A grateful heart

Do you choose a word to guide you through the year? What was your word for 2012? How did you get on with it?

I am so happy I chose gratitude as my word of the year for 2012. What a wonderful word to live by! As the year draws to a close, I am so thankful for all it had to offer. It took me in wonderful new directions I didn’t even know I needed to take.

Going into the year I didn’t think I was a naturally grateful person. Keeping a daily gratitude journal helped me see that I was actually already a lot more grateful than I had given myself credit for. I just didn’t use that word much. It also opened my eyes to some changes I was ready to make.

Consciously living in gratitude this year set me free to let go of the expected, to live my truth fully, to come out as an artist writer, to start Artfully Carin and so much more. It’s been a wonderful year!

I have already chosen my word of the year for 2013. I’ll tell you all about it in the new year. It packs quite the punch! But the year of gratitude is not yet quite over, so I’ll be back Monday to celebrate my creative achievements this year.

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A grateful heart: I started this page by randomly putting down patches of watersoluble crayons, blending it a little here and there with white gesso. Using a black watersoluble crayon, I then made swirls all over the page. I journaled things I’m grateful for about 2012, stream of consciousness style, not worrying if the “right” things got mentioned, but trusting the process. I made a picture collage in picasa symbolising some of the things I am grateful for about this year, printed it out and cut it out in the shape of a heart, which I then put onto one of my painted papers that I cut into a slightly bigger heart.  I hand sewed around the edges of some torn book pages, then added scraps of the same painted paper I used for the heart, and doodled. I glued everything to the page, then randomly stamped all over the page, added some yellow tape with roses on it, then doodled here and there.