Some of My Favorite Posts from 2013

A blog is a great way to look back at your favorite artworks and posts from the year.  I think about the year and it doesn't really feel like I accomplished a lot... just tinkering around here and there in my art journal and scrapbook.  Rereading my blog entries reminds me that I did do a lot.  Here is my year in review.

In 2013, I continued working on Project Life style scrapbooking (however, not documenting each and every day because that is way way too much.)

In January, Featuring magazine Issue #3 (of which I am a contributing editor) was released.  To learn more about Featuring, visit the website. 

February:  I made this sweet page around Valentine's Day.   I love the bright colors and the lettering in this one. 

March: I chose the word "soul-affirming" for the year 2013.  I was hoping to choose to use my time on soul-affirming activities.. making sure that whatever I said "yes" to was something I really wanted to do and was a good way to nourish my soul.  That happened mostly.  I made some choices I shouldn't have but I'm more on track now.  Here is a journal page with that phrase and I'm super excited that this was selected to be a part of a book about art journaling that will be published in 2015.  Yay!

Here is another one from March that I really enjoyed making:  You Shine Brighter than the Brightest Star.

March was a busy art month and I made several art journal pages that I treasure.

April:  In April, I signed up for the 21 Secrets online art journaling workshops and had a blast.  Cathy Bluteau's workshop was one of my favorites and here is a page I made inspired by her videos:

Here is one I made for Artists in Blogland Color this Quote Challenge:

In April, I had an article titled "13 Great Layers for Art Journal Pages" published in:

And another colorful burst of fun!

In May, I made more journal pages and decided that during the summer I would create a series about using stickers in your journals.  There were 15 posts about "sticky journaling" during the summer.

 

Anatomy of an Art Journal Page are among my favorite types of posts to write:

June:  Ah, summer.  The perfect time for leisurely arts and crafting.

I wrote a post about How to Make Stickers Using PicMonkey, 

our trip to the Lego Brickworld Convention,

and showed more pictures of my watercolor doodling.

In June, Featuring Magazine Issue #4 was published.  I wrote several articles in this issue. 

July:  I wrote an E-zine about Art Journaling with Kids.  I have a new one that I am working on.

An article I wrote for Cloth Paper Scissors Pages came out.  Love their photography and presentation!

I made a number of index cards for the Daisy Yellow Index Card challenge:

1. leaf icad, 2. ICAD, 3. ICAD, 4. ICAD, 5. ICAD, 6. ICAD, 7. ICAD, 8. ICAD, 9. index card art Marcia, 10. index card art Marcia Beckett, 11. icad art, 12. hello index card art, 13. bird art marcia beckett, 14. Index Card art, 15. Daria making index card art, 16. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 17. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 18. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 19. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 20. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 21. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 22. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 23. Bird ICAD, 24. icad to journal page, 25. icad to journal page marcia

August: We went on a family vacation in August and then on a girls' weekend with a few friends later that month.  I did some art journaling with my daughter and my niece while we were there.  Check out our craftiness here.

At the end of August, I found out I was pregnant.  We kept it a secret longer than our first.. we wanted to make sure everything with the baby was healthy and besides, I'm still barely showing as it is.  Well, my stomach is definitely bigger but I wear a lot of loose clothing as it is.  (I'm 23 weeks now.)  From August until the present, I have been going to bed between 7:30 and 9:00 every night and I'm still working full-time, so my art time has been drastically reduced.  All I feel like doing is laying on the couch!

September was back to school and nothing really amazing stands out to me art-wise.  I did some fun Lego stamping with my students.  

October I was pleased to do a Stencil Test Drive for Jessica Sporn's new stencil, did a painting of a Dreamer Girl and wrote a tutorial about making windows for an art journal page.

November the book Quotes Illustrated came out and I was honored to have an artwork published in that book.

I also started painting faces more:

That brings us to December.   Well, December is so recent I probably don't need to bring up anything that happened! 

As for goals and resolutions for the year 2014, I will have to think about that.  Mostly, survival!  Getting through the rest of this pregnancy and then surviving having a newborn.