New Year, New Focus

With this being a new year, I am starting a whole new chapter in my blog as well in most parts of my life.   Instead of resolutions in the traditional sense, I chose a word for my year:  MOVE.  Very appropriate to what I've just gone through (i.e. had my hip replaced, so am now able to walk and MOVE around in my life with more ease and no pain!), and am continuing to put in place.  


I do have some "intentions" which to me are stronger than resolutions and go deeper also.  One of them is to journal every day or nearly every day - both in writing (in the form of morning pages) and with images (I am doing a Book of Days art journal).  This intention is not just to say I did it but to enable myself to create so much this year that I finally can find my own personal artistic style and to unleash my inner artists' voice that has been lurking inside. To this end, in my Book of Days, I have written a letter to the spirit of 2011 thanking it for all I have learned last year and saying goodbye to some behaviors and beliefs that I want to release.  In addition I have written a list of qualities I want to exhibit more of this year.  So I am focused more on who I want to BE rather than only on what I want to DO, though doing is a part of being.  It's the action part, the MOVE part that is the true me.  


I took an old book from the 1940's that I had found in a thrift store to alter for this journal.  I tore out about every 3 or 4th page first of all since I know that what I will do to the pages will make them fatter and the book will expand a lot.  Then I painted over and embellished the cover.

Yes, this is an altered, collaged photo of me that I took with the webcam in my laptop, so the quality is not very good, but it seemed to need a current photo of me. When I paint and journal on the pages, I usually need to glue at least 2 pages together to strengthen them since they are very thin and in some cases somewhat crumbly.  

Here are my opening 2 pages where I am storing the letter to 2011 and my list of intentions for 2012.

Closeups of these pages:

I'll share with you some of the consequent pages as I create them.  Here are a few more to start.

This Book of Days I am doing in conjunction with a group led by a wonderful mixed media artist called Effy Wild, who is offering this work without charge via a Facebook group, emails, video tutorials, and lots and lots of encouragement!  It has been fabulous so far!  Check it out!

So, that's about all for this post. I'll share more as I create more pages.  I am also participating in a year-long art workshop called Life Book where we will be creating art as taught by 14 different well-known online mixed media artists.  It promises to be an exciting, fun, and eventful year.  I will post some of my work from this workshop next time, so stay tuned!

Yours, In Spirit -  Arlene