Week 4 | Favorite Flower

Prompt: Share your favorite flower.

Stephanie | I have many favorite flowers, one of my favorites is the peony. My sketch didn't come out quite how I had wanted, there was supposed to be a vase, but overall I am happy with how it turned out. I am happy with the progress I am making in my sketching and painting. My other creative this week was another painting, this time of some pretty roses. This has been a strange and emotional week in my home, so I wasn't feeling as creative as past weeks.  

Annetta | I honestly didn't sketch my favorite flower as I've already done it in my other sketches. My favorite flowers are roses, poppies and anemones. Instead of sketching my favorite flower I just sketched a flower from Artful Blogging as that magazine is full of inspiration. The flower I sketched is a cosmo, which is another flower that I adore, I just love flowers! I had such high hopes for this sketch, but it did not turn out as I had planned and that's what makes this project exciting. You might not end up with something different then you planned, but it doesn't mean what you made isn't beautiful, it's just uniquely you, and full of character. Another reason why it's great to do sketching with a pen because you can't fix you mistakes, you just have to love them. Why wording was also way off. It was supposed to say I Am A Photographer, but spelt Photographer with a PO so I had to make up a word that starts with a PO. My other creative this week was making my sons birthday dessert table backdrop. This party was color themed and these tassels from Creativebug were perfect. When I have a house again I want to make them for decor as they look gorgeous hanging.

Week 3 | Lettering

Prompt: Try out different fonts.

 

Stephanie | Annetta came over to my house again for a dinner and sketching date this week. I wish we could continue this through the whole year. We picked the same font to try out. It was difficult, especially since handwritten is not something I do well in. It took a while to sketch out all the letters, but in the end they look really great, with the colors I picked it really reminds me of the circus. My extra creatives this week are a water color of a water tower in the tiny town of Roy. My girls and I stopped in just as the sun was setting. I sat at the picnic table and sketched while the girls explored the trees and threw rocks and branches into the large puddles. I also was playing around and painted some mushrooms, cleaned my work space, and finalized my cross stitch project I've been working on for weeks for Annetta's birthday gift.

Annetta | This week Stephanie and I got to hang out again, have dinner and sketch together. I realized that sketching with her is once of my favorite times. It fun to sketch with the friend. We picked the same alphabet to recreate and I'm happy we did because we get to see the difference in how we create, draw and think. Hers is precise and neat, mine is sloppy and messy. She carefully sketched her letters and I just went at a quick speed, but both are unique and beautiful. I also did many sketched throughout the week. I also now have three sketchbooks which I work from, but my favorite is the once Stephanie made me. My extra creative activity this week was putting together a moodboard for  the interior of our airstream. We still have months before I even get to put this moodboard to action, but it will help in figuring out which flooring to order, what kind of cabinets I want and whether to tile a backsplash in the kitchen or not. Moodboards are fun to put together!

Week 2 | Outdoor Treasures

Prompt: Find a treasure from the outdoors that inspires you.

Annetta | On Tuesday, Stephanie and I had a spontaneous meet up where we got to catchup on life, have dinner, go over the Sketchbookery class videos and even paint our first pages in our sketchbooks that she made all while the kiddies played nicely. I am seriously loving this type of messy, colorful and fun sketching. We painted some flowers in a vase that sat on her desk and then this week I painted a cool pinecone I found at the park. As you can see from the image I love pinecones. My 'Other Creative Activity' this week was fog chasing and taking pictures of it. It was a great way to spend my morning, have fun with my son and get some pictures.

Stephanie |  My outdoor treasure was some flowers Annetta gave me when she came to visit. We sketched them that night, but I wanted to do them again, I was very inspired by their beauty this week. I wanted to sketch them a different way. My other activity this week was to make the sketchbooks Annetta and I will be using this year. I really enjoyed making them, even though it was a bit of a process, but I love how unique each one is. I plan to make more to sell.

Week 1 | What You See

Prompt: Sketch what you see. It can be anything that catches your eye today.

Annetta | I bought some tulips this past week, well I had my husband get them for me, and they caught my eye as the perfect subject for my first sketch. We have yet to get our official sketchbooks (Stephanie is hand making them). I really love how my loose sketch turned out! It was stressful as I was racing against a dark day. One thing I know I am going to love is that our sketches will not be perfect as that's not what this is about. Its about capturing a moment the way that we see it and putting lines and colors to it. My 'other' creative activity that I worked on this week was a last Christmas present for my mother-in-law (I hope she doesn't see this post). It's out last name that I am cross stitching and then will embroider. I'm hoping that she will like it and will hang it on her walls in Slovakia. I am almost done with it and have only three more letters to go before I embroider it.

