My word for 2016 : reflecting on Transform

In January I shared my word for the year : TRANSFORM

I'm sure you know this quote "Always aim for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars". This was true for my year. I didn't meet my expectations in some areas, but I also transformed in unexpected ways...Here I review my intentions from January

Transform physically - Although I'm getting better at healthier eating and have increased my gym habit, sometimes stress has overcome my good intentions. I haven't lost heaps of weight, but despite this, I HAVE succeeded in transforming my perceptions about my body! I now feel very happy with what I see when I look in the mirror - I value what my body can do, and how I look when I get dressed. I recently saw the movie documentary Embrace and I want to continue to live like that. I've struggled a bit with the onset of menopause this year - a not so easy transformation....but I'm feeling happy with my strategies for dealing with this. I know that I am set for 2017 with good plans in place for a healthful life. 
Transform relationships - I've definitely made new connections this year and deepened some existing friendships. I'm very proud of the way I've supported my family in stressful times this year, and the extra closeness that we have as a direct result from this.

Transform creatively - I made a lot of art in 2016 that included my word and/or butterflies. See my Flickr album for my OLW art HERE.

I've made good progress in transforming an old art book into my lovely art journal and generally feel like I've made more art this year 

and I've used Effy Wild's idea of an Ultimate notebook to transform my experience of what I get out of online art classes. I've transformed some fabric into quilts, continued to blog about my art, and have loved my first forays into teaching mixed media art. I've been very proud of my progress with Faces this year and look forward to seeing how they continue to develop in 2017. I've also got a better recognition of how different times of the year present different challenges and my art productivity is cyclical - I'm kinder to myself about what I'm managing to achieve.

Transform my soul/spirit - I've continued the journey I began in 2015 of being open to meditations, talking to myself more kindly and working on transforming limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs. I've enjoyed the classes that have assisted in affirmation work through art (Particularly through many of the Life Book lessons and Effy's Facing Forward II class).

Transform our living spaces - I was more active in taking steps to get quotes and focus on some home improvements, and we now have new curtains and renovated bathroom and toilet with lovely tiling. I have a plan for what to do next....

Ali's One Little Word class has definitely helped to keep my word more present through the whole year. Although I didn't complete every month's prompt, it was still great to have her email arrive and remind me about my word every month. Register for her 2017 Class before December 31, 2016 to receive her early-bird price of US$26. After December 31st the price is US$31. 
I've got a new word for 2017. Share it here soon

Documenting life : remember September

Last time I did a daily journaling post was 1st September. I noted that although I'm still trying to do something creative every day, I've been feeling less like documenting my everyday happenings and instead concentrating on meaningful journal spreads. Effy calls it 'meeting yourself on the page'. September has been a roller coaster of highly stressful events interspersed {thankfully} with times of great joy. Our One Little Word prompt from Ali Edwards for September was to pay attention and it was good for me to focus on my joyful highlights. I figure it fits my word "Transform" by artfully creating a positive spin on the month.

I used the weekly DLP 2016 unPlanner prompts for inspiration to add artful touches. September Week 1 was to add an organic element. The examples from the artists were twigs, but I needed something flatter in my journal and I was pleased to remember my microwave flower press. I haven't used it for ages :-)

The hellebore ended up quite tissue thin so I glued it carefully with gel medium as I would tissue paper, and it inspired some doodled spring flowers.
DLP Week 2 : Stitch on your card. I decided to tear a card of paint samples, and since I had a feather, decided to use that organic element as well. Plenty of stitch on this one.

I went to a Craft and Quilt Fair last month so decided to enhance my page by using some of the new stencils I purchased there.

Since buying my lovely new coloured pencils for face shading recently, I thought it would be fun to use some magic Koh-i-noor pencils on my pages - not watersoluble with multi-coloured leads. I used them a couple of times on this page to add framing.

DLP Week 3 : Mark making in black and white over colour. I enjoyed the doodling I'd done on a Book of Days page earlier in the month so used that as additional inspiration.

