2014 word and project 365

How's 2014 treating you so far? I must admit that the storms we've had in the past week is starting to get to me. All that rain. And howling winds. Oy. But I've decided that the weather is not going to make me feel down. In stead I am just going to enjoy indoors-y activities.

Like many other people, I have chosen a word for the year. I'm no good with resolutions, they rarely last past the second week of January and there I am with chocolate in hand again.. But I think I can stick with a word. As a way to focus my attention and efforts etc.

The word I have chosen for 2014 is 'Create'. I was looking back at what I made/created in 2013 and it wasn't as much as I would have liked. But I guess moving into a house that required quite a bit of TLC just takes more time and energy than I realised. Towards the end of the year I seriously felt like my creative mojo was missing somewhat. Not good.

But we're in the house now, and it's starting to turn into the home we want it to be, so now it's time to start focusing on other things as well. Like making things, creating new things. That's what I want to do this year. I have lots of plans and ideas, but the *big one* is my 365 patterns project.

The project is simply this: every day I'm going to sit down with my sketchbook and doodle/draw/sketch some kind of pattern. It can be something that could turn into an embroidery pattern, or an idea for a fabric design. Or, whatever. The patterns don't have to have a purpose, it's just a daily practice, so I atleast do that if I don't have time/energy to do anything else creative.

Of course, life does throw unexpected things at you, so if I have to skip a day or two (if I have a valid excuse!), then I can just catch up, during that same week. But hopefully I will be able to stick with one a day as much as possible.

A couple of days this past week I have thought that I'd like to explore a sketch more, make different versions of it, and I can totally do that, but I must do that in my proper sketchbook.

Other than that, and the possibility of catching up, there are no rules. I can do the patterns any way I fancy: pens, watercolours, stamps, acrylic, crayons, paper cut, heck even potato print if I think that would be fun! ;-) And there is no end goal for the patterns other than a collection of 365. If they become something else too, that's a bonus.

So that's one of my plans for getting more creativity into my life. Because I wholeheartedly believe that if you start doing something creative it will be contagious and spread and make you want to do more of it.

I'm going to share the patterns here each week - if nothing else to hold myself accountable! ;-) This month I am just making any idea that pops into my head, just to warm up the creative muscles, but I think I will pick themes/subjects for (part of) the rest of the year. You probably guessed that the picture at the top of this post contains the patterns for the first week of January. Definitely feel like I'm just warming up. they're all over the place! :-D

Do you have any plans or resolutions for this year? Maybe you picked a word to guide you as well?


PS - If anyone has a suggestion for getting pictures of the patterns into the computer, please let me know. I'm using a spiral bound sketchbook and scanning the pages doesn't look great at all. :-/

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