"The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time along. Write in a journal." -Robin S. Sharma For the past several years, I have tried (and failed) to take online courses. It seems like every time I try to get started, I stop when "real life" gets in the way. When I saw the class "Art Journaling for Scaredy Cats" by Tangie Baxter being offered, I thought it might just be the right one for me to finish. (I'm starting to sense that finish might be a theme on my journey this year.)
Art journaling is something I have silently stalked in the digital scrapbooking community and on pinterest for years. I love the way that the Art Journaling community brings feelings and emotions to life through their beautiful art work. I love how it is generally quirky but also heartfelt, but I have been at a loss as to how to start or what my goal is in trying to create this type of a page. Thank goodness I signed up for this course-I LOVED IT! First and foremost Tangie is an amazing teacher--passionate, talented, and generous with both her expertise and products. Early on in the class, she talked about how it takes us 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, so it is entirely ok if I am not great at this at the beginning. This definitely gave me the freedom to jump in and simply start creating. Above you can see the pages i made in the class and I love them all. I love that I can turn on some tunes and enjoy letting go for 20 minutes or a half hour and create something real. I will definitely keep working on art journal pages and I am already signed up for Tangies next class--learning about making mixed media art in Photoshop! My art may not be amazing, but is mine and I am definitely proud of it!
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"Finishing races is important, but racing is more important." -Dale Earnhardt As I wrote about in "Candle Countdown", I am a bit of a quitter. My brain thrives in the land of ideas, yet I sometimes lose my excitement in bringing something full circle. Thus, one of my items on my life list was to finish a 30 (or 31) day challenge. You know them--they are all over Facebook and the Web. Be grateful for 30 days or do the Whole 30 or 30 Days of pretending to be perfect. I have tried SO many of these challenges, have come close, but have not finished many (or really any). Digital scrapbooking used to be one of my favorite pastimes, but over the past few years, I had lost my mojo. So, when The Lilypad Announced their Month of Challenges, I though this might be the perfect challenge for me to take on. It would help me to practice self discipline (which I obviously could use since I don't finish things) as well as help me fall back love in with my creative outlet. Each day through out the month, a new challenge was posted and away I went to scrap. Now, it would have been easy to quit. I owned very little from The Lilypad store so had to make an investment in scrapping supplies. I got a MASSIVE cold in the middle of the month which had me sidelined. Yet, I felt a pull to finish this. To fall back in love with my hobby as well as prove to myself that I was worth finishing something. So, here are the results. How do I feel? Amazing, proud, creative, and accomplished. I learned several new techniques including how to justify font in Photoshop elements and how to create a geometric mosaic from a photograph. I fell back in love with creating art as well as telling our stories. Now I am excited to scrap for fun and to start working on finishing my scrapbooks which I have fallen desperately behind on.
Here is to a great January and all my beautiful layouts! Hope you enjoy. |
AuthorAlmost 40 and tired of the treadmill, I am going to LIVE each day as a new adventure while finishing todo items on my life list. Mom, wife, teacher, geek! Archives
May 2020
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