A New Direction

Hello, friends. So it turns out that I was over-enthusiastic about my plans for this year. I thought that if it seemed feasible when I was at my lowest energy in December, that it would only get better. It turns out that months upon months of chemo take their toll and I wasn't really at my lowest point in December. Around May of this year, I basically stopped scrapbooking. I just didn't feel like it. The only layouts I'd been doing were the ones for the Log Your Memory challenges, and while I loved the layouts, I wanted to be able to scrap whatever I wanted with my limited time and energy. So I allowed myself to change my mind about doing all the challenges. Really I let myself off the hook and I don't feel guilty about not completing my goal. With all that I've been through, I can't hold on to guilt about scrapbooking, right?

I've been scrapping more lately, and getting more organized with my photos and layouts with the help of Stacy Julian's Finding Photo Freedom class at Big Picture Classes. I would like to share some of those layouts and tips here, but what I want to talk about today is a new creative direction I've taken this year.

A friend of mine referred me to the SheArt class run by Christy Tomlinson. She thought it would be fun for me to create a canvas of a girl for each of my daughters. I'd never done anything like this, but for some reason this particular class really appealed to me. I signed up and started slowly working through the material. Here's the first canvas that I created:

 

Here's the second one, which I've since given to a friend:

And, finally, the third one. This was my least favorite, but that's what happens with stuff like this, right? These were all from the first week of class material!

So starting with making canvases, it was an easy leap to art journaling. If you don't know what art journaling is, I will be sharing a lot more this month, but here's a great resource to learn the basics. I'm going to join in Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Art Journal Every Day for August and I'll be sharing something about my art journaling every week. I don't think I'll share all my pages, because the whole intention for me is to have the actual journaling be private and just for me. If I have the pressure to share the finished product, I won't be as honest as I'd like to be. Please come visit me throughout August to learn more about art journaling and maybe see some new layouts, too.

Have you ever kept an art journal?