Catégorie : one card a week

One card a week 06

english-challenge

I have to come clean: I am a recovering overthinker. I think too much for as long as I can remember. It’s really helpful when I have to deal with a crisis: I tend to just unplug the emotional me and just run into thinking only mode. Really useful… but not so useful in an everyday life, when crisis almost never happen. When everything is so much lighter than they used to be.

Anyway, as I said, I am a recovering overthinker. And as I come from really far, I first had to acknoledge my emotions, to accept them, and to listen to them… First I had to accept to feel pain, and that crying was ok. Then came fear, anger, then hope, then pleasure in little things. I still have to discover a lot of feelings, a lot of emotions… I am waiting for them to appear, I am ready to recognise and to accept them. Because this is time for me to do so. I don’t have to protect, to fight and to be the strong one anymore…  I can allow myself to just…. feel.

So to celebrate my coming back into being a human being and not a robot anymore, here is this week challenge:

  • quote: « Sometimes you have to stop thinking so much and just go where your heart takes you. »
  • pattern: heartvine

 

Here are the rules:

  • Each thursday, I’ll give you a quote and a pattern to play with. You can use both, you can use only one of them, it’s up to you.
  • You have till the next wednesday to make your card and share it with us in the facebook group (just ask to be added, and I will open the doors wide open to you )
  • The goal of this chalenge it just to offer yourself a time to have fun with pens and cards, to ponder on words, to enjoy a ME time. We tend to forget about ourselves so easily! And sharing is such a beautiful thing to experiment in our life!

 

And my card:

Freebies!

Il y a des dates si douloureuses que tout votre être se déchire à la seule pensée de ce qu’elles signifient pour vous. Hier, c’était le cas pour moi. La date anniversaire de la dernière récidive de la tumeur… La date qui marquera le début de notre descente en enfer, un enfer dont je suis sortie seule. Je n’oublierai jamais le visage de la neuroradiologue, son manque de mots elle qui avait toujours su les trouver les deux années précédentes. Notre montée en urgence à l’hôpital de jour pour avoir les corticoides nécessaires… la te^te des médecins, la gentillesse du personnel soignant. le sourire fatigué d’Emma qui me souffle ‘quand ils sont aussi gentils, ce n’est pas bon signe’. Alors hier matin, je me suis réveillée en pleurs. Les larmes ont coulée jusqu’à l’école…. J’ai enfilé mon costume de maitresse et j’ai tenu la journée. Une fois mes élèves partis, j’ai filé dans ma voiture pour laisser les larmes couler librement. Je savais que je devais affronter ce genre de date. Je me doutais que ça ne serait pas une partie de plaisir. Je dois les affronter, les apprivoiser. Pour pouvoir avancer, refermer ces portes, ces fenêtres sur mes souvenirs, ne plus avoir ces images, ces paroles, ces sensations… Et pour cela, si les larmes doivent couler, alors qu’elles coulent. Il faut que ça sorte.

Et puis, aujourd’hui est un autre jour… Alors je décide de procéder comme à mon habitude: faire du négatif quelque chose de positif…  je me suis dit qu’un petit cadeau vous ferait plaisir. J’ai donc décidé de rassembler les 4 premières cartes de chaque challenge sur une page à imprimer pour en faire ce que vous voulez!

Yesterday was this kind of day you know you have to live to be able to go on. One year ago was the day we learnt the tumor was back, again. From that day it only was a walk through hell… but I was the only one to come back this time. So yesterday morning I woke up in tears. They came to me till I arrived to school. I then put on my teacher’s mask and did my job as usual. When school ended, 8 hours later, and that my 1st graders al came back home, I let the tears to come back… I knew I had to go through that. I felt it wouldn’t be easy. But I had to face it, to learn from it. To be able to go on, to close all those doors and windows on my memories, to stop having those images, sounds, feelings … And if to do so I have to let tears do their job, then I let them do. It needs to go out.