Stephanie |  For New Years my family, along with my brother and Gramma, stayed at a little cottage in Long Beach WA. It was a great (and much needed) little get-away for the holiday. It was very cold, but the sun was shining the whole time which made me so happy. On new years eve we walked to North Head lighthouse and I got to test out my new Polaroid camera (my other creative outlet this week). After coming back in for the night I was able to curl up on the couch and paint from my picture, this is exactly how I envisioned our trip. I loved being able to play with my new toy but it took some figuring out. I lost about 3 pictures just while playing with it, those things are hard to pull out of the camera! Its too bad that they only come 10 to a box, but luckily Annetta gifted a refill box, it came in handy and I learned how to replace the film. It was a great trip and a great way to close out 2014 and start this new 2015 project.

A Year To Inspire | 2015 Sketchbook

A Year To Inspire 2015 will look a little different then it did in 2014. This year we will be working on a sketchbook project and it will be a weekly project. This will help us to capture the world around us, but still have time for those other projects and ideas that we personally want to do throughout the year. At the start of our A Year To Inspire Sketchbook we will be taking the Sketchbookery class by Marry Ann Moss. It will be setting the tone to how our sketchbooks will look like. Our goal is to sketch the world around us from breakfast to the places we go and the things we see. 

Since last year project was such a big project we have decided that we will be posting weekly. Along with our posts we will be posting a photograph of something else that we have done in the creative field from a cross stitching project to our polaroid captures. We want to have time to explore other creative outlets this year, but share our discoveries with you! Our posts will be every Sunday and only on Sundays. 

If you decide to join us for our weekly, we would be honored to have you! Just hashtag your images to #ayeartoinspire52 and we will feature an image once a week along with our posts!

Please visit us for our first post this Sunday January 4th! Happy New Year and welcome back!

Day 365 | Closing Out The Year

A Year To Inspire

Stephanie | Wow! What a year it has been. We made it all the way through 365 journal posts. There have been times along this journey I never thought this day would come. What a huge project we took on. What an accomplishment we made sticking through our goal. It has been amazing watching us evolve throughout the year in our art and writing. I am so thankful to Annetta for sticking through this with me, it was not easy at times and trying to juggle it all seemed impossible. I am so beyond excited and proud to say our blog was featured in Artful Blogging and heART Journal Magazine plus countless fan blogs from all over the world. Our followers have been so incredible and we value you all greatly. Thank you all for sticking with us and sharing you love, all of your wonderful comments mean so much to us. I am glad we inspired so many people. I am thankful to have done this project and now to be able to close this chapter. Looking forward to starting 2015 fresh and creating a new Year To Inspire.

Annetta | Our LAST post!! This is something to celebrate because we've done so much this year and pushed boundaries we never knew we had. I love looking back on my journal pages and seeing all that we have made and said this past year. When dong a 365 the thought always comes of giving up and I am proud of us for not and reaching out goal of posting 365 days. It was so fun to see our styles develop as we took this one day at a time. I've learned that when I journal I love using magazine images as a base. I've learned that Stephanie is quite the writer and makes some gores journal pages. I'm thankful for a friend who not only excepted this crazy challenge, but was dedicated throughout the whole year. Her encouragement and participation really made this project what it is as on my own, I wouldn't have come this far. Thank you for everyone who has read our posts and enjoyed our journal pages. We are thankful for every comment and every post read and shared. It's amazing to see that our posts have actually inspired people. I'm glad its over because my journal is busting at the seams and I can't believe I went through 2 whole journals, front and back! Let's getting 2015 started!!

Day 364 | Plans For 2015

What can you expect from A Year To Inspire in 2015?

A 365 project was a huge project to take on, so for 2015 we will be doing a 52 project. We will post 1 time a week rather than everyday. We will be posting a more in depth over view of our new year project on Jan 1st. Rather than making an art journal we will be only using sketches and watercolor based off a class we are both enrolled in (more info on that on the 1st). We will be sketching and also incorporating another creative outlet of our choosing allowing us to branch out and enjoy other things, like stitching, reading, gardening, etc. We would love to have all of you join us in our new adventure and new year.