Word For the Year---NOW

For a few years now I've seen various artists online, in their blogs and artwork, pick a word for the year to focus on for inspiration and/or motivation. Many of the words are action words.

Anyway, this year, I decided on one for myself. It's not an action word unless you put other words with it, but it's a word that's been in my conscious for a while now. The word is NOW.

I'm 61 years old, and not in the greatest of health, although I'm very thankful that my health is as good as it is. I say this, because even IF I live to be 90 years old, I don't have that many years left to live, and maybe even less to be creative.

Hence, the time to do the things I want to do or create is NOW, as in:

DO IT NOW!

NOW IS THE TIME.

NOW, THIS MOMENT, IS WHAT MATTERS.
DON'T PUT OFF WHAT I CAN DO NOW.

I CAN'T GO BACK TO YESTERDAY, I'M NOT PROMISED THE NEXT MINUTE, SO NOW IS WHEN GOD HAS GIVEN ME TO LIVE AND CREATE.

LOVE AND ENJOY LIFE AND CREATIVITY NOW! MY WORLD COULD TURN UPSIDE DOWN TOMORROW, OR TODAY FOR THAT MATTER.

CREATE NOW!

LAUGH NOW!

DANCE NOW!

LOVE NOW!

So far, I've created two projects using my word. The last one (top) I created is the one I decided to put on my sidebar. It started out as a watercolor with the letters drawn and painted in my large A4 Moleskine watercolor book. It wasn't going very well, so I pasted torn scrap papers with writing on them onto it with gel medium, added some acrylic inks, white fluid acrylic, and writing in black zig marker and gold gellyroll pen. I wound up cutting the large letters out of white cardstock, covered them with clear gesso, then shimmering gold acrylic ink, then some white gesso in spots where they got smudged during the gluing down with gel medium. I added dots and outlining with the Zig marker and stamped dancing mice to make it fun. I like it a lot now. :)

The first one I did (bottom) in the Moleskine journal by applying leftover paint with an old credit card and drawing in the letters. The largest letters are painted, then outlined and "stitched" with metallic pens, which I also used to fill in the smaller letters. I wish the metallics showed up better in the scans, but unfortunately they don't. :/ I love dragonflies, so I stamped a couple onto the NOW and added a couple of sponge stamped hearts for a bit of whimsy.

I plan to apply this word liberally this year, so look for it in future projects. OK? :)