And today is another day… So I decided to do as usual: to turn negativity into positive…. I thought you may enjoy a freebie. I decided to create 2 documents with the 4 first cards of each challenge, for you to print and have fun!

cartes-01

cards-01

One card a week 05

english-challenge

Sometimes, it’s more confortable to just take no risk in life. To just go to work, pay our bills and do what we need to do to…. survive. A tasteless, boring existence. A lonely one, too, most of the time. You are not living, you are surviving. You may be in this situation because you suffered too much in the past and you decided to cut yourself from anything that may be painful, or you may just don’t know why you are where you are. But at some point, you just can’t stand it anymore and you feel the need to change.

Thing is, when you decide to stop surviving and start living, it’s scary. It means you will be ready to take risks, to give a meaning to your life, and that it will worth it. If you believe you will enjoy your life and not just going on with this boring, tasteless thing you call life, then you are ready to take a further step in the right direction. It’s this belief that it will worth it that will keep you going on the path of true life. And it will bring you pain, fear, but also love, happiness, and this sensation of fulfillness you can’t have by just surviving.

So just take a first step. Decide now is the right time to live. Truly, really live. Fill it with all you find on your way, learn, grow, and enjoy each breath. You are alive, and it’s only the begining.

So, this week challenge is the following:

  • quote: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
  • pattern: amy

 

Here are the rules:

  • Each thursday, I’ll give you a quote and a pattern to play with. You can use both, you can use only one of them, it’s up to you.
  • You have till the next wednesday to make your card and share it with us in the facebook group (just ask to be added, and I will open the doors wide open to you )
  • The goal of this chalenge it just to offer yourself a time to have fun with pens and cards, to ponder on words, to enjoy a ME time. We tend to forget about ourselves so easily! And sharing is such a beautiful thing to experiment in our life!

 

And my card :

Un peu de couleurs

Le temps est bien gris, en ce moment… Il est temps de contre attaquer! Voici donc ma pile de cartes à gribouiller…

20170125_1611341

20170125_1608031

Je ne sais pas vous mais moi ça me rend toute joyeuse, ces couleurs!

One card a week 04

english-challenge

I hope you had a good week !

Life is a journey. As travelers, we write our own book of discoveries. Each big step we make is a new chapter. When we decide to move on, we just turn the page and write on a new blanck page. Anything can happen, and we make sure to tell ourselves about it. Thing is, sometimes, we just can’t move on. In order to do so, we need to let go of what was written on the last chapter. It may takes some time, but it doesn’t really matter. We take the time needed. Nobody will be mad at you because you want to re read a chapter you loved. But we also have to realise that when we feel stuck in a chapter of our life that we don’t really like, we just have to stop re-reading it, turn the page, grab our favorite pen and start writing a new chapter. It doesn’t mean that we forget about the last chapter. It is written, it exists. But we can add a new chapter, something new, yet something that belongs to the same story.

I tend to re read the former chapters when I need to understand where I am standing. Usually, I do it just before a big jump to a new chapter, to remember where I am coming from. And sometimes, I just turn the page and start writing. Anyway I tend to look at my life as a saga. I sometimes feel that I lived several lifes in one. At least, I can’t say that I had a boring one. Now that I tend to more peace, I am thinking about just taking a new book, and puting the last one on a shelve, where I can see it, where I know it will be if needed. Starting a new book for a whole new volume of my life. After volume 1 ‘the young years’, volume 2 ‘the fearless warrior’, volume 3 ‘the motherly one’, here is volume 4… I still don’t have a title because I really don’t know what it will deal with…. but I really hope it will bring a happy end. For a change….

So here is this week challenge:

  • Quote: » You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last. »
  • Pattern: bugle

 

Here are the rules of this challenge:

  • Each thursday, I’ll give you a quote and a pattern to play with. You can use both, you can use only one of them, it’s up to you.
  • You have till the next wednesday to make your card and share it with us in the facebook group (just ask to be added, and I will open the doors wide open to you )
  • The goal of this chalenge it just to offer yourself a time to have fun with pens and cards, to ponder on words, to enjoy a ME time. We tend to forget about ourselves so easily! And sharing is such a beautiful thing to experiment in our life!

