Review of February

The photo above is of the art I've completed this month (click any photo to see it larger). Not all of it has been shared on my blog yet. I thought it would be a nice way to start these monthly review posts. February signals the end of our Summer School holidays and the beginning of a new school year and back to routine. It's been a really mixed month of establishing new routines, creativity, sadness, sickness, and progress. I started the year by accepting a few more hours at work and this month I've got into a good routine with fitting in my gym practice and written journaling before my earlier start time for my job. I now work 22.5 hours a week which is feeling perfect for me. Still plenty of time for creativity, social meet-ups and supporting my family. 

I was going along really well for the first half of the month and you saw me creating and posting regularly here. But then we had the anniversary of my Dad's passing - it was a tough week made tougher by a horrible head cold. I felt pretty miserable with low energy for the best part of the last couple of weeks - don't you hate summer colds?

Thankfully I've also had some highlights. I was asked to teach an introductory art journal class at a local quilt and craft shop. I have 10 women enrolled! I gathered supplies and shared some of my journals for the first overview lesson on 13th Feb - showing my art, giving them ideas for journal options, and talking about where I shop for supplies. 

It was the highlight of my week - so awesome to share something I feel so passionate about ♥ This past week I shared techniques for backgrounds with wet media 

Creatively I was inspired by a talk by Lyric Kinard : 

and I've scored some lovely new supplies : background lettering stamp from a friend, white stencil set purchased from Dianne at Village Books and Crafts, lovely NZ Plant life stencils from Scholastic lucky book club. I'm going to enjoy these additions a great deal. 

Book of Days 2019 is being taught as a collaborative this year. Our guest artist for February was Tangie Baxter and I don't think I shared my "scribble girls" made with inktense pencils here. I put them in my Inner Work Journal cos I wasn't inspired to expand on this technique.

Also in my Inner work journal this month, my focus for February came from the second letter of my word Shine : Healthy practices. I've been doing quite a bit of work around body positivity and I've made a huge shift this month in how I feel about my body. 

You may have seen my full moon body celebration spread in my previous post : 

and I printed this out for my Inner Work journal :

I continued to write, even on days I couldn't art. My Inner Work journal now looks like this - the green tab marks the beginning of Feb and the red is the start of March. Might need to start a new journal for April....

I continue to take photos for my #arteveryday practice - this was last week (Week 13) and shows that my art journal pages sometimes take days to create, and some days all I can manage creatively is to 'wear my joy' ♥

This is my record of what I was reading and watching in February :

My son and I LOVE to watch Thunder play in the NBA. Their Centre is Steven Adams - a Kiwi ♥ I especially enjoyed my non-fiction last month, and was really glad I watched Wanderlust. It raised lots of interesting questions and had a variety of great characters. 
Looking ahead to March - we are heading into Autumn. I am always really sad to see Summer go - I hate how the rain stops me doing things outside and the shortening days mean the end of late evening walks. Already temperatures are dropping and although it makes it easier to sleep when cooler, I hope we continue with days of warmth and sunshine afternoons for at least this coming month. I just don't want it to get grey and rainy too quickly but am looking forward to autumn colours and I am grateful to live in a place where the seasons change and we can appreciate the unique things offered by each. Hope the sun is shining where you are and that I'm back with more art to share soon.