Atelier 54

Focus on Finishing

 Every year I choose one word for the year. It is sort of a guiding light, a theme, or a focal point for the year.  This year my word was FOCUS.

Focus on Finishing is my theme for December.

These frogs that live on my porch were the first project.  I made them years ago and they had gotten quite dirty and needed a makeover.

Every morning, as I went out for my coffee and time with Jesus, I would say to myself: I need to clean those up, but I never got to it.

This year as we were decorating the porch for Christmas, Steve commented they needed Christmas outfits, their summer ones were out of place with the other decorating he was doing.

I wholeheartedly agreed and promptly went to my stash to see what I could find. Fortunately, I found the original pattern, so I didn't have to design all their clothes from scratch. I was pleased to find big enough pieces of a red and white stripe with gold accents and some solid red to dress them in.  I used scraps of fur for the hats and her muff.  There was even enough to make a small banner to hang with them.

Steve was very happy with how they turned out and deemed them worthy of a place on our Christmas porch. I think these outfits will be good until Valentine's Day, just need a different banner and a heart or two. And now their summer clothes are washed and ready to go.

So far my Focus on Finishing is going good.  Besides cleaning up these frogs, I've glued a chair back together, finished a sewing project for a friend that had been started at the beginning of the year, and made a plan for finishing other UFOs in the studio.

Finishing up projects or at least having a solid plan to finish them is a great way to end the year.  Facing all those unfinished projects sitting in my studio is a creativity killer.  Seeing those small projects around the house I haven't gotten around to zaps my energy.  By focusing on finishing up those projects, I am making more time and room for new ideas and inspiration.  Finishing them didn't take much time, but the relief of not having them "hanging over my head" was very freeing.

Do you have small, unfinished projects that are zapping your creative energy?   Make December this year is your time to Focus on Finishing.  Let's all start the new year out with room for our imagination and creativity to flow.