lesson, I explored Rubber Stamps by Montarga in New Zealand and decided it was time to order. 

The customised one had its first outing when I did my annual making of bookmarks for my school librarians

I've spent some time thinking about my creativity and why I've not been motivated at times this month. I've been inspired to think about a December Daily practice and I shared some options here although it might be mid-December before I manage to do anything about it! I've been really interested to read Wendy Solganik's blog posts about finding your artistic style. Have a read and see what rings true for you.

I've also enjoyed watching Mary Beth Shaw's FREE Dirty Secrets class - sign up HERE. Available until 31 December if you've not seen it yet. Great for all stencil lovers and cool to be reminded of some techniques. 

Time to share my completed November monthly journal. 

In my October review, I mentioned I'd been struggling with my monthly journals, but using Megan Quinlan's techniques from her new class Journal into Your Art I was able to create some different effects and be reinspired with my monthly practice. 

My base file folder colour was a rather vibrant yellow, but I was very happy with the softened effects I was able to achieve and I loved gathering my stencils and rediscovering what I had and new ideas to use them for documenting.

I decided to try out other ideas from Megan's class and moved away from the Journal 52 prompts this month. It has been liberating to give myself permission to continue to finish my monthly journal project for the year but in a different way.  

Also loved how I could include layered effects with gelli printing from Fodder School classes too. This is such a lovely print it deserved to be on a flip-out page

I even managed to make a flip through video.

See all my posts about my monthly journal project HERE and previous posts aboutJournal 52 HERE. I'm looking forward to creating a December journal but these next 10 days are going to be crazy busy so I'm just going to try and do what I can and be grateful for my pockets of creative time....I have started to bring together a project from Fodder school too - more of this soon I hope

See more regular postings from me on my FB artist page and Instagram. Wishing you creative joy and peace this holiday season.

Shine

I'm so glad I have an art journal with pages ready to fill because yesterday (my New Year's Day in New Zealand) I got an email from Effy Wild which included a speed painting to inspire embracing your wildness. Here's the email with the link to the painting. After a nap (stayed up til midnight - not used to it!), and a swim (my weather app told me it felt like 29 degrees celsius), I jumped into my journal. I love how her face started off looking so kind.

One of the things that attracted me to Effy's version were gorgeous silver doodles in the black spaces. I am wanting to incorporate more of Klimt's style into my work this year, and this seemed the perfect place for that. I decided to use my new stencils.

As I added all that gold and iridescent turquoise, she evolved into a celebration of my word Shine. This has been my word since 2017. In 2022 I want to Shine, to continue being intentional, with an emphasis on releasing what no longer serves me so that I can live with ease. I explained it more fully last year if you are interested in exploring my acronym focus words in more detail : Self-care, Home, Intentional, Notice, Ease.

I had no idea that I would be in my art journal so quickly into the new year. Last time I used it was early September! It's been completely unexpected and a great way to start the year given my previous post where I acknowledged that my creative time is precious and I really want it to be time that is making me feel fulfilled and is heart led. Unplanned creative joy for the win 💜