Happy Christmas

On this Christmas Eve I hope you will be able to find time to listen to this song by Casting Crowns.

Happy Christmas

Thank you to all of you who have followed along with me on my creative journey this year.

ATG Landscapes

Last year I joined in with a Seasons themed series of workshops at Littleheath Barn.  This year the theme for the Art Textile Groups is Landscapes.

Liske introduced us to various drawing and collage techniques.  I used photos of canals for this session.

I looked online for photos of people's work that I admire and I hope will provide inspiration.

We did some mark making and I used photos of the coast as inspiration.

In our latest session we started with painting dye and paint on fabric.  I worked on this piece of scrim laid over silk noil.  However I didn't much like the colours and wasn't inspired at all.  This was mostly because I was still confused about which landscape I was concentrating on - rural, coastal or urban.

After discussion with a friend I took her suggestion of concentrating on coastal.  When I turned the fabric the other way up I can see how I can make this coastal!

I then started working with my favourite colours and back in my comfort zone.  This was mark making on silk noil.

This was using up the paint with torn paper and a dry brush.

I used dye on this piece of silk noil.

I prefer the back of it.

It will be interesting to see how this develops next year.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Choosing a word for the year

I don't usually write about my next year's word this early in the year or do I mean late!  I quite like to reserve the big reveal for the new year.  Although when checking out the links below I found I'm not always consistent.

I have been choosing one word for the year for a while now.  You can see my words here:

Restore 2011        Focus 2012

Present 2013        Participate 2014

Thirst 2015     Purpose 2016

Connect 2017   Gratitude/Thankfulness 2018

Commit/Commitment 2019

So, on to 2020.

Looking back at the words I have chosen or have chosen me I can see some sort of link - apart from Thirst - which was a bit of a disaster anyway!  But probably at the beginning of every year the goals I set are very similar and at the end of each year I find I haven't really achieved them.

In light of the above quote - which is reminiscent of the one: If you keep doing what you've always been doing, you'll keep getting what you've always been getting, what road do I need to take in 2020.

What goals should I set for the year?

What do I want to see more of in my life and how can I work towards that?

My friend Valerie has made a great video about how she chooses her word for the year.

I'm not really quite so purposeful as Valerie.  Nor do I include God and prayers in my decision making as she does.

I tend to think about choosing a word a lot.  Last year I had a short shortlist of possible words but this year I have really only had one.  And to be honest I couldn't see how it would work with Bible verses as the word doesn't exist in the Bible (I know - I've looked!).  I looked at synonyms and that didn't throw up any help either.

And just as I was going to give up on this word, I suddenly thought of the passage in Ephesians 6 about the armour of God.

The next day on my Facebook Newsfeed I saw a link to a project in Australia which talked about this word.

Can you guess what has chosen me?

It's (drumroll please): resilience

I wondered though about my previous words and decided that really I need to have an action which might provoke me to do something positive.  So my word(s) for 2020 is

be resilient

There's a couple of weeks left of this year to sort out how I'm going to record this - if at all.  I'll let you know what I decide at the beginning of January.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice