Recovery - My One Little Word for 2018

I'm starting off 2018 with something a little bit different for me. I dabbled a little bit in art journaling in January of 2015 but it didn't really fit with me. Since then I've created a couple more background pages but never went back to embellish any of them. I decided I wanted to do the #onelittleword thing this year (I think the other time I did it was also 2015 actually) and thought an art journal page would be the perfect way to illustrate it. 

I've picked 'recovery' as my word for 2018. The obvious reason is to do with me knee operation, as I will be spending the majority of this year completing rehabilitation. Right now I'm working on being able to walk without a limp and increasing my range of motion, long term goal is to get back to being able to play basketball. I'm hopeful this will occur by the end of the year. Also, I had a really hard time with anxiety in 2017 which knocked my confidence a fair bit. I'm looking to get this back under control in 2018.

I started the page by writing down everything that I need to recover from, just getting all the negative thoughts out of my head. I covered that all with three colours of acrylic paint, followed by a gesso wash to tone it down. The stitched circle stamps are one of my favourite sets so I had to use them. They have been coloured with Color Crush powders used as watercolour paints. I like the seed beads highlighting the yellow circles.  The stamped sentiment is by Kaisercraft, I've chosen to break it up across the page and highlight it with silver Sharpe. I also used some Colourblast texture paste through a Scrapmatts stencil at the bottom. Two types of washi tape have been randomly placed across the page. I watered down some acrylic paint for the drips at the top and then flicked this over the page. The butterfly rubon is a REALLY old Basic Grey one, I'm suprised it even transferred. Lastly, I used some punchinella as a stencil and applied white acrylic paint and two colours of distress inks to add some more depth to the background. 

Have you picked a One Little Word for this year?

Growth LO

Wow, what a creative start to 2015 it has been for me! Between layouts, cards, ATCs, art journals and off the page projects this is my 14th post for the month. I'm even ahead on design team projects. I hope I can keep this up all year. This layout is a challenge layout rather than a project for a specific commitment, just because I could! :)

I keep alternating between thinking I like the clean look so it's done and wanting to add a bit more to it. Does it need some sewing, does it need some ink splashes? For now I'm just going to leave it like it is.

Challenge YOUrself has set their January topic as choosing your One Little Word. I think OLW is an interesting concept but have never previously taken part. I chose Growth as my word and journalled about why. I think it's important to not lose sight of all the components that make up me while I'm focusing on helping Harrison grow.

I thought Stuck?! Sketches didn't let you combine their sketch with other challenges, so it has been a while since I played with them. However, I was re-reading their rules and they do, so I used their January sketch as the basis for this layout.