When you look at the final spread you'll notice I used the white pen dot to highlight quite a lot. The first weekend of the school holidays was another girls' weekend in Raumati. The weather was nice enough on Saturday to have a lovely long beach walk

The Wearable Arts show was indeed WOW! No photography allowed during the actual show, but this was The Brancott Estate Supreme WOW Award winner : SUPERNOVA by Gillian Saunders, New Zealand. Made of recycled leather, gems, marker pen ink. 

To get a taste of the show, here's a link to videos. You will find close-up video of the supreme winner and click on the one called Interview : Tor Columbus & Ross McCormack which has snippets of the show alongside an interview with the Director and Principal of Choreography chatting about the creative process. See much more at the official FB page for WOW - including photos of all the section winners and a photo album of the show.
DLP Week 4 : Add stripes. Started with a wee journaling block with added white dots for sparkle 

You can see in the finished spread that the addition of black & white over colour AND stripes prompts appears in various forms in lots of places. This is the completed spread of joyful things for Remember September. Click on any photo to see it larger.

You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE. You can find out more about DLP 2016 the unPlanner HERE.

One Little Word : April and July

It's July already and we are all wondering how we got here so fast! I felt miserable yesterday with a head cold, but well enough today to take stock of the year so far and do a bit of planning for school holidays in a week and some projects that need to happen. It's hard to believe that across the other side of the world they are wearing shorts and promoting new classes called Art Journal Summer School while I'm wearing merino, boots, and layering with jackets and scarves. Winter has arrived at my place.
I joined Ali Edwards' One Little Word class a the beginning of the year, and I did well until April when I let the prompts slide. Consequently, I feel like I've been losing touch with my word Transform in some areas of my life. When I looked at July's lesson, I found the message is "What do you most need to hear this month?" 

Do you get daily email messages from the Brave Girls Club? Often I just skim and delete them, but sometimes the message comes with just when I need to hear :

Dear Diligent Girl,
Put it in your mind that quitting is not an option.
Tides will change. The wind will shift. Things usually start to come together JUST after we were sure is was time to quit.
If you are facing the direction of your most wonderful end goal, even if some days FACING that direction is all you can do...that is still part of continuing.

Some days you will take steps. Some days you will just keep yourself turned in the right direction. It's all important progress. 

Just don't give up, okay? Never never never never quit.

You can do it. You ARE DOING IT.

You are so very loved.  xoxo

I've decided that what I most need to hear this month is "Keep going. Remember why you started" :

It's ONLY July. I AM making progress in several areas. There are still 6 months before this year's transformation is done, and I need to recognise the progress I've made since January, and believe that I CAN DO IT. This month I'm going to once more use the goal tracker idea from February - practicing one new thing every day for a month. 

Next I decided to look back through Ali's prompts that I didn't complete properly - by which I mean putting them down in my journal, thus capturing their importance in my daily life. In April the question was "What does it REALLY mean to be your word?"  I remembered I'd made notes about this so I decided to create a page in my journal.  I started with paper serviettes of butterflies (a transformation symbol for me) and some journaling cards.

I quickly noticed that there were some very apt words in my background which needed to be circled

and I really love how the page turned out.

I immediately knew what needed to go on the facing page to make this a true mix of April & July's prompts. Ali talked about making cards as "a creative meditation" and I love that phrase so just started building up the kind of intuitive/meditative background and layers that I love - letting the art take me as it would. I started with soft colours to complement the facing page, and included a bit of stenciling

Then the layers built with various pattern stencils, more of that butterfly serviette I used on the facing page, some stamping, and one of my favourite word stencils by Dina Wakley

And here's the completed spread - I feel re-inspired for the second half of the year

Click on the photo to see it larger, and you can see the other journal pages created from Ali's class prompts HERE.
Encourage yourself. Be your own cheerleader this month :-)

One Little Word : March Vision Board

So far I am loving being part of this workshop. It is definitely helping to keep my word of the year "Transform" present in my life. The task set by Ali for this month was to create a vision board. I've never done this before, and can't remember when I created a project that was solely collage. First I gathered appealing images and meaningful words. 

I highly recommend these magazines available in New Zealand (and some overseas) for their great words, lovely imagery, and nice (not shiny) paper.

Then I started to play and it didn't take me long to get my initial layout down. 