 

Here is my card:

One card a week 03

english-challenge

Third week of the challenge!!

Sometimes we are not happy with our life. Let’s face it, most of the time, we can do something about it… We are just scared to move on…

I am lucky to love my job. It’s sometimes really challenging, but I do love it. I also love to be able to be creative in my private and professional lifes. Lucky me! Here is the thing:  I also have to reinvent my whole life, as everything I thought it would be just vanished when I lost my daughter. I also gained a lot of weight during her last months and after…

So I decided it was time for me to change what could be changed. I didn’t like where I was in my life, so I moved. Literally moved. I went to a gym and got a membership. And I started to work out. I did it by myself, picking what couldn’t hurt my knees or back. I also discovered that whenever I felt stressed, I could go and just let it go exercising. I felt exhausted, but I could sleep. I am just at the begining of this journey, and let me tell you there is A LOT of work to do before I feel ok with my body, but I moved. I didn’t stand there, like a tree, growing roots in front of my computer. If I could do it, let’s face it, ANYBODY can do it. And if you feel unconfortable going to a gym and comparing yourself to other people, let me tell you my secrets: my gym doesn’t have mirrors on the walls, I leave my glasses with my stuff, so I can’t see anyone, and I put music I like and that motivates me in my phone…. So I can’t see or hear anyone. I don’t go there to meet people. I go there to have a date with myself, and let go of everything too heavy to carry. So let me tell you, those weights are nothing!

But hey, I love trees too. I’ll talk to you about them another time… I love them, but I am not one of them.

Anyway, this week challenge is:

  • The quote: If you don’t like where you are, move. you are not a tree.
  • The pattern plop

Here are the rules of the challenge:

  • Each thursday, I’ll give you a quote and a pattern to play with. You can use both, you can use only one of them, it’s up to you.
  • You have till the next wednesday to make your card and share it with us in the facebook group (just ask to be added, and I will open the doors wide open to you )
  • The goal of this chalenge it just to offer yourself a time to have fun with pens and cards, to ponder on words, to enjoy a ME time. We tend to forget about ourselves so easily! And sharing is such a beautiful thing to experiment in our life!

And my card:

Enregistrer

One card a week 02

english-challenge

I hope you liked the challenge last week!

This week, I wanted to play with this quote. It really means something to me. When you have to deal with toxic people, it’s so easy to just shut down and let the storm go away… But it never does. So you have to be smarter and yes, you need an umbrella… so this week, this quote is my mantra!

  • The quote: « Mind is like an umbrella… it only works when it is open. » Sir James Jeans
  • The pattern ‘brella

 

Here are the rules of the challenge:

  • Each thursday, I’ll give you a quote and a pattern to play with. You can use both, you can use only one of them, it’s up to you.
  • You have till the next wednesday to make your card and share it with us in the facebook group (just ask to be added, and I will open the doors wide open to you )
  • The goal of this chalenge it just to offer yourself a time to have fun with pens and cards, to ponder on words, to enjoy a ME time. We tend to forget about ourselves so easily! And sharing is such a beautiful thing to experiment in our life!

 

Here is my card:

One card a week challenge

english-challenge

As you may know, I host a weeky challenge with my french speaking friends… I have a thing with inspirational quotes and with zentangle patterns. So each week, I make a card, with a quote on one side and a doodle or a pattern on the other side. I really love spending this time to ponder and to reflect on the words while drawing.

SO, I have this french challenge going on, and I made some cards with english quotes I like too… Which led me to think that I could also offer a weekly challenge, but for my english speaking friends this time (Hey Bev 😉 ).

I use home made cards. These are card box cards I painted with my daughter a while back. We just painted plain white cards with acrylic paint, played with textures and colors. One of them have her hand print on it, and when I saw it, I decided I had to do somthing meaningfull with these cards. You can use home made cards or bought cards, blanck postcards, whatever you want. you can even use a notebook (it would then be « one page a week cahllenge » 😉 ). It’s easy, fast, and when you feel down or just need to reflect on your feeling, you just pick a card you made and let the words speak to your self. It’s efficient and really meaningfull.

