 Hey guys welcome to another month of my year 2017. We are here for the month of November and our prompt this month is gratitude. So this month because it's November and next month is December and for most of the world those are big holiday months no matter what holidays you celebrate. So I am going to very much lighten up the load of videos I usually share with you all over in the Facebook group. I'm going to just do kind of one longer video instead of like something every day. I may come on and do live chats or something but right now at this point I only plan on having the one main video on Sunday the one you're watching right now and then I'll have a book review about halfway through the week. I may come on the last day of the week and do like I said a live chat but it'll depend on you know the holidays and yeah stuff. So okay so we're going to prep this is my November signature and I've been asked repeatedly about how I made these. There is a video in the Getting Started document in the files section of the current group my year 2017. If you're watching this on YouTube and you aren't a pet member of that Facebook group and would like to be there's a link in the description below. For 2018 and going forward we're creating a new group so the link for that group is also in the description below. And the Getting Started video links the document with all the video links are in both groups just FYI but it's just made out of file folders and I did these at the beginning of the year. So okay the first thing we're going to do is we're going to tape in our book review list so I'm just going to use double-sided tape. One of the things I've been trying to do all year is use up what I have and this is all the stuff that was like stuffed in the back of my traveler's notebook just you know because you know why not just to have a bunch of stuff crammed in the back. So different like washi stickers and different tapes and you know I pick these up here and there some of these obviously if you know recognize them they're Jane Davenport stickers and things and I just you know I picked some of these up when I was at Creativation in the beginning of the year in Arizona and I love them but I'm not going to hoard them. So we're going to use some of them here in the book and we're going to do a little sketch tutorial too. You actually get an art tutorial this month rather than just watch me glue and paste things. Some months I think that's all I do for you guys. You're going to get bored. I can't get these okay so one issue I have is it's hard to get these off the paper. I don't like that. I don't like how hard they are to get off. I have these little sticky notes because you know I love me in a good sticky note this across. This isn't done very cleanly is it? I'm messing it up. Computer might ding in the background because of course you know I'm taping and chatting with folks at the same time. Of course I am. So this month's our theme is gratitude which is I think a great topic to discuss and as I'm trying to use up a sheet of these washi stickers here maybe you all can be thinking about when you hear the word what does that mean to you? What do you think of when you hear that word? See I don't like these are going to drive me crazy. Jane you've got to do something about these little sticker things. These are they're a pain to peel off. Let's move on to something else because they're I like this one. Everything is forgiven in a sketch. Start the art. I love word stickers. Take time to dream. Ain't that the truth. A lot of couple more pieces of these but they just these are drive me crazy. Is it just me people? It's probably just me. These are error. Right? Yeah these are these are crazy. I'm going to put one more and then that's it because they're making me insane. All right so just go through your section or sections of your journal. If you have a separate signature like I do go through the signature. Add some decoration to it until you're satisfied and happy and I just noticed I have like nothing back here. So let's add something. Let's find another word. Here is another one. Put you in your art. I love that. Okay crap I'm going to go back to these stupid. I love you but I don't like these tapes. It's another reason to use them up. You know you've got something in your stash. For whatever reason you're not so crazy about it. Let it go. Use it up. Sell it or something. I mean I love some of these because they've got some of her girls on them. Some of her artwork and I love to put artwork from other artists in my journal and to celebrate them in my journal but I maybe would get a roll instead of the washi stickers because these washi stickers are kind of making me insane. Okay not kind of they are making me insane. All right now if you do put washi or stickers in your journal and you're worried about them not sticking then put a little matte medium over the top of them and maybe even underneath them. These should stick okay but we'll find out as I work with the journal. So now I want to do I think right in the front here on the front page our prompt is gratitude and you know those little mini pumpkins you see all over the stores over the fall holidays picture a stack of them in your head of like five of them. I actually made some notes on my phone of all things when I was in the parking lot of the grocery store. I don't know that's just when you know I don't know. So I'm going to start with a bottom pumpkin. I'm going to zoom in here. I'm just using a black Vic crystal pen. Nothing fancy nothing you know expensive or you know super hard to find or necessarily just use your you know whatever you know plain ballpoint pen that you have use a black pen. I'm doing loose messy sketchy lines. I'm not doing anything