My Pinterest Art Journal board. I call it “Art Journal Love”.  If you have not already discovered Pinterest – hop on over and check it out.  I think you’ll fall in love with it and the possibilities. Pinterest is a social  media site like twitter and facebook however it’s a virtual bulletin board which houses your favourite images on the net. My favourite board is my art journal board.  I go there for inspiration and sometimes to watch a few tutorials too that have been pinned.  If you are getting married or having a baby you can create a board just for those occasions to give you ideas for the event, furniture or clothing you love and more!  If you have a dream of buying a funky trailer one day well you could create a “trailer board”.  

I have a favourite’s list on my computer however i never use it – it’s grown so big and cumbersome that i don’t even know what’s on there.  Now i use Pinterest or Evernote to capture images or in evernote’s case to store articles and recipes that i like. 

I visited my grandson Cillian on Sunday and had such fun holding the sweet little guy – he’s almost 3 weeks old.  While holding him i saw the position of his wee hands and they looked so precious.  I asked my stepdad to quickly take a photo.  I plan on putting the image of Cillian’s hands in a collage – not exactly sure what I’ll do with them but something will come to me .

Gosh – there is so much inspiration all around us that we will NEVER run out of ideas for creative self-expression.

I won’t be blogging tomorrow as I’ll be co-facilitating a workshop with teens tomorrow morning.

See you on Thursday morning!

This was my table at the convention – not too fancy but it was okay – i didn’t want to over fill the table.  I wanted to showcase the Teens Dream Journal DVD.

I taught a Dream Journaling class – a very quick one – 70 minutes which meant the participants had less than one hour to create collaged journal pages . The participants had fun getting messy though.

Here is Lois enjoying stencilling.

Aren’t these pages looking great?  The Stencil on the pink background is from Artistcellar.  The participants loved the artistcellar stencils.

We had one gentleman in the class – i later found out he was a photographer.  I wonder what he thought of art journaling.

I really love how this background turned out!  Unfortunately towards the end of the class everyone was hurrying up to complete their pages that i didn’t have time to take photos of the collaged people.  I had to quickly clean up to relieve the two students who were manning my booth for me.

The two day conference was not as well attended as it had been 2 years ago so there were only about 70 or 80 people – mostly art teachers.  I didn’t make enough money to cover the cost of my booth as i also donated two items.  But i did meet many lovely people and received some great feedback from a few teachers about what their teens like and don’t like.  A couple of women i met might come by the magic cottage for a visit and to pick up a copy or two of my Teens Dream Journal DVD.  I didn’t take MasterCard or debit cards so I’m sure that prevented a couple of sales from happening. I did pick up a few brochures from other vendors and may follow up on teaching opportunities as well as applying for a possible grant.  Nothing ventured nothing gained eh?

I think you can always learn something from every situation whether you deem it successful or not.

In preparation for the B.C. Art Teachers Conference tomorrow I had Mr. G cut down the legs of an unfinished tall table and then add a couple of 2 x 4’s for a chair back. This is what the sign will be standing on – hopefully to attract the attention of passerby’s so they’ll stop by my booth. I don’t have a banner or anything.

I bought an inexpensive canvas with a peace sign on it so i could do a mixed media collage on top of it.

Here it is with the chair painted chartreuse! You can see a tiny bit of the peace sign showing through.

I had fun with old book text, tickets, Chinese writing (which was totally obliterated), mark making and drippage.  I also added a piece of lace for added dimension.

As you can see i created a spiral for raised interested and added some sequin stars.

Set design or visual presentation are not my forte – i don’t really enjoy doing it. Some folks like my sister Linda Heagle of Twisted Sister’s Design really likes it and is very talented at creating cool environments. Linda can easily walk into a room and within minutes can tell you what to do to make the environment more interesting, spacious or colourful.  She’s had the ability since she was a teen.

What i did have fun at was creating the mixed media piece.  I had to keep reminding myself to not take too long doing it since there were other pressing matters to attend to – like in the next few minutes I’m off to do a whole bunch of copying, running around picking up my journal, getting supplies, float money etc. . When i get that all done i need to create a mock up on my kitchen table to see if everything fits.

A Postcard Swap!

The wonderfully talented artist iHanna is hosting a fabulous postcard swap on her blog – do hop on over and check it out!  The Swaps slogan is: Connect, share and spread creativity into the world! I won’t have time to take part however I just wanted to pass along this wonderful opportunity to you!  Enjoy!

