We're Traveling Into the Future

 Hi everyone.

Happy New Year to you. 

And welcome 2022.

It is hard to believe that 2022 has begun. I don't really know where 2021 went to because it certainly  seemed like it "blew" in and "blew" out quicker than I could write this sentence.

And not only is today the start of a new year, but because it is a new month, it is time for a new challenge and a new host at Art Journal Journey.

Thank you Valerie for all your lovely art and fun topic last month. I had a lot of fun adding doors to my art and drawing houses. Thanks to all of you who joined in also.

This month I happen to be the new host. 

I have a lot of rubber stamps, and one of my goals  last year was to use some of the older forgotten stamps. This was part of a process to help me decide what I should purge and what I should keep in a big clean out. I still haven't cleaned anything out, but one thing I noticed (while going through my stamps over the 12 months of 2021) was that I have lots of different face images in my collection. That inspired me to come up with this month's challenge theme:

Let's Face It

This month you should use a face or two on your journal page. It could be a human face, an animal face, or a face on something that doesn't usually have  one like smiling flowers or a mustached mushroom. It might not even be a living thing, like a clock face. Or perhaps instead of an actual face you have another interpretation of this topic. (Like me when I was trying to motivate myself last month to write a stack of Christmas cards, and I thought, let's face it, I need to get this done before the holidays have ended.)

You can stamp a face, draw a face, use a digital face or cut out a face from something printed. You could also paint a face or stencil a face. However you can think to add a face, add one or more.  It doesn't matter the size of the face or whether you include one face or multiple faces. If you're  going for a symbolic interpretation of the challenge phrase, then  somehow describe that on your journal page.

Here's my first page for the challenge.

As it is day one of the new year, I wanted to incorporate time  into my first challenge piece. Luckily clocks have faces and you can see a lot of faces on my page.

I started by stamping the clock faces and the word time on my background, and then I used some watered down acrylic paint to color the background. I knew I wanted to use this image of the  lady on her horse, and I decided she could be the goddess of passing time. I am going to call  my goddess Lady Tempus.

I stenciled the numbers along the left side, since  Lady Tempus is counting down the moments until the new year begins. The Lady Tempus on her horse image and the magnificent building, as well as it's border, are fussy cut from a sheet of printed paper. I also added a bit of gold metallic paper border to the image. Lady Tempus is looking back as her horse, whose name is Future,  is about to bring her into the new year. The magic of that moment is represented by the snowflakes flying upwards into the air from Future's hooves.

Future seems quite anxious to get into the new year and have it begin.

The quote is an old one from my stash, and the stitching is added to be  symbolic of the imaginary line  or moment that separates one year from the next. It also represents how I feel when the new year begins, that I have left something behind and am starting something new. Perhaps you also feel that way.

I hope to see many of you at Art Journal Journey this month, as well as seeing lots of faces too. Maybe I'll even see some selfies too so I can put names to faces. (smile)

I hope you have a happy and creative start to the new year!