super clean and this is not erasable so these are going to stay right. So there's one then if you picture it in your head with another like pumpkin sitting on top of it a little smaller. We're going to keep it kind of loose and sketchy for the moment right and then on top of that one we're going to put another one. We're going to try to do five of them. So you can see I'm just making like wedge shapes or I don't know half moon shape not really a wedge I guess. Half moon shapes so these kind of curvy lines like I said loose and sketchy. No two have to be the same. I've tried to make it so my pumpkin tower isn't leaning too much. Let's see that I'm just have like an oval here one two three four one more. You could take pictures of these pumpkins like the next time you're at the grocery store so you have a reference photo. I'm not working from a reference photo. I'm sure if you go to a website with royalty free photos like paint my photo you can find a reference photo that will work for you. So now that we've got our basic pumpkins in a stack I'm going to darken up some lines. On this one up here I'm going to sort of try to fill in you know add a stem add the other side of the pumpkin. Now if you're doing any sort of realism there would be a shadow from this one down onto this one there'd be a shadow cast add a shadow darken your lines first. You could do this in pencil if you're nervous about putting something in your journal in pen that you have to live within there forever that you don't like so don't feel bad if you have to if you want to do that that's fine. But I encourage you just try it in pen what's the worst that can happen? It's part of your creative journey to experiment to try to even make mistakes own them be happy with them love them fail with grace right. Okay that's pretty good I want to grab my orange highlighter my white gel pen so we're going to add some white accents to the pumpkins I'm doing the white pen first because there's a reason for that because these white gel pen will not write over the highlighter crayon then this is not going to show up a ton on this brown craft paper but it will show up a little bit zoom out just a little bit so you can see whoops that's the wrong way there we go so I'm going to add a little bit of the it will show a little bit it's just not going to show a ton so I'm not going to try to color the whole pumpkins in but I'm going to try to give each one of them a little bit of color it is hallow it is halloween that was last month it is fall after all lot so the next thing I want to do is I'm going to grab a scrap of paper do I want it to just be white paper I think I might I'm going to just take a little piece of this printer paper I printed book list son and I have four words I mean sorry five words of gratitude that I want to put on each pumpkin and as I write the words and put them on the pumpkins we're going to talk about the words the words are breath discovery purpose and love so when you are working on your prompt for this month and you're you know doing some of the obvious what are you grateful for in your life of course we're all grateful for friends and family a roof over our heads food on the table right and health if you can not all of us have that luxury of health mental or physical and some of us just aren't that lucky so no matter what's going on in your life good or bad mental or physical pain as long as you have breath in your body you're breathing right could always be worse so our first pumpkin at the top is going to be breath as long as you have breath in your body there's hope and actually I'm looking at that breath it looks really big oh I want to make it littler let's write that littler so long as you're breathing so long as you have breath in your body there's always hope for a better tomorrow right always there always is so breath so we're grateful that we have breath and because of the breath we're grateful that we have hope because of we have hope we always have the opportunity to discover a better way right so discovery because we have the opportunity for discovery to discover a better way clean up my table a little bit we have the opportunity the possibility of discovering our true or new purpose in life because we have breath in our body hope in our soul discovery in our being and purpose in life we have the opportunity for love love of ourselves love of others right love of friends and family so when you go forward this month thinking about and talking about the prompt of gratitude and working on it in your journal think a little bit outside the box of the norm then just creating a list and writing down those things that you're grateful for think a little bit broader than that yeah this is a really cute graphic i'm very happy to start off my november section with the stack of pumpkins all in gratitude and speaking of which let's see let's write something up here okay so isn't that the truth there's always room for gratitude and being allowed to try another day no matter how bad it is there's got to be a bright spot in there somewhere i hope there is for you so go forward this month in gratitude draw some pumpkins in your journal at the very least work on what each pumpkin should say that you're grateful for in life and in art and i hope that you all go out and have a fabulous holiday season check out the video description for links to the facebook groups there's a link to a site called link tree down there if you go there you'll find every single place you can find me on the internet all my stores my website everything and um my happy mail address is down there too most importantly have a great day go out make some art be grateful and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it i'll see you later bye guys