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How I Pick My Word for the year by Carolyn Dube

It’s the start of a new year, so that means plenty of introspection on what I want to make a priority in 2017.  I would love to make everything a priority and do it all.  But there is a reality that there are only 24 hours in a day so picking a word, or two, can help guide my choices throughout the year.

The first thing I did was make a list of possible words.  And  it was almost 100 words long.  Too big of a pile to even dream of narrowing down so I turned to my art and art journals.  I flipped through the pages and found some words used over and over or ones that held particularly strong meaning. That list of 21 words is above.

I’ve spent about a week narrowing the list down, and it’s down to 2.  Conventional wisdom holds that one word is picked but I am feeling that I need two this year. Which two will guide me this year?  Dare and Freedom.

What about you? What’s your word, or two, for the year?

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What’s in store for 2017 and play?  It’s all about getting started and moving forward.  After all, these are the most important parts of play in my experience.

How will it be structured and formatted? Not like 2016, but I think in an even better way!  Stay tuned for the newsletter with the details! Need to get signed up?  Just click here.

The final winner of the monthly giveaway is C4G!  Congrats  C4G – the winner of the December Let’s Play $50 gift certificate to Dick Blick! C4G, send me your information (carolyn at acolorfuljourney dot com) and I’ll get you your gift certificate pronto!

Thank you to everyone who has played along in 2016!

december-winner

 

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Playing around with a stencil and spray ink on cardboard video tutorial by Carolyn Dube

When does the muse show up and inspire me? After I have started.  It’s as if starting is her invitation to join me so that means I need to start. No matter what it is, the important thing is to just start.

I grabbed plain old cardboard from a shipping box as a place to start along with a stencil and some black spray ink with zero idea of where it was going.  And I definitely did not expect the clean up to become one of my favorite backgrounds ever.

Watch Spray ink and stencil play on cardboard on YouTube.

This cardboard starts with just loose, random and juicy black spray ink all over with the Never Ending Calendar stencil.  I might have gone a bit overboard, but it was just so much fun I didn’t want to stop.

Playing around with a stencil and spray ink on cardboard video tutorial by Carolyn Dube

One of the ways to keep colors bright and pure is to not mix them.  When finger painting, that means one color per finger but you have to pay attention to which finger goes in which color.   For those curious, DecoMedia fluid acrylics are non toxic.

Playing around with a stencil and spray ink on cardboard video tutorial by Carolyn Dube

Using a fine liner to to write on my colorful cardboard means zero waiting for things to dry.  If you’re new to fineliners, I have a video explaining it here.

Playing around with a stencil and spray ink on cardboard video tutorial by Carolyn Dube

While making the cardboard, I cleaned off the excess spray ink directly into an art journal so that every drop of spray ink was used.  No thinking at all.  Just plop and go.  Turns out not thinking is a good thing for me.

Playing around with a stencil and spray ink on cardboard video tutorial by Carolyn Dube

Once I added color to this, it became precious to me.  Precious in the best possible way – I love it.  I know it isn’t finished yet, but I am loving it so much as it is, it will stay this way until it is ready for more layers.  Okay, until I am ready for it to have more layers.

Playing around with a stencil and spray ink on cardboard video tutorial by Carolyn Dube

Here are the supplies I used. Some of these links are affiliate links which means I get a small percentage. It doesn’t cost you anything extra and you are helping me keep this blog and my videos ad free! Thank you- I don’t like ads any more than you do!


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