{OLW} ~ January Prompts

At the end of last year, I came across the idea of choosing one word for the new year, a little word that one uses as a sort of guide line, something to focus on. I thought it was quite a nice concept and thought about choosing a word for myself for 2011 as well. However, I just couldn't decide what it should be, what it was I wanted to focus on. So I decided to let my Angel Cards choose it for me. And what they came up with was:

INSPIRATION

I must say, I couldn't have chosen a better word myself! It's just perfect. There are quite a few things in my life that I've tried to change for the last few years, without success so far. At the beginning of every year, I made plans and wish lists about the things I wanted to do, achieve, change. And at the end of each year, I was depressed, feeling such a failure, because I hadn't really managed to make any of them happen. So one month ago, at New Year's Eve, I decided to let that whole planning and wishing thing be. The only resolution I took was to go on working on and improving my photography and post processing skills, to focus on the creative side of me, to spend more time again at painting, calligraphy, learning to draw. To keep my eyes open for inspiration everywhere around me. And the rest - well, I'll just take it as it comes, one step after another, or no steps, if there are no steps to be taken. And maybe, the inspiration I'll find for my photography, painting etc, maybe, will inspire me in other things as well, letting me find new ways and possibilities, new pathes to follow.

When I saw that at BigPicture there was even a class about exactly that - One Little Word - I signed up for it. I loved the idea that the course covered the whole year, helping you to keep focusing on the word, and of course getting loads of inspiration. I've already written about it in a post earlier this month and posted the January title page. But until yesterday, I hadn't really had the time to sit down and work on the other prompt for January. To create 9 little cards with quotations, definitions, sentiments, ornaments etc. for our word. I still haven't all the supplies yet, the refill folders are still missing, but I have my lovely lavender coloured album and the card stock to print on. I even figured out how to find the right paper size for printing the American 8 1/2 " x 11" sized paper, yay!

So these are my January "canvases" for my word. Not cut out yet, will do that when I have the folders.

I decided to write almost all of the texts for the cards on the computer rather than by hand. I love handwriting but I've also downloaded so many great fonts in the last few weeks, that I wanted to use them. And of course it meant that I could get much more text on my cards. I know, it's a lot of text and even in the original versions, some of it is hard to read. But that's okay. Because that's what I want to do this year: looking for lots and lots of inspiration, and maybe there'll be things I'll forget about again immediately, but at the end, all the small bits and pieces together with the bigger ones will add up to the big picture.

It's the end of the month, which means that next week, the prompts for February should come. I'm so looking forward to going on working with my "little word" :-)

{Day 18} ~ Centre of Attention / {January} ~ The Beginning of a Year full of Inspiration and Creativity

Prompt for Day 18 of Picture Winter: "Centre of Attention"

Today's assingment was to "pay attention to one subject that tends to keep showing up in your work - something that captures your eye, time and time again, and begs to be the center of attention for your creativity".

Well, brushes might not be the thing that most keeps showing up in my work, although I have taken far more and regularly ictures of painting brushes and other paining stuff than you've seen here on my stream. However.

I painted long before I picked up "serious" DSLR photography last spring, but my creativity has been suffering for a long time. 2011 will be my creative year, so I've decided, and already in the first three weeks of this new year, I have found so much inspiration around me which has helped me to develop my photography skills.

I know that I will never be an artist and never be able to produce true real art, and I don't aspire to do so, I'll always be an amateur. But I very much hope that I will also find the inspiration this year to make painting again one of the centres of my attention and the passion it once was, along with photography. And I'm looking forward to combining the two, I already can see so many ways in doing so.

And I just love images of painting brushes and painting stuff :-)

Texture by Shadowhouse Creations.

*  *  *

I am also using this image for my "Beginnings" page for One Little Word. My word for 2011 is Inspiration. The prompt for this page actually was to take a self portrait. And I will. Later. But I felt that this would be a so much more fitting image, as this is the beginning of my year full of inspiration and creativity.

I haven't really taken the time to work on this project until today. I always wanted to but then all the photo post processing got in the way. And I was also unable to order the supplies as all the three main thing - the album, the plastic refill packs and the card stock were not on stock. And although I kept receiving messages that some small quantities of stock had come in, they were sold out again so quickly that I never managed to order them all three together. And with the shipping costs from the States to Switzerland being what they are, there was no way I was going to order them individually. But album and cardstock at least are now on their way, together with some other scrapbooking stuff, and the refill pages I'll hopefully soon be able to order over here in Europe.

I'm so looking forward to start to get working on the project. I think it's a wonderful idea to have a special word for the whole year and I think that this class will really help to keep focused on it.

I'll soon write more and in greater detail about this class and project, and will be starting at the beginning, but I just had to create this page today and add it here as when I did the processing work on this photo today for Picture Winter, I just felt that I had finally found my "beginnings" photo.