Happy 2012!

Best Wishes for Your Best Year Yet!

I'm taking this first week "off", laying low, preparing for my activities to resume around Jan. 8th, I believe. I never should have gotten sick on Christmas. It has just devestated my timetable, so I am trying to adjust.

I was a week behind going into Christmas. This past week was almost entirely spent recovering, so that probably makes it two weeks. And I'm getting tired of feeling like I'm never caught up or even on top of something.

So, that usually means change. Making changes. Subtracting and adding. Rearranging. Well, bring it on, cuz I'm also a bit bored with daily life have been so stable for me in 2011. I'm ready to go out on a limb to get a new stable for 2012, lol. Yeah, I'm not a big risk taker. winkwink

To that end, as I do every January, I signed up for some online classing. I'm not for sure of all the deets, so my guesses are in parentheses. One stamp carving class (4-6 weeks?)...I paid for this one, so it's like the most important class, also the one that ends the soonest and easiest to get money's worth.

Then, one book study class on Making Handmade Books by Alisa Golden. This one is free and will be several weeks, open-ended in a way. I had the book and the supplies, and figured it was a sign. I am not one to snub Karma.

Last class is a free, year-long art journaling adventure called Book of Days. It is the least commitment-wise, the most open-ended, and the most unconventional. I am timidly curious abut how it will work out. (Perhaps if I read the class docs and watch the vids, I'll know more. Off to do that as soon as I post this.)

Another factor in my change agenda is the results of the art time management survey I got back. Earlier in the year I'd won the survey in a contest in one of my magazines I subscribe to. It expired 12/31/11, so I made myself answer a million questions and get it done. But, it did help me see that although I rate making atc's and greeting cards as low on the satisfaction and goal scale, I spend the vast majority of my time on them. Ergo, this is what is keeping me from completing my goals or finding more satisfaction from my arting.

So, even though I feel I must continue to make greeting cards for family and close friends, I can and pledge to adjust to doing them in groups and very simply designed and quickly made. Next weekend I will have a card day to make the rest of January cards. And another weekend day before the month ends to do February cards. That's the plan.

If I stick to it and do that, then I won't have it always hanging over my conscience to be making a card. I won't always have to put off arting on something I want because I have to make a card. That nag is sucking the spirit out of me. So, no competitions. No entering any cards anywhere. Why? Because sometimes that tempts me to spend more time getting something perfect when I'm not worried about being perfect for the recipient. A little warped thinking there.

As for the atc's, I'm simply going to try to not make them. I have 3 binders full of swapped atc's. It's so much time spent on such a tiny landscape. I've been the most active in yahoo groups that swap and mingle and lottery atc's, and I will have to stop participating that way. Maybe I should probably leave those groups, but I like the people in them.

So, in addition, I need to finish my craft room and I also need to finish organizing my photos and the Stacy Julian class I took over the summer. I hope to get back into some scrapbooking. In my art journaling, I decided on using my old American Express bound planners as journals, for now. And whatever else that class offers that I feel comfortable doing. Underneath this is following Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's art journaling on her blog. I would bet she will be giving me some good ideas as well.