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I'm so happy I can finally share these with you! They were created a few months ago as I experimented with a new style ~~ creating inspiring cards for others to give or hang on their walls! I really, really love these two and decided why not update my Etsy shop with some pretty little prints!
Click on the piece YOU love above to grab it before they're gone!
What do you think? *grin*
Hi!
Still battling a migraine, but super excited to present this new way of taking/viewing/participating in online classes. We're trying out the format with a 1-hour Intuitive Journaling Class.
This class will be tomorrow, Tuesday, September 4th at 7:30pm EST.
Doing this on video will allow me to help:
See what you're doing.
Give guidence.
Help you get past hurdles.
The only supplies you'll need are your favorites on-hand. We'll be covering drawing, painting, and writing poetry!
You WILL need a webcam to participate.
If you're interested in trying this out with me, I now have a PayPal button. It's a pay-what-you-can scale from $8-$15. This is to compensate me for my time (and if you took a 1 hour class with me in person, it'd be more!) and make sure people show up on video.
I am really excited to try this out and have us chatting and journaling together!! I just want to figure this out so I can get started on my next online class and see if adding these live on-video teaching events can be added to the curriculum.
Help support an ailing artist (since I've been on vacation and then sick, I haven't been able to work much, and sales on Etsy have slowed...artwork IS work, and I appreciate your support!)!
A sudden migraine attack has me wincing at light, so yay for being able to turn down the brightness of my laptop screen!
If you've noticed, there wasn't an art chat tonight.
The art chats were really me testing out the technology, and I want to go further, to where I've been working towards!
So if you're so inclined, why don't you join me on Tuesday, September 4th at 7:30pm EST? (Or Sunday afternoon? What works? Let me know in comments!)
That's right! I want to test things out and change how we take classes online. Instead of watching a recorded video of me teaching something, I want YOU to interact with ME. I'll be playing around with Intuitive Journal Pages and want you to be able to follow along.
See what you're doing.
Give guidence.
Help you get past hurdles.
The only supplies you'll need are your favorites on-hand. We'll be covering drawing, painting, and writing poetry!
This will be informal, and may have glitches, so please keep that in mind!
I want to see how it works! I want to see if classes taught this way CAN work! So if you're up for a bit of an experiment & fun, sign up below!
1-hour art journaling class LIVE is $8 - $15 on a sliding what-you-can-afford scale. There is only space for 10 people!
Note: PayPal is being evil to me, so if you'd like to join, please email me for instructions. I'll update this post tomorrow when PayPal's being nice again.
I'm still as tired and slow as a sloth (this only applies to metaphorically sloths) and lying in the middle of my bed. I did a LITTLE art last night, and hope to try for more today.
In my mind, I've painted entire pieces, have cleaned, have caught up on work, have released the e-book sitting on my harddrive. I've edited together my travel vlog and posted to my blog. I've done so much...
...but only in my mind. Apparently, my body dislikes airplane travel, now, and I should be fully recovered in a day or so (I've been resting since Thursday!).
Here's some pretty to tide you over.
Our last vacation guest post! This one, by Violette, is amazing, soulful, and gave me chills. How many of us can relate? How many of us have found our true selves through journaling the blackest of moments? I know this story can be many of ours - mine, yours, Violette's. It truly shows the transformative power of art.
Like many of you I have suffered from depression – depression that at times has been debilitating. No energy, no joy, no happiness - nothing – just black, soul sucking emptiness. I remember one day about 12 years ago or so I was so incredibly depressed I couldn’t drag myself off the floor. I was literally lying on the carpet immobilized. Luckily my room was messy so I had pens and papers lying on the carpet. I reached over, grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and began to draw what I was feeling.
The feeling was that of being a slug. So naturally I drew or rather scratched out a drawing of a slug. Art has always been my “go to” answer to whatever ails me. I just didn’t always know it on a conscious level.
About tweny years ago I found creating something 3-D helped me move through the feelings of grief and sadness – a papier mache dancing cow helped transform the grief. The sensation of slapping on wet pieces of glue drenched paper onto an armature and smoothing it out, hearing the sounds, feeling the feelings and basically channeling the sadness into the cow helped lift my spirits.
I still do suffer from depression and sadness from time to time and when I do I turn to art to help transmute the feelings. Art and particularly art journaling for me has been like an alchemist transmuting baser metals into gold. A couple of years ago during a coaching call my coach asked me to describe what I was feeling. Although I found her probing questions incredibly annoying at the time J they were very helpful in drawing out a detailed image of what I was experiencing.
