Gratitude Journal

I think that everyone should have a gratitude journal and write in it on a regular basis. We are so busy with everything happening around us every day that we don’t stop to be grateful for all of our blessings. And there are plenty of good things in our lives if we just take the time to reflect on them.

Gratitude and appreciation are powerful tools for enhancing wellbeing by fostering positive emotions and reducing stress. Regular practices like gratitude journaling and expressing appreciation can improve relationships and increase life satisfaction. Cultivating a habit of gratitude promotes resilience & can lead to a more fulfilling life.

A gratitude journal involves jotting down a few things that you are thankful for and can be done daily or weekly as you so choose. Keeping a gratitude journal is a good first step toward establishing gratitude, and it will help you identify and reflect on people, things, or events for which you are thankful. What are you grateful for today? Take a moment now to think about it and write it down.

Wall Art Progress

I’m still not satisfied with the gel prints I’m making for my potential wall art project. I’m likely being over-critical of my work, like always, but I have not given up on the idea yet. Rather than not accomplishing anything on the weekend, I decided to try to make a small ‘test’ piece out of patterned scrapbook paper. I picked out a dollar store 6” X 6” paper pack to make it with. If nothing else, I proved that the ‘concept’ worked.

I will continue to work on the gel prints and try to not be so critical of myself. I may watch a few video tutorials to help me advance my technique, looking for all the tips and tricks I can find. The test piece is 8” X 10” but I want the ‘real’ one to be bigger with more variety of colours. It’s a long weekend, so I will have more time to experiment. Onward and upward we go!

Gel Print Wall Art

I watched a couple of videos this week about creating wall art with gel prints. Naturally, I want to try it. In the first example, you make a lot of layered gel prints in different colours, cut them into 1” strips of varied lengths and apply them to a canvas or board. I could not find a photo to show you, but it would look much like the jelly roll quilt below. The finished piece in the video had multiple colours, not the narrow colour selection like this quilt. Either would work, I think, depending on your personal preference.

The second wall art example was done in a grid formation using multiple 2”-3” squares with a white border around each. Again, this could be created with multiple colours or a monochromatic colour scheme. You can decide what size to make your creation depending on the size of frame you want to use or where you want to display it.

With this wall art goal in mind, I pulled out my supplies to make some gel prints. Well, I was unhappy with the results I was getting and stopped to re-group and re-evaluate the colour scheme I want to go with. The prints that I did pull became potential artist trading card backgrounds. I believe I have enough of those to last me quite a while now.

I will make another attempt at it to see if I can get better outcomes this weekend. Cross your fingers for me!

ATC Trading

I have nine new ATCs posted for trading on the Facebook group I belong to. I tried some new techniques with some of them this time. The middle one in the bottom row has already been claimed.

Here is the first batch that I received in March from different artists.

I realize that I seem to be choosing cards created using different techniques than I typically use, either because I don’t like doing it or don’t feel that I’m very good at it. For example, colouring line images is something that I don’t have the patience for and when I try, the results are not great. So I generally don’t do it. Trying to do something like the one below would put me in the looney bin, for sure.

Collage is another technique that I struggle with. Perhaps it is the perfectionist in me telling me that what I do is ‘not good enough’. But you will notice that I did put on the big girl pants and created collaged backgrounds for three of my new ATCs for trade. It is something that I will continue to work on.

But who knows, maybe some day I will even try colouring images again. And maybe I will get better at it and come to enjoy doing it. Never say never!