It’s that time of year!  If it’s November, it’s time to remember that I am a creative soul and no way better to do that than Art Every Day Month, an amazing creation of Leah Piken Kolidas that I have participated in here, on this blog, since 2010.

This year, because I’m also participating for the first time in NaNoWriMo – that challenge to write 50K words during the month, I decided to work on projects instead of one offs for AEDM.  To that end I will be working on decorating an old denim duster of mine that I’ve been working on sporadically for a couple of years, and a simple vest (one made from a large tshirt).  There is a possibility I will also be working on creating a set of major arcana cards but that is still in the though process.  At any rate, I know what I’m doing and only have to pick it up and work on it for my creative part of the day.

Here’s the start for the duster.  I have painted the left epaulet and am now embroidering with no specific plan, based on doodling and on colors of embroidery thread *already on hand*.  Plenty since I’ve been embroidering since my preteens and I never throw anything away because….well, I’m an artist and it’s all source material, right?  (“after” then “before” simply because I”m not going to go back and mess with this.)  The cuff was already done, but I decided to add a longer piece of lace (hand sewn – all of that is hand sewn).

For NaNoWriMo I will list a word count for the day, lagging a day as I haven’t written anything yet.  If I really like what I’ve written I might post it too (but I’m totally “pantsing” the writing – no plan at all, so liking it remains to be seen).  I’m using the writing as very rough draft for where I might take a story that has started itself in various on-line writing classes this year.

Toward the end of that writing, it began to cross over into art journaling as you can see here.  The last 4 posts prior to this one are also examples.

November will be a busy month.  Keeping up will surely keep me out of trouble – I won’t have much time to think of anything else!

Join me on this journey.  I’d love to hear from you.