ICAD #44

ICAD = Index Card A Day, a brainchild idea from Tammy Garcia at Daisy Yellow Art. I have been at it for 44 days, the goal for the challenge is 61 days = one card every day in June and July. I had a couple of days where I did not create one and subsequently "caught up" the next day, but that only happened a couple of times.

I am glad to say that Tammy was right. Doing this has gotten me in the habit of doing a little bit of creative activity every single day! For me it is important that this creative activity involved paper, paint, ink, stamping, text, drawing and the like. I know I'm creative with my daily blip photos, but doing these index cards is a different way to be creative and truly where I come from. I have been playing with paint, paper, etc since I was 3 or 4 years old, well over 50 years! Photography is a new art for me. Learning and playing with it had me leaving my other art behind sometimes, so it is good to get back to it. Just got to learn to balance it!

It is often hard for me to accomplish everything I want to do. But the approach of thinking that the making of the card is more important than the card result worked for me. I learned to be more than okay with that because not only was I was getting it done, but the art on the card was fine and sometimes even great, or very pleasing to me! Tammy's good sense of using an inexpensive index card to work on really helped me to set a creative habit. It was easy to start each day because it was not precious. It got me moving forward and wanting to do this bit of art every day. That good feeling I think it is the most important part to my success so far.

Last year I remember I gave up my blip journal for a couple of months in the summer when was doing the ICAD challenge. I could not seem to keep up happily with everything, so I let my blip journal go and took a break, returning late August to back-blip some of the days and catch up, start again. I've been quite steady here ever since then. But I'm so glad I was able to do both challenges this summer, even while traveling where I had no internet, only the roaming on my smart phone to upload my blips & index cards! I was determined to try to continue and it was do-able, hooray! The only thing I did have to cut back on was my participation here. I do hope to get back to visiting all of you very soon!

Here are some details about Index card #44:
It was late last night when I went to begin. I had saved the little note Steven had written me . . . sometimes I do this and they end up in cards, collages or art journals. Little snippets of the day. I glued that down then looked through my scraps of paper from my traveling art kit. I found a transparency I printed out of a photo of my dad & grandmother & added that. A few more saved scraps of paper, a bit of watercolor crayons and a texture stamp to finish.

I showed this finished card to Steve and he smiled when he saw his note from yesterday when he brought the dogs home and I wasn't home…. instead of keeping the dogs outside with him at the boat shop where the thunder scares Asia more.
I said to him, yeah it’s kind of silly I saved that note, then put it in my index card collage. He said, No… you like to celebrate the everyday things, it’s cool.
This is true, I think it makes me appreciate more in my life and feel grateful more often. xo