So if you are interested, here is the first one. We can also share our cards on the facebook group I created to host pics of my previous challenges, and the current french one.

There we go!

This week, I chose a quote from a song that really helped me dealing with my sorrow when I lost my only daughter because of DIPG last march. So it seems right to start with a deep but positive quote.

So this week, you have to make a card with

  • the quote « It’s only love, it’s only pain / It’s only fear that runs through my veins / It’s all the things you can’t explain / That make us human.  » Civil Twilight, Human
  • the pattern vercut

Let me add a quick note to sum it up:

  • Each thursday, I’ll give you a quote and a pattern to play with. You can use both, you can use only one of them, it’s up to you.
  • You have till the next wednesday to make your card and share it with us in the facebook group (just ask to be added, and I will open the doors wide open to you )
  • The goal of this chalenge it just to offer yourself a time to have fun with pens and cards, to ponder on words, to enjoy a ME time. We tend to forget about ourselves so easily! And sharing is such a beautiful thing to experiment in our life!

Welcome to this new challenge!!!

Here is my card, I can’t wait to see yours!

 

 

Challenge 2017: modalités

unecarteparsemaine

J’espère que vous avez passé un bon réveillon. Pour ma part, j’ai bien gribouillé, et j’ai pris le temps de préparer les modalités du nouveau challenge. Et c’était une belle façon de finir l’année 2016.

Voici donc les modalités du challenge:

  1. Chaque lundi, je poste le sujet du challenge. Vous avez jusqu’au dimanche soir suivant pour poster vos propositions sur le groupe facebook.
  2. Je vous propose plusieurs possibilités: une citation, un mot, un motif de zentangle. A vous de choisir d’en utiliser un ou plusieurs. Les liens vers les tutoriels éventuels seront inclus.
  3. Vous pouvez dès lors décorer votre carte, ou encore votre page de cahier.
  4. Surtout, amusez-vous, prenez ce temps pour vous, profitez, laissez parler votre créativité. Partagez aussi, chacun peut être une source d’inspiration pour les autres!

A demain pour le premier challenge!

Challenge 2017: les supports

unecarteparsemaine

Voila donc ce que je vous propose pour cette année 2017: décorer une carte par semaine, avec une citation, un mot, un gribouillage, ce que vous voulez.

Les cartes.

Vous pouvez utiliser

  • des cartes postales vierges,
  • des fiches bristol,
  • du papier épais,
  • ou préférer gribouiller sur un carnet ou un cahier. Après tout, il n’y a aucune obligation!

Pour ma part, j’utilise des cartes bristol que j’ai coupées pour qu’elles puissent entrer dans ma petite boite. Elles font 7cm par 12 cm. C’est un petit format pour moi, mais hé, c’est un challenge hahaha.

J’ai opté pour du bristol, parce que j’aime bien l’épaisseur. J’ai pris des fiches blanches ou quadrillées, que j’ai peint à l’acrylique, avec des effets ou non, et d’autres que j’ai laissé blanches. Si ça vous tente, c’est facile et rapide.

Il vous faut donc:

  1. des cartes vierges
  2. de la peinture acrylique
  3. du sel, du papier essuie-tout texturé, du film plastique…..

J’ai bien bien dilué l’acrylique, le but n’est pas de recouvrir la carte d’une couche épaisse mais plus d’avoir un effet de transparence. Du coup, vous pouvez sans doute aussi utiliser la gouache de vos enfants héhé.

Une fois peinte, et avant que ça sèche, j’ajoute un peu de sel, pour obtenir ce genre d’effet:

20161231_110921

ou j’applique un papier essuie-tout, je tamponne avec un plastique… pour un effet de texture (et la carte violette a encore les empreinte de doigts d’Emma !)

20161231_111024

ou je laisse juste sécher la carte.

20161231_110827

J’ai aussi des cartes que j’ai laissées blanches, pour me laisser plus de possibilités.

Voila !

A demain pour le premier challenge!