Black Balloon is what emerged from that session. Black balloon needed to be more than one panel and since I have a cartooning background I felt this format lent itself quite well to the experience of being depressed and floating on a black balloon. I developed a narrative cartoon based on the questions my coach was asking. The most amazing thing is that after completing the piece my sadness and depression had softened and was slowly lifting. AMAZING!
I often draw my gremlin and what he’s saying to me – drawing the gremlin or inner critic kind of takes the wind out of him. As I am able to transform the negative messaging I hear inside my head my drawings of the gremlin shift and change in response to it! Art journaling is amazing therapy and it’s free! Oh my gosh – you can’t get better than that can you?
My art journaling pages are not always about depression, grief and sadness but often embody the message of being true to yourself. Being kind of an eccentric person, living in a purple magic cottage with a giant dragonfly on the front and having driven around town in a painted Glittergirl van for years I have become known as somewhat eccentric. My purple magic cottage even appeared on the show Weird Homes!
When I was a child and teen I desperately tried to fit in, blend in the background and not call any attention to myself. Now I do just the opposite. I’ve noticed the more I attempt to suppress who I truly am the more depression consumes me. The more “I trust my vibes” and go with my offbeat thoughts, ideas and the out-of-leftfield notions the truly happier I become. To be truthful it has not been an easy journey but the spill over affect has been great. By giving myself permission to be who I am I’ve given others permission to do the same. That part of the journey has been the most exciting of all. I am forever grateful to my Muse for the gift of Creativity and for saving my life.
How has art saved you?
Love, Violette
Read more of Violette's adventures at her blog, Violette's Creative Juice. She's truly a kindred spirit!
Hello lovely blog readers! I hope you all are having a great week. I was asked by my dear friend, Samie to do a guest post while she is off on vacation. I was honored that she asked me to share some of my story and my journey through life and art.
While on vacation, I asked a few of my friends to write blog posts for me. I asked for raw stories of the saving grace of art, or those little epiphanies that can change our outlook. I've recieved a few amazing stories, and would like to share one with you today.
I’m tired of waiting for the moment to be right. To find the perfect supplies. To dress up in carefully beautiful I’m An Artist outfits with Artsy-Farty Music on and a perfect bohemian glow shining around me, white curtains blowing in a lusciously clean and bright studio.
I talk a good game about embracing wabi sabi, seeing grace in my goof-ups, finding beauty in the broken—loving REAL life, not the prettied-up version that’s so tempting to polish and post on Facebook and blogs and in my magazine and even preach into my mirror. But it’s still so easy to fall back into stories of not good enough, of be more like her, of comparison and perfection, thinking something in me needs to be different in order to make art beautiful and true.
Enough. I’m here, now. In the mess. In dirty house and grumbling belly and whatever-was-comfortable clothes. Today, now, I decide I NEED this: to unstick the warped door into my studio, to stumble through piles of Forgotten Stuff that Didn’t Fit Anywhere Else, to grab the first art journal I see, to gulp a breath as I glance over Bits of Me Left Behind, to reach a ready hand out and find oil pastel in candy-bright shades. I clutch the goods to me, back out of the too-cluttered-to-work room (with a whispered “I’ll be back. Promise”), and head to the kitchen. I dump the supplies on a folding table and look.
I breathe. Hesitate. Breathe again. I stare at blank page, pick at my nails. No more perfect, right? Just here. Now. The black marker feels right, somehow—so I scribble, without thinking: JUST LET GO. Next, lime green oil pastel finds its way into my hand. Scribble scribble. Glorious. Messy. Yes. Everything else fades. All I see is lime and teal and orange and me. All I feel is joyful squish under fingertips, white paper giving way to color, heart slowing, breath coming easier now. Yes.
Who says beautiful and true can’t be real and honest? What about the wild and free side of me, who so often gets tamped down and combed out and spit-washed and tucked away? She needs to be heard.
It’s time to make mistakes, to play, to delight in the process. It’s time to screw up, royally. It’s time to make some ugly art that somehow still feels beautiful. It’s time to make sh*t because it just feels GOOD. It’s time to get messy, to scribble and “og” (as I called it before I knew the words), to tear and burn and cut and paint and glue and tape and swirl and swish. It’s time to pour out guts and glory on the page (or canvas or cardboard or word or fabric). It’s time to let loose, to give in to the wild side. It’s time to make art because it’s what I do, because art saves me and speaks me and gives me room to Be.
And oh man, it feels gooooood.
