so yes, I was still taking part, just not done very much lately. hey ho! 2017 will be different, right?
However, I have been following and doing, the One Collage Challenge, which we've been encouraged not to share until the very end. Every couple of weeks Kasia gave us a prompt. Each stage was to take no more than 5 minutes... sometimes this was easy, others not so!
We could choose any surface we liked, bearing in mind we would be working on it for the whole year.
I took a 25mm by 30mm flat canvas I may have gesso'd it to start with, made no notes, just took photos of each stage.
1. grab at random, no choosing, 2 pieces of paper, tear large pieces and stick to surface.
Grab one acrylic paint and add a shape , either with brush or your fingers
2. repeat the shape from guideline 1 by doodling on the surface - once or more times. I went more! I chose a matching pen
3. write in (some of) your shapes, thoughts, words, feelings about it so far
4. Use your fingers and add paint round the doodled shapes from step 2.
5. take a semi transparent acrylic paint and paint round the outside of the shapes from step 2 (was running out of gaps by now, regretting quite so many doodle shapes, not enough spaces left)
these were meant to be smooth brush strokes.
stage 6 was to find a word from a magazine and put it aside.
stage 7 was to write turn the canvas upside down and write the date
8. (you can see the photo is still the wrong way up, as the date is the right way round)
add drips or splashes of something white - ink, paint, over the canvas,
9. repeat step 8 with tea bag stains..
10. pick a stamp, any stamp and permanent ink, stamp all over the collage. you can see I used 2 different inks
11 was to find another word from a book or magazine.
12. find a loose corner on your stuck down papers from the very beginning, rip a corner and tear
13. take a favourite acrylic paint and fill the torn spaces - this didn't take long as I only got one!
I was in a purple mood at the time but do admit to making my favourite not clashing.
14. add some white dots to the painted area from 13 - any kind of dots. I varied mine.
15. find a focal point - a face - human or otherwise - my main problem with these word finding and picture finding exercises was not having many magazines (other than craft ones which I won't tear up!) but I found one eventually.
16. find something from a magazine that will replace one of the eyes.
17. grab a black marker and draw 3 thick lines somewhere on the collaged face
18. find another word.
19. put the face in a frame, grab pen(s) pencils,.draw a frame - shape of choice.
I used black and white markers
20.. I just realised I missed out this step, I was playing catch up today and missed it.
there is meant to be another image from a magazine, stuck on the forehead - pretend!
21. find a picture in a magazine of a background.
(I found a picture from Kew in my Kew magazine.. at least that was fairly easy.) make it fit behind your face, filling no more than a third of the frame.
22. take a photograph and keep it on your computer. we were not to look at the next stage (published at the same time) before doing this..
I had an inkling of what was to come by this point, I could see where it was going.
typically right at the last minute I forgot to take a photograph of the penultimate stage of step 23..
23. Yup, cover the whole thing with gesso or paint.
I chose two thin layers of gesso.
first part (that I forgot to photograph on it's own) was to use the saved words and create a sentence, we could add to them if we wanted.
my words read Grand Family Designs Magical Winter.
hmm.
Next and final stage was to write in the rest of the space, words and feelings about the whole process of the One Collage challenge.
For me, it was all about not over-thinking each step, not spending too long - I certainly stuck to the 5 minutes each time, and it was certainly quite free-ing not knowing what was coming next.
Thanks, Kasia, this was fun! There were definitely stages I didn't like so much, but hey, they've all gone now under that gesso!!
I scribbled a border round the top of the page and was searching around for some words to add to the page... 
