OLW Sparkle: July 2012

It is now a little over halfway through the 2012 calendar year. I feel like time has just raced on by. In December I chose set an unofficial goal for myself. I chose to live more intentionally and try to be better in different aspects of how I am. For 2012, I am choosing to Keep Calm, Carry On and Sparkle. I set this goal to just be better at who I am and how I choose to react and deal with the things that happen.

For the past 6-7 weeks, I have really been struggling with things on a few different levels. I am trying to  just be the better person and not let these petty things bother me. I have been letting the fear of the unknown and stress of situations make me sick. I am planning my wedding, I should be in some sort of bliss. To be honest, lately wedding stuff is just making my stomach turn. Well, it was. Things have sort of resolved themselves in many different ways (more to come).

The June and July prompts for the One Little Word "class" have been rather hands on in the creating area. I am really finding that it is what truly, and honestly makes me happy. For June, the prompt was to create mini-canvases for our word. They didn't have to completely and literally connect us to the word. Just create while trying to focus on the word or the things you want to accomplish from living intentionally with your word. I ended up sticking with 7 of the 9 I had made and incorporated them into a spread for Project Life using a design F page and design A page.

For these I just sat down and used what was in front of me. I started with 9 white 3X4 pieces of heavy cardstock. My box of craft acrylics was near by so I just grabbed and went to town painting base colors. As you can see, a lot of teal, blues, purples and golds. For all of these, I really just focused on what I want from the many meanings of Sparkle. To be in the moment, to not over think, to not be sick with worry.

I tried to be as simple as possible with these. The Bee was made using the Cricut Art Nouveau cartridge. The bright teal and purple with words are stamps from Elise Blaha Cripe. The purple was actually a scrap I ended up reusing. I painted over the stamps with bright purple, then restamped without really lining it al up and repainted. I used a silver Zig Metallic Vellum writer to fill in Sparkle synonyms.

I am currently working on July which is related to songs and music. And it is really cool to see how songs that have been go to's for as long as I can remember are encouraging and uplifting throughout this self betterment journey.

Overall, I feel I am doing well with the goal I gave myself at the beginning of the year and moving forward with my life. I am going to be facing a crossroads soon and I am confident that things are going to work out for the best.