Happy New Year 2013!!

Mercy me, this has been a sadly neglected little blog lately!!  But it's a NEW YEAR, right?  All KINDS of reasons to feel hopeful!!  

I've chosen my One Little Word for the year and that too, has me feeling hopeful!!  Here is what I posted today over at Love is in the Details!

Since Ali Edwards made this concept popular a few years ago, many, many people have focused on choosing a single word at the beginning of each year, that can become a touchstone for them through out the rest of the year.  A gentle reminder of something they can do/think/envision for themselves on the road to self realization or personal improvement.  This year, choosing a word was a little harder for me.  There were so many areas of my life that I'd like to focus on, and I couldn't seem to find one word that either stood out or enveloped all the areas.  Until I thought of "use".  I am blessed with so much.  Time, health, energy, experience, and even a little talent too.  But what do I do with it?  I know far too much of my time is wasted and at the end of each day I just shake my head at how little of value I have accomplished.  I have good health and enough strength to do what needs to be done and a bit more.  Too often that is wasted too.  Or spent frivolously on myself.  I want to focus more on the needs of others and be useful to my family and others who can't do as much for themselves.  I'm available,  I can help.   So I want to USE what has been given to me, to become more USEFUL to others.

I thought a canvas on the wall would be a good, constant reminder of this for me.

So I hauled out the gesso, and the modeling paste, and the ModPodge and the brushes, and all manner of bits and bobbles I could find!  I didn't really have a final result envisioned and that's good because I'm pretty sure what I ended up with wouldn't have looked anything like what I'd pictured.  

These photos are sort of a step by step of the process.  You really just build layers.  I didn't want a lot of color, so I made it all about texture.  As I got closer to the end, I decided it needed more color after all, so I pulled out the stamps to layer on top of the textures.

Then I used some stencils, including the leftover negative from a chipboard shape for the bottom left flourish, to build up a layer of modeling paste.  While that was drying, I added my One Little Word letters with ModPodge to adhere and seal over top.

Once all that was dry, I began layering on other mediums: mesh ribbon, beads, metals, transparency images.  ModPodge again came into play as an adhesive.  After that was dry, I used more gesso, thinned with water to mute all the color by painting over it with a sponge brush.

Have you chosen a word for yourself for this year?  I'd love for you to share it here and I'm going to choose one comment to receive a little something in the mail from me!!