I did it!!

I am officially a NaNoWriMo winner!

Fifty thousand words!! And the best bart, I wrote it all freehand! In a composition notebook! I will post photos later.

I'm so excited. And now I have time to clean my house and do everything I put off doing last month while doing this amazing writing project.

I feel fantastic.

NaNoWriMo Update

4,000 words to the finish!

I'm so close! Two more days and I have just 4,000 more words to reach the 50k word count. I can do this. I can actually be one of this years NaNoWriMo winners. I'm so excited. This was one of my goals for this year and here I am making my dreams come true. You really can create the life of your dreams if you just commit and follow through.

4,000 words to go!

Next Goal :  To loose weight and get healthy by my birthday on Aug 14th 2012 I officially start this January 1st, 2012 but I will unofficially start December 1st, 2011 just to get a head start.

What are your dreams and goals?

Mail Art and NaNoWriMo Update

So I have been fighting this NaNoWriMo beast with all my might. I almost lost it this weekend after missing two days and getting behind about 5,000 words. My fiance came to the rescue and gave me the whole day yesterday to write and get all caught up, which I did. I am almost done now! Only 7,000 more words to go and I've hit the 50k mark. Then I will be throwing myself in letter writing and swaps and my neglected pen pals.

Anyway today I worked on a mail art swap I was in with a theme of fairy tales - Red Riding Hood. I really love how this envelope came out. You can't see the glimmer mist sparkles on it in the photo but its so sparkly and shimmery. I used some graphics from an old book I had and cut and colored them a bit. Then I collaged them onto the envelope which was spritzed with glimmer mist and stamped with some distressed inks.

Fairytale Mail Art

Side of the envelope before I put in my swap partner's addy.

I will be so happy when my NaNoWriMo is over. But I am still going to try and keep writing every day, not 1200 words a day but maybe just for an hour or so, unless the muse demands a longer session. One thing for sure is that I am no longer creatively blocked. The writing is flowing free. Now if only I could come up with something fantastic to write about! But hey, you can't have it all. I'm grateful that my creative block is gone. Baby steps on the road to my dreams...baby steps.

Art Journal Pages & NanoWriMo Update

I'm fighting through my NanoWriMo Novel. Last night I had a breakdown and wrote a whole page yelling at my main character who I am so frustrated with. He is a lazy, self absorbed, unmotivated, male chauvinist! How on earth did I come up with such a character? And I've spend 25,000 words with him so far. So yesterday I went off on him. I told him he needs to get of his butt and do something, he needs to stop being so passive and make a few decisions on his own. After I got it off my chest he seemed to have listened as he decided to go explore the territory a bit.

The NaNoWriMo is taking up a lot of my writing time, but I'm still trying to get some penpal letters out and do some work in my art journal. Yesterday I finished my Wishes page from 11*11*11 and I really like how it came out.  I love the bright colors. It's so positive and uplifting. I hope my wises come true.  :)

Mail Art and Art Journal Pages

outgoing mail art

Here's some recent mail art I did for a pen-pal swap over on swap-bot.
The owl envelope is handmade paper I made myself out of some recycled junk mail and rose petals from the roses my father brought me after my surgery. I love how the rose petals tinted the envelope.

orange headed lady

The orange headed lady was my attempt at some of the funky teesha moore style collage with bright colors that I love. I've been using a lot of pinks and purples and oranges in my art lately and I am really enjoying it.

The last photo is my first attempt at "Fearless Painting" from Dirty Footprints Studio. The goal is to paint BIG, on large paper while standing up. I normally do a lot of my art standing up anyway but there really is something magical about letting go of your mind and painting 100% intuitively. I had no idea what this would even look like until I stepped away from the canvas. I love the colors and shapes. As soon as I'm done with NanoWrimo I plan to do some more fearless paintings!

fearless painting

Finally here are some art journal pages. I really need to post more of these as I work in my art journal daily. That will be one of my New Year Resolutions, to post my art journal pages weekly.

*note to self - New Year Resolution - Make a You Tube video of my art journal.

NaNoWriMo Update

I'm in the dreaded second week and man they were not kidding when they said this week would be hard. My main character in my novel is procrastinating. He doesn't want to go anywhere and do anything, but today I let him know that he will be going outside and partaking in an adventure...like it or not.

I am right under the target word count, about one day behind so today I am going to write a bit extra to get closer to the goal number. I want to be fully caught up and on target  by this weekend, so I told my main character he is going to have to but his big girl panties on and start doing something. I can't write a novel with a whiney spoiled brat procrastinating main character!

If you want to follow me on NaNoWriMo my name on the re is "ilona". And if anyone one of you is doing it too let me know so I can follow you.

Take care and off I go to try and write 3,000 words today! Gulp.

More Printable Stationary - Kawaii Pink

click to download

So today I was creating some of my own stationary for one of my pen pals who loves Kawaii. I was also procrastinating my NaNoWriMo which I am a bit behind on.... I wrote 900 extra words today in an attempt to catch up to the word count but I still have about 1500 words to go to properly catch up. Boo.  But I'm not throwing in the towel...no way! I really would like to finish this year so I am working very hard on this novel, or at least on creating the time in my busy day every day to write this novel. :)

click to download

Anyway, about the stationary... I came up with a few cute designs. I used themed photoshop brushes from like 5 years ago that I had downloaded but never even played with. So today I decided was a good day to play with them.

Feel free to download these and use them for personal use. I use them to write letters to my penpals and swap buddies. They are letter size but you can print them smaller if you want to use them for notes. Just click on the image to download the larger file, right click to save.

click to download

Please please please leave me a comment if you use them. And I'd love to see pics too!

Enjoy!

click to download

click to download

I Dream About the Mountains

Bluebells in England

I've been dreaming more and more about the mountains. It is where I long to be, and where my whole life I have wanted to live. I remember in 2005-2006 when I lived in England for a year and a half doing my Masters Degree, we lived in the mountains...well little mountains... in the green hills and beautiful lush valleys. I was in my element. I was so full of joy every day taking the train to school and looking out at the green rolling hills, each day thinking... this is beautiful...

I miss that terribly. I feel the ache from deep in my soul. I want to relocate to the mountains. Why don't I do it? Because my children are close the their father here, because my father is here, because my fiancee's family is here, beacuse we dont have the money right now to buy a home... because I am bound to Tampa, trapped like a caged bird waiting for her chance to fly free.

I took this photo of blooming bluebells when I was
living in England going to grad school. 

So I wait patiently. I hope and wait and pray that things will shift and my caged door will open and I will be able to fly up to the place my soul longs to be, to walk among the tall trees, to hear the crackle of pine needles under my feet, to smell the air, the crisp freshness of green mountain air, and maybe even dip my fingers into an icy stream, preferably one I am not sharing with a black bear!

For now I am planning next summer, a trip to the smoky mountains with the kids and my fiancee. Hopefully they will fall in love with it too, maybe it will be the first step to change. Maybe I will find a cute little cabin with my name on on... a cute home with a small barn where I can do art and write and be creative...

Oh what a dream... what a dream...