This afternoon I was supposed to decorate our tree. It is a tall narrow artificial tree that fits into our small living room. I’ve used the same decorations for years and I like how it looks when it is done. A little commercial and neat; a little sloppy; a little fun; maybe a little under-done.
But today I just wasn’t feeling like decorating that tree! (The photo is from 2013). I wanted to work in my holiday art journal so, for the third day in a row, I procrastinated and headed to my craft room instead.
I had a narrow piece of green scrapbook paper bound into my handmade journal, so I decided to work on that. The prompt for my weekly art journal group, Journal52.com, was ‘Doodle’. Now, I’m not into formal doodle techniques like Zentangle although I do mindless doodling that is similar if I have a lot of time and/or large areas in which to doodle. Most of the time, for me, doodle means to goof around and scribble and draw and make marks. My doodling is pretty messy . . . as is my lettering.
Hmmm, what to doodle? Since my bare Christmas tree has been on my mind, I decided to ‘doodle’ a tree. I drew a very loosey-goosey tree on the paper with a Micron pen and ‘doodled’ ornaments for it. The tree made me think of the German song “O, Tannenbaum” (“Oh, Christmas Tree”, to us) so I wrote the first line of the song in German and the next line in English over the top of the Christmas tree with its ornaments. The tree looked very wimpy at that time and the letters got lost. To correct that, I filled the block letters in with an 08 black Micron pen and then colored the ornaments with various colored souffle & glaze pens. I then went over the circular pattern in the paper in green and added white accents, cranberry garland, and dangles at the top of the page. Done!
The tree is narrow, like mine. It is a little messy; a little neat; a little fun; a little under-done. Just like mine. Do I wish I had the time, patience, and hand-control to doodle something spectacular on the page? Sure. But I don’t . . . and I refuse to fuss about it. I’m okay with my page just as it is. And I still decorated a tree, didn’t I?
I enjoyed playing in my holiday art journal today. I hope you found the time to play creatively today, too!
Ain't No Ninny 
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