Focus

HAPPY NEW YEAR

A word of warning! This is going to be a long post so perhaps you want to get yourself a cup of tea. Or a glass of wine! It is New Year's Day after all. The start of many new things and I'm beginning by showing you my word for this year which will be: FOCUS.  After choosing COURAGE last year I was a bit more careful in selecting my word for 2016 so that I would not be tempting the universe to test me on the subject. I know it's superstitious, but still! Better to be safe than sorry. 

I choose FOCUS because I want to live even more mindful, paying attention not just to the special moments in the coming year but to all moments, however mundane they might be. Also to the moments that maybe would be better forgotten in the hope of finding something worthwhile even in them. I want to FOCUS on learning more (that's a perennial resolution!), enjoying working in my journals, making my art, stitching my quilts, walking the dog, reading books, enjoying the sunshine (hope there will be lots!), being in New York, working in the garden and posting this blog, as well as on anything else that comes along. I also want to FOCUS with my camera, more about that later. 

This 9 x 12" page was done on heavy duty watercolour paper and will probably be part of Life Book 2016 in due course. It's fairly sure we will be asked to choose our word for 2016 there. It's a collage made by tearing up parts of my gelli plate printed papers. I have a huge pile of these and most of them also use Stencilgirl stencils. Don't ask me which ones though, these pages were made ages ago. The only additional paper I used was the sparkly black wrapping paper.

After I was happy with the composition on the page I added the circles that were made using 3 different sizes of circle punches and more gelli plate printed papers. They were outlined with a black marker.  The page is also covered in sparkles to imitate the fireworks for a New Year. So much for how I made the page. 

Here is a detail of it with the word BLIP added to the mix. No digital wizardry was used, just a piece of folded masking tape to hold the extra circle I made with the word BLIP stamped on it, onto the page! The whole Blip site has been asked to feature the word BLIP on their blips. Here is the reason why:

as most of you will know I have been posting a daily photograph on the Blipfoto site for more than 5 years now. The only "rule" of the site is that the picture has to be posted to the day it was taken. I love the site and am an enthousiastic user, not just because it's fascinating to see how all those pictures add up to my life but also to see what I was doing on any given day for those 5 years. I love getting a glimpse into other blippers' lives on a daily basis too. I have met many wonderful people on the site and have gone on to meet many of them in person too. However the Blip site has been in trouble for more than a year now, financially speaking. .

The good news is that the Blip community itself has come up with a solution. We, the users, could buy and run the site. In order to do this we need to raise at least £180.000 by investing  ourselves and becoming shareholders of the Blipfuture Community Interest Company.Today we have been urged by Blipfuture (the name of the new Company to be) to spread the word far and wide and I'm doing it here on my blog.  I have pledged my bit and now the waiting and fingers crossing is on! Let's hope for a fabulous new beginning for Blipfoto in 2016!

I am also spreading the word on Blip itself today using the word Blip in my picture for the day. All Blippers have been asked to do this and you can see the resulting pictures all together here.