Amanda Fall is a joy-seeker and art-maker, blessed beyond belief to create and edit Sprout online magazine. She invites you on a mission to color the world, to seek beauty in the mundane, to practice gratitude, and to celebrate abundant joy in this divinely blessed life. Join the conversation on Facebook, in the pages of Sprout, and at her personal blog Persistent Green.
She is now available as a print in my Etsy shop.
There’s been a book sitting on my bookcase for the better part of the year. It has sat there among others, and I started it, but I never really dove in. I thought I didn’t need it, and thought I’d get back into it when I did. But in the wisdom of as Ze Frank:
When you’re most in need of help you the most vulnerable to bad advice. Probably the best time to read self-help is when you least need it [and can chew on it with a bit of vinegar].
2012 has been a year of changes for me. And while many of these have been amazing, and large, lately, I’ve felt that the greatest barrier to my success has been myself. And as I was flying high on cloud nine, seeing my work pay off after seven years of blogging and making videos and sending in submissions, but I wanted to do more. I knew I needed to change from the inside out. And you might have seen the beginning of this shift when I finally decided to create for the niche that I felt in my heart for so long (and thanks to Alice for letting me know that even if you don’t have a chronic illness, you can still relate to my work and words!).
And so, I pulled down that book; it’d been sent to me by my dear friend Roben-Marie: The Gifts of Imperfection
I know I’m not alone; this knowledge is the driving force behind why I share so much; I want to tell people they’re not alone, that they’re not the only one with FMS or an illness, and that beauty and art can be captured no matter what your background or physical/mental state you’re in. That’s not what tore me open. It was this, her definition of Shame:
Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.
As I read the first few chapters, I felt something shift within me, and all of a sudden, I cried. I cried for all the times I might have shame someone else to make myself feel better. For a long time, whenever I was in pain, I felt so ashamed and disconnected, I felt that the only way I could get anyone to help me was to go for the throat. And I’m not proud of this or saying any of this with pride; but it has to be said. And I’m sorry.
I had already started practicing mindful authenticity and ordinary courage after finishing Brené’s second book, but now I had to re-learn empathy, and how to really connect with others. One helpful thing I’ve been doing is sitting with my emotions instead of simply getting angry or frustrated. I figure out what, exactly, I’m feeling, and why. I now better understand my motivations and am less unsettled about myself, which has me creating more authentic connections and communicating with more empathy.
I remember one afternoon, as I was eating lunch with Becca, completely breaking down into tears. My heart had broken open, and it seemed I had a lot of sorrow and regret to get out before I could even begin to go forward. I spent the day painting, allowing these previously-hidden emotions to come out through my brush. And it’s taken a long time to finish the painting I began that day because it is, in itself, the process.
It is the process of opening yourself up to what you may have done in the past, and remembering to forgive yourself. I think that is so important. Before you do anything else, I want you to sit, in this moment, and forgive yourself for anything you have done recently that you may be ashamed about.
Brenè says the guilt is more motivating than shame. Shame makes us feel less than worthy, less than perfect — makes us feel less, period. And that’s the thing — we are all imperfect. It’s our imperfections and this state of authentic being that we should be celebrating!
So stop trying to make your journal pages, your art, your photos, or your blog perfect! Make them more you. That’s what speaks louder than anything else! It is that essence of personality, of a person truly trying to connect with others, that will bring people back for more.
(At least I’m hoping that’s the way it works!)
So this painting was the process of me cracking opening open and sobbing with my friend, sobbing while driving home. I love the message I got from my mother and daughter who said they are looking forward to this painting being available for them to have on those days when the pain is too much and they need something to allow them to be. I had to pause in dictation; I just started to tear up and cry.
I am by no means finished with the book, and my copy looks more like a high schooler’s copy of Catcher in the Rye, full of annotations they’ve been forced to make by English teachers, than that of a twenty-something woman reading to better herself. I’ve been reading with highlighters and pens in bed at night because I see more than just a book for me. I’m reading now more for my tribe, my community of artists and followers. Listen to this quote, and see how someone with a chronic illness may respond to reading this:
We equate more ability with weakness, and, in our culture, there are very few things we abhore more than weakness.
I know a lot of you who read my work have illnesses, and you may be ashamed of yourself, and your weakness. And I want you to look at this painting and take her message to heart: for your protection immediately forgive yourself.
And then go create something beautiful, if only for five minutes, today.
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Grab her in my Etsy shop, or browse all my other paintings now availiable (a few originals are left; contact me if you're interested!).