If you look back at my January post about my word for 2016, you'll see I talked about goals for transforming physically, relationships, creatively, my soul/spirit, and living spaces. I'm satisfied that I've represented all these areas : 

I can't decide which close-up area I like best....Ali made her vision board on a canvas, but I was happy to put mine in my art journal. It's present larger as my new background on my computer

I'm really happy with the mix of imagery and words that make my intentions around "Transform" meaningful - click on the photo to see it larger.

Find out more about OLW 2016 HERE. See all my posts about this project so far HERE. This last photo has also been posted in my Flickr album for the completed spreads in my Daily Journal HERE.

Daily journaling

We are in high summer here in New Zealand - sunny days - hot temperatures - sometimes a bit much humidity, but mostly I love it, especially when there is time for swimming in the pool :-) Seemed appropriate to start with hot pink in my background and had to include some screen shots of our weather forecasts. All true except we don't seem to have had much of the cloud and no rain this past couple of weeks (Click on the photo to see it larger)

A few things to celebrate this past fortnight. In October of last year, I completed a Life Book lesson called Inner Warrior Princess - see my process HERE. 

Last week I received a message on FB from the teacher of that class, Andrea Gomoll, asking if she could feature my art to promote the class which is now being offered as a mini online class. I replied that I was thrilled and flattered to be asked, and she has said she will add a photo of my project when she next updates! 
As a side note for you, Tam has announced the release of 5 of her classes from Life Book 2015, now available as mini classes HERE. 

While I didn't do the two in the top line, my versions of the other classes are linked here : Fly High, Beacon of Light, Seeds of Love. For all of the lessons I did, I linked to the artist, so if you're interested in checking to see if anyone else now has lessons available, you can get to them via my posts about Life Book 2015 HERE.
Now we're in February, we have a new creative prompt for our One Little Word class with Ali Edwards. 

This month we're focusing on the concept of "Practice", and we're picking one single thing to focus on every day in February. It's an idea used with the permission of Elise Joy - the creator of the daily goal tracker. I am finding it motivating, encouraging, and helpful to be concentrating on just one practice for the month...may make this a monthly habit :-)
Monday 8th was a day off for us (Waitangi Day) and I spent some of it creating my Quirky Bird for Life Book 2016 - shared in my previous post.

The next best thing to being in the pool is lying on my bed with all the doors and windows open, and devouring this : 

And loving that I can make these daily journal pages whatever I want. After our lovely long weekend, Tuesday to Friday this week was mainly : get kids to school, go to the gym, go to work, come home and get in the pool to cool down, do jobs....so I just had a bit of fun with some found words and left out the boring details of those days and that's fine with me :-)

And I celebrated my 500th visit to the gym today!! 

It's been a good 2 weeks : 

Hope you have a great weekend with some creative time.
You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE.

One Little Word : January

I definitely won't be blogging daily once this initial rush of "first pages" is over! But I'm loving having the time in my holidays to do it, and to share with you in the hope you will be inspired to try something creative in your life as well. I shared my first page in my new daily journal in my previous post, and I cleaned off my stencils on my facing page which made an easy start on page 2 :

I thought about whether I would start my daily journaling there, but decided I would rather answer January prompts from Ali's One Little Word class since I already had my word so prominently on the spread. My presentation is completely different from Ali's, but I managed to include her main elements. First I took some inky papers and popped them through my printer to get some of her headings on them

I managed to include quite a few responses on my page : my definition and symbol (click on any photo to see it larger)

summary of intentions  - I glued the paper to a card and this flips open to show...

what I want to invite and release, and a small photo of me 

a quote about transformation

and words of encouragement for my journey

Happy with how that all came together on the page

and this how the entire spread looks completed - first one in my daily art journal :-)

As well as this page in my art journal, I've also done a detailed blog post about my word that meant I could just summarise my intentions on this page; I have a Pinterest board for inspiring quotes about my word and staying on track; and I also have a clearfile book which contains the work I did on Susannah Conway's FREE emailed class to find my word, a printout of my blogpost, and Ali's class notes so I can flip through at any time when I need a boost; 

and I've also got this reminder about healthy eating which hangs on my noticeboard right next to my pantry door!

See the original art I did for this HERE.
Seems I've got all my support material sorted. Now I just need to start working on my transformation...small steps every day.