Good riddance to another awful dystopian year- and happy new year 2022

In this blog post I have a very brief look back at another year from hell that was 2021 and talk about my plans for the new year 2022.

First of all, I wish you a happy new year. I hope you managed to somehow celebrate – most places were yet again under many restrictions – like Scotland and Wales. The fireworks in Wales, where I live, were rather subdued, the town centre pretty empty. We did what we always do – stay at home, drink and watch telly and make sure our cat is fine (she is actually pretty relaxed about fireworks). This time we enjoyed a cheap bottle of Lidl Cava and watched a few episodes of the Rik Mayall/Ade Edmondson comedy classic “Bottom”. Still very funny after all those years. It reminds me of simpler times too.

When I was thinking of what to write in this blog post, I was in two minds – do I let you know what I really think and am scared of and go on a long rant about the dystopian, totalitarian nightmare that governments have turned this world into or just acknowledge the situation very briefly. Well – I am not good at ranting and if I would get started, this would turn into a very negative and long blog post. I know plenty of amazing content creators who express so much better what I have been observing and feeling over the past two years. So instead, I will tell you about what I have done last year.

Learning new art skills

Well as we have been more or less still in some sort of lockdown with never ending restrictions, I rarely left the house and of course we didn’t travel anywhere. The places I visited mostly were supermarkets, pharmacy and the post office, the vets and dentist and my mother-in-law. Once a week I walked to my workplace to print things off for the church services – otherwise I worked from home for my part-time job. My German tuition was done via Skype/Zoom and I had 2 students for a while, an adult student who started with me in 2020 before the first lockdown (remember – 3 weeks to flatten the curve?) and a student doing her AS levels, and then later in the year I had two youngsters I am still teaching via Zoom.

I didn’t make any jewellery last year; business was pretty much dead and I spent my time with making art. I have printed a few editions of my various animal lino cuts, which you can find here and sold a few. Last year I came across floral artist Natalie Parker from New Zealand (though based in Australia), who teaches art classes and runs an art membership website which I have joined and I am still a member of. Her own style journey went from realistic to abstract over the years and she teaches aspiring artists to be more lose and abstract and to play around with different styles and techniques. The membership website is called “The Confident Brush” and I have learnt quite a lot over the last months from Natalie and the lovely ladies in the Facebook group. As a consequence, I have also spent time learning how to work with acrylic paints and created paintings that I am very proud of and will add to the website for sale this year. Last year I have also spent my time reviewing Scrawlr and Artful subscription boxes for my YouTube channel – though I am now unsubscribed from both. Art subscription boxes are a great way to test new art media and play around with them. The Artful lino box I bought in 2019 reintroduced me to lino-printing, which I really enjoy and I also loved their acrylic ink box. I absolutely love playing with acrylic inks and have invested in a lot of colours from Daler Rowney and Liquitex. My favourite Scrawlr box of last year was definitely the alcohol ink one. I have since invested in more colours and a safety respiratory mask and other bits and pieces. I have discovered some pretty cool art channels by artists specialising in alcohol ink art and some of the work I have seen is just amazing. Another awesome art form I discovered was via my husband. YouTube kept recommending him acrylic pouring videos and we ended up watching quite a few of them. They are quite addictive and make the process look deceptively easy.  So, I ended up buying a Pebeo experience box with premixed paints, to have a go at it (I think by now you know that I love trying out lots of different things). While this is probably the messiest art form I have ever tried (apart from working with dry air clay, that’s pretty messy too), it is a lot of fun and satisfying and the results are just beautiful. I like the surprise factor – you never know what the end result will look like. And I can see how addictive this art form is. I ended up joining two groups on Facebook where I can ask for help and advice and share my work. I started this year with these 4 pour paintings. For these I bought Pebeo pouring medium and paints. So far, I found it easy to mix these with a bit of water to get the correct consistency, which is key for this art form.

Health stuff and losing my part-time job

What else happened last year in my life? I had to get a root canal filling which was incredibly uncomfortable and the tooth still needs a crown. My eyesight is definitely getting worse, but I am currently too chicken to make an appointment, plus I hate wearing masks. I can’t breathe through the things as I suffer with a chronic stuffed nose, which gets worse with masks on, plus it is making me feel claustrophobic. And I don’t see how you are supposed to test glasses when half your face is covered. So, I just have to wait it out. Thankfully nobody in my family died last year. If you have read my blog post from the beginning of last year you might remember that I have lost three relatives: my grandmother, her sister and my father-in-law. The sudden, unexpected death of my father-in-law being the worst loss and we are still feeling it as a family. It hasn’t been easy, certainly not for my mother-in-law.

I had bad news with regards to my part-time job and was sadly made redundant, which hits me hard financially. My final day was on Christmas eve, which put a bummer into Christmas. I can understand though that my employer just couldn’t keep me on and we parted on friendly terms. I rarely burn bridges and try to keep in touch with people I worked with.

My plans for 2022: Exploring and experimenting with different art materials.

I want to dedicate each month of this year to a particular material and medium – for example this January I want to concentrate on paint pouring. In February I will concentrate more on alcohol inks and keep printing new lino prints. Nothing is set in stone yet as to when I will do what. Some things are actually weather dependent. I find working with precious metal clay difficult when it’s very hot, same with polymer clay. The reason why I want to keep trying out different things is, because a – I have low boredom threshold and b – I hope I will eventually discover what I like to work with the most.

I also plan to create brand new jewellery and want to focus on silver clay. Years ago, I was given a Prometheus kiln for Christmas and I have only used it for copper clay. I have plenty of silver clay to use up for this.

I also want to get back to polymer clay and sculpting with the Cosclay I bought a few years ago (I hope it’s still ok to use, I better check!).

I want to make sure I have a few more students I can teach.

I will keep making YouTube videos and grow the channel, but for this I have to come up with new content ideas.

I also plan collaboration with another craft business (we are still in the early stages of figuring it out).

And generally, I hope that business will improve. I know it’s not going to be easy, especially as energy and living costs are going through the roof this year (sorry to be the bringer of bad news).

Last year I bought a beautiful Eastman mandolin and have no idea how to play i t- so this year I want to learn how to play. Who knows by the end of this year I have mastered REM’s “Losing my religion”?

In 2020 I lost 2 and a half stones, last year I let my diet slide and haven’t actually been on the scales. I know thanks to Christmas and generally paying less attention I have piled on the pounds – so it’s back to being more mindful of how much and what I eat. I also want to exercise more regularly and keep taking Zinc and vitamin D. And I need to address my eyesight problem. Unfortunately, eye issues run in my family.

I have plenty of books I also want to get through this year. Ideally, I finish one book per month. That obviously depends a bit on the book length and subject matter.

Another thing I would like to do is getting notebooks with my own art published on Amazon as a KPD.

And this is as much as I can think of right now. Things will probably happen along the way and some of my plans won’t work out. But that’s ok.

I hope you have a good start to the new year and that you enjoyed this post or found it interesting. Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading

Helen x