One Little Word - May

Before I looked at the May materials in Ali Edward's One Little Word class this month, I spent some time reviewing the previous months materials and reading through my OLW notebook. I decided to re-watch/listen to the videos for January through April while I was puttering with an artsy page I started months ago.

Way back in November, I tore a page out of a sketch pad, covered it with the leftover part of a chipboard punch out sheet, sprayed it with some mist, and then adhered bits of pieces of leftover materials from my craft table over the course of a few days. I really didn't know what I was going to do with the page, so I filed it away on a shelf and forgot about it.

 

When I pulled it out a few days ago, I first added a gesso whitewash over the entire page, however I really didn't like that look and added some yellow acrylic paint to  my gesso/water mixture and ended up with this background for a page.

I adhered cutout pieces to form a girl doll at the bottom of the page, then added letter stickers, writing, word stickers, and stamping to complete this page to add to my OLW album.

Then I started on the May class materials by filling out my reflections card for April.

The action item for this month was to get artsy and create nine mini-canvases with "I am" statements on them. I almost skipped this step since I'd just finished the art journal page, but I decided to go ahead with the prompt because Ali encourages us to try the things that are out of our comfort zone. I remembered that I had some of the Project Life cards that we blew colored bubbles on at the Play! in Anaheim event, so I pulled nine of those out to use for this project.

These cards are 3x4, so I started by cutting them down to 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 to fit in one of the nine-pocket page protectors we're using in our OLW albums. I pulled out some distress paints, a Simon Says stencil, and two little plastic pieces that Cheri gave me to use to add texture to mixed media projects.

I used the distress paint daubers with these stencils to add some color and texture to the cards. I think they turned out pretty good.

Well, actually my first attempt wasn't quite so good as I pressed a little too hard with the paint dauber and wasn't holding the stencil down firm enough! I had too much paint on my card, but I simply picked it up and let it run a little bit, then pressed the stencil back into the paint once it started to dry.

While the paint was drying, I pulled out some distress inks, alphabet stickers and StazOn ink to add the next layer.

I used the distress ink on the edges of the cards and stamped the words "I AM" in red on each card. I also gave the cards a spritz with Heidi Swapp's Gold Color Shine. I added some rub-ons and a few stickers to the cards as well.

And finally I added in my journaling and slipped the cards in a 9-pocket page protector.

I had a lot of FUN getting artsy this month and like the way these two pages look in my OLW album.

As I contemplated how I'm doing with my word this year, I feel great about my efforts to incorporate more FUN into my life and being more aware of opportunities to have FUN. My overall goal with this word was to have a genuine feeling of joy and happiness, and I'm thrilled to say that I'm successful most days. For the rest of the time, I simply need to remember Aly's reminder in the January class video that this is a year-long journey. I'm excited to see how FUN continues to manifest itself in my life as we prepare for summertime!

How do you feel about your efforts to incorporate your word into your life so far this year?