I won’t be blogging tomorrow as I’ll be getting up super duper early to attend the Conference in Vancouver but I’ll see you Monday and tell you all about it!  Have a lovely weekend.

Do you remember I was talking about the sample book i was creating to leave with one of the Learning Centers for Teens?  Well here are a couple of pages i created for it. The above image is a stencil of a crow – next to it is a fantasy face.

This is a funk-i-fied image of me a la Teesha Moore.  You can definitely see the Teesha Moore influence here.  I thought the Teens would really enjoy creating an art journal page like this of themselves.

On Friday and Saturday i have a booth at the BC Art Teachers Conference – I’ll be selling my Teens Dream Journal DVD’s and my book Journal Bliss as well as some necklaces. I’ll also be presenting a short workshop on art journaling. My i-pad will really come in handy at my booth as I have the short intro video to the DVD workshop loaded up on there so i can show interested attendees what the DVD is all about. Since I don’t have a banner for my booth I am creating a simple display to get people’s attention as they pass by. I’ll show you what I’ve been up to tomorrow.

Did you get the chance to watch the video i spoke about on my blog yesterday and did you create your own Vision of your future Dreams?  I think there was quite a bit of interest there. Drawing your dreams is powerful stuff – it’s like you are drawing your desires closer to you as long as you infuse the drawing with colour and emotion.  This is basic Law of Attraction material.  For us Visual folks we GET THINGS much more easily if it’s delivered to us in a visual format.  Just like Dream boards that we post somewhere we can constantly see, posting your “Drawing your Dreams” illustration can help you manifest your Vision.

If you build it they will come – you just have to get out there and TAKE ACTION !

See you tomorrow!

After watching Patti Dobrowolski’s TEDxRanier presentation – Draw your Future I was motivated to draw my own future.

I had Mr. G take this picture outside in the rain – it’s a bit dark – i was in the covered area of the deck. I am still going to add some details to the page.

Patti talks about how visual we are and that creating a visual representation of our dreams helps make them more real.  By drawing our “current state” and our “Desired new Reality” you have a roadmap for change. I’ve always been a huge advocate for developing templates, roadmaps or mind maps to better understand concepts and ideas so this is really up my alley.  I hope you are inspired to create your own Drawing of your Desired Reality.  Patti has a template you can download from her website if you like to start somewhere however it really is not difficult to draw a simple drawing such as this one – you don’t even have to be an artist to do it.

Fill your drawing with colour and emotion to make it more real.  I have my drawing on the flipchart standing in the Living room. I’m sure Mr. G REALLY appreciates that. 

I’m so excited about the process Patti lays out for us that I’ve ordered her book “Drawing Solutions: How visual goal setting will change your life”.

I know that these techniques and the techniques i learned from the Graphic Recording workshop i took last summer will help me in my work with Teens.

What are you doing to realize your dreams?

I was very excited to be asked by Patricia Mosca to review her upcoming book Permission Slips for your Heart and Soul. This book is being published by STORY PEOPLE.  If you don’t know what Story People is all about do check them out – they create wonderful art, books and artful products that will bring joy to your heart.  Patricia’s book falls under the same category. Her whimsical illustrations will delight you and the accompanying text for each of the 52 Permission slips will feed your spirit or the spirit of someone special who is in need of permission. 

I first heard about Permission slips when i was in Elementary School many moons ago.  You received a permission slip to be in the hall because you were on some sort of mission – i can’t remember exactly what it was since i never had a permission slip but always wanted one . The next time I heard about Permission slips was from Sark in either the book Inspiration Sandwich or Creative Companion.

It was very liberating to feel that i had permission to do what my heart was telling me to do!  Now Patricia has created an entire book full of permission slips you can cut out and pin up on your bulletin board or send to a dear friend. 

Here is just one example in the book:

“Let it GO Day”

- “Let IT GO” Let go of the parts of the past that serve you no purpose. Let go of the people who drain your energy.  It will feel like a big rock has been lifted off you……”

I believe Patricia’s book will be released in April – I’ll let you know as soon as i hear or keep checking here.  In the meantime I plan on cutting out pages from my book, posting them up for inspiration and mailing a few to my girlfriends who could use a permission or two to follow their heart!