The New Year's Acorn

My friend Tommy O. bid me a Happy New Year this week and dropped an Acorn in my hand. We don’t naturally have Oak trees here in Alaska and Tommy explained that this was a token of good luck and well wishes for the coming year. I have never heard about the Acorn’s charm –have you? While doing a bit of research I thought I’d warm up for the Sketchbook Challenge which starts tomorrow. Just in time for the Challenge, look what my friend Vicki made for me -an original Vicki journal! I thought

it couldn’t hurt to kick it off with sketching some Acorns!

~“Good Luck in a Nutshell by Nick Howes

When you carefully consider the old saying "a mighty oak from a little acorn grows", you don't have to go far to see that some cultures consider nuts to carry some kind of magic. Superstitions about nuts have been widespread throughout history. In fact, acorns remain popular good luck charms, even today. The belief originated in ancient Asia Minor where acorns represented the goddess of nature and spread west to the Romans and pre-Christian Druids of later times. The good fortune associated with real acorns extends to those made of gold, silver, or some other substance."~

~During the Norman Conquest, the English carried dried acorns to protect themselves from the brutalities of the day. Considered to be an emblem of luck, prosperity, youthfulness and power, the Acorn is a good luck symbol indeed! It also represents spiritual growth.~

~Symbol of the Acorn~

oXo

Happy New Year 2011!

I've Fallen Off The Wagon

The sketchbook wagon that is. I’m not drawing, sketching or even painting as often as I should be. I feel that sketching or journaling is an important daily exercise for artists (whatever the medium) or anybody for that matter. My favorite blank books and journals are by Moleskine. Their Cahier Journals have the creamiest of paper and the Kraft covers make for wonderful, custom collage. Two, small Hard Black Cover Noteooks are kept in my purse –one for fiber designs and the other metal work ideas. I’ve filled up a few journals and small

black books but as I get busier with life my sketchbook time fades. To help my sketchbook workouts and with New Years’ fast approaching I found a New Year’s Challenge that I think I can actually stick with. I’m not one to make resolutions because I’ve never stuck to them. I would secretly love to do one of those 365 Days Blogs but I’m afraid it would end up being a day 25 then crap out! But this Sketchbook Challenge sounds very appealing.

Here's everything you need to know about how the Sketchbook challenge works (from the Sketchbook Blog):

"The sketchbook challenge is a new project launching on 1/1/2011. Follow along with us as we fill our sketchbooks based on a monthly theme that will be announced on the first of each month. Each month we'll announce a new theme on this blog and throughout the month we'll be showing you images from our sketchbooks and talking about the intention and inspiration behind them. Along the way we'll be sharing tips, techniques and tutorials. We hope that by giving you a peek inside our sketchbooks and showing you how different they all are that we'll inspire you to start keeping a sketchbook of your own. And of course if you do, we'll want to see some photos of your book too so we've designed a blog badge for you to put on your own blog to show your participation in the project. You can download the badge here. We encourage you to post photos of your sketchbook

pages on your blog and then post a link in the comment section of the Sketchbook Challenge blog so that others can look at your pages too! We've also set up a flickr group where you can post photos too. You'll find the group here. And that's not all! Thanks to the generosity of some terrific sponsors we'll be doing some givewaways and special shopping offers too!"

The view of Glacier Creek in Girdwood, Alaska on Winter Solstice with the temperatures hovering at zero.