Thank you

Today is day 30 of the 30 day blog challenge.  Thank you so much for hanging in there with me over the month of November.

The 30 day challenge is organised by Sarah Arrow and Kevin Arrow who not only send a daily email with great ideas but are available to give advice in the Facebook group.

Whilst much of what is taught is about making your business blog more visible I have learned about things that are valuable to my personal blog.  In addition you get to see a much wider range of blogs from the links posted in the Facebook group.

I signed up because my friend Sandie Cottee announced she was doing the challenge.

I schedule my blog to post at 3.30am - which does confuse some people who seem to think that I get up at 3.30am to click the button!  As a consequence of this timing I couldn't receive the email (it arrives for me betwen 7 and 8pm), write an appropriate post and catch the 3.30 posting.  Yes I know I could change the time but then I would have to alter the blog email timing and I've been doing it this way for several years so why change!

In any case what I like to do is think!  Think about how I am going to tackle the challenge! Think about what to write!  See if I'm going to ignore that day's challenge because it doesn't fit with my topic for that post.

It has worked well for me to have signed up and received the first email on October 19th and start the challenge on November 1st.  It gave me thinking time and enabled me to add a particular day's challenge to a different day's post.

What have I learned from the challenge?

• I can complete a challenge - this is quite important as I am not much of a finisher of things.
• Setting myself weekly topics has helped to keep me accountable with some of the projects I started eg my Venice Sketchbook and the Colour Theory Journal.
• That I blog for myself - almost a diary of what I am up to - rather than writing for a specific audience.  That said, I'm so glad that so many of you are interested in what I ramble on about and stick with me.
• That an editorial calendar is a really useful planning tool.

So, will I blog everyday from now on?

No.   However if I set myself another challenge or I set up an art challenge blog then you may see daily posts in the future.  For now, I'm thinking regular postings possibly 3 or 4 days each week.

Thanks to Sarah and Kevin and their generosity in sharing their knowledge.  Thanks to Sandie who encouraged me to keep going.  And thanks to all of you who read my blog and to those of you who have left comments.

Thanks for stopping by
Bernice

And finally a question?
Which has been your favourite post during the last 30 days?

Christmas Countdown

Today I'm going to share with you my top 5 UK Christmas adverts for 2015.  I'm not getting paid to post them here and I apologise to my US readers if the videos don't play in your region.

#5  Because Cadbury's is my favourite chocolate

#4  I just love the clever boxes in this one

#3 Mog's nightmare

#2 John Lewis
The John Lewis Christmas advert is usually my number one choice.  This one is still great but there is one that supercedes it.

Drum roll please
At #1

Of course the whole point of these adverts is to sell stuff.  Not to point us towards the real meaning of Christmas.

There is a new advent study starting on His Kingdom Come today or you could use the study I wrote with Diane Marra last year: Pause, Ponder & Prepare.

Today is the first Sunday in Advent.  This is the period from now until Christmas Day when we consider the coming of Jesus.  And the world needs Jesus more than ever.

Continue the story

TMD:ReWind November week 4

This is the last of the ReWind posts before we start our Advent Study at His Kingdom Come.  The theme for this week was Promises - the promises of God.

Continuing with using my new Gelatos I scribbled 2 different colours - one on each page.

I wet the pages and then pressed one onto the other.

And peeled them apart to reveal this.

I left it to dry naturally.

I put two types of washi tape around the edge of the pages.

I put washi tape in random places on the page.  At this point I still had no idea where the page was going.

I printed out 5 verses and coloured the paper with Distress Ink.  I put the verses onto the pages and drew round them with a turquoise pen.  The pen didn't work well over the gelatos so some of the lines are a bit wonky!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice