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.

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!

Jenny and Kym at the Tamarind Tree restaurant in Seattle.  I met up with them in Seattle and had a lovely Vietnamese dinner.  As you can see Jenny was creating one of her fantastic doodles during dinner!

Here are some doodles Jenny made into postcards.  Aren’t they awesome?  She traded some of them at the PLAY retreat.

Jenny had bought a beautiful handmade book which she asked participants in the PLAY retreat and Jane Davenport’s class to draw in and leave a few words of wisdom. I was honoured to be asked to leave my mark in this gorgeous book!

At this point i wasn’t quite finished yet – i still added more words to the page and shaded behind the woman so she would stand out better.  I spent two hours drawing while visiting before and after dinner – it was so much fun!

Ordinarily when i got out for dinner with Mr. G we just eat and chat and are finished in one hour.  I think it’s fun to go out once in a while with your art friends and take the time to create while visiting!

Remember if you would like to order a Teens Dream Journal DVD for yourself or a special teen in your life I still have lots in stock! 

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend.  I plan on visiting my newest little grandson Cillian – should be fun!

I am thrilled with the comments you have been leaving for the Teens Dream Journal DVD giveaway! If you have not already done so please leave a comment on yesterday’s post  in order to be entered to win a prize!  The question i posed was:

 What do you wish you had known as a teen that would have made your life so much better?

In the above illustration I basically talk about the advice i would give to a 20 year younger me.  I think this is a good exercise for anyone to do.  We all possess an inner wisdom – imagine if you could conjure up that wisdom to help you through the “present” bumps we encounter? As usual i LOVE to draw – especially the “crones” so naturally i drew a funky character but you could easily use a photo of yourself that you doctor up or even use a magazine image that you enhance.  Just find an image of a person that is 20 years older than you and cut it out.  You could paste on some larger funky sunglasses, add a hat or anything you can imagine to personalize the portrait. Now tap into that wisdom and ask yourself a question about something that is troubling you now.  Get quiet and wait for the wisdom to come forth.

Where do you get your ideas and inspiration from?

Check out this incredibly COOL Wine Label from Bear Flag Wines! I actually looked like a cartoon character when i came upon this bottle of wine dust billowing out behind my skidding feet…….i was zipping along in the liquor store looking for a bottle of wine when i quickly stopped in my tracks when I spied this label.  I thought to myself –

 “What the heck is an art journal page doing on a bottle of wine?”

Naturally i HAD to buy the bottle (just for the label) even though it wasn’t the kind of white wine i drink and it was 3 dollars over my happy number for wine .  The red wine label was EVEN cooler than the white wine label however I’m not a big fan of red wine. Eduardo Bertone is the artist who designed the labels. His art is so amazing and versatile.  As you can see he’s used stencilling, textured backgrounds, sketching, splotching and lettering to create this amazing label.

I am often asked where my inspiration comes from – well pretty much everywhere if you open your eyes. Even a boring liquor store can inspire you.  Another place of inspiration are store windows – some of them are super duper creative and can inform your journal pages! Just think how you can incorporate some elements into your next art project.  The sky is indeed the limit!

Attention: Teens, tweens, college students (and those who love them)……

• Have you ever felt like no one understands you?
• Do you wish you could feel better about yourself, more confident?
• Does it seem like everything inside of you is crashing down around you?

If you’ve ever felt this way, I understand.

My name is Violette and I often felt like this when I was a teenager.
I wondered why I felt this way when others didn’t seem to. I looked for answers for a very long time.

At first, I searched far and wide for people who would ‘get me’ because my family didn’t understand me. This was hard because we moved to Canada from Morocco when I was four and English was a second language. Our family wasn’t like other families. This all added up to me feeling SO alone!

Later, as I grew older, I tried doing things that promised to help me feel better. At 14, I tried transcendental meditation, but that didn’t last very long. I moved on to workshops. I read books about happiness. In fact, I had the LARGEST self-help library of any teenager I knew.
I tried SO many things!

But, it seemed like no matter what I tried, within a few days, I would feel just like I always had – insecure, afraid, different than other people, and not good enough.

One day, MANY years later, I felt like I might be able to get these feelings out of me by painting them. I began to journal through drawing and clipping pictures instead of only writing how I felt, which sometimes led me to feel even worse about myself or even more confused! Somehow journaling in this way allowed me to get the feelings out and feel better when I was finished – even when I journaled my saddest thoughts!

I knew something magical was happening when I began to feel better about myself and my life.

And, then this magical something jumped into my life!

I began to try new things. I began to meet people who ‘got’ me. I began to do things I had only dreamed of doing. I began to experience new adventures. I also started to feel much happier. The more I journaled my dreams through art, I found THE MOST IMPORTANT discovery of all, and it’s this: the ONE person who needed to understand me and my dreams is ME!

I spent all of my teenage years feeling like I didn’t fit in and couldn’t follow my dreams. I used much of my early adult life chasing after my dreams and trying to figure out who I was.

Now, I live my dreams and I inspire others to live their dreams, too.

This is what inspired me to create the Teen Dream Journal Workshop. I want you to spend more of your life living it, having fun, exploring what you want and feeling good about who you are. I want to introduce you to the tool that unleashed all of this for me – and more! I want to introduce you to YOU – the inner you that is smart, funny, creative, artistic and capable of achieving any dream you can imagine!

In this Teen Dream Journal Workshop, you’ll create a journal that is a perfect snapshot of ‘you’ and will include:

• Favorite quotations,
• A love letter to yourself,
• Silhouette of yourself with words that describe how you feel inside,
• Image transfer of you with qualities that you appreciate about yourself,
• What you love such as foods you love to eat
• Your journal will include only what YOU want to include. In this DVD workshop, I’ll ask you questions that maybe you haven’t even asked yourself! Questions like…
• Where would you like to travel to?
• What you do when you feel sad?
• What kind of super hero you would be?
• Who are your friends?
• And, of course, you can add anything else that is part of your dreams!

The teens I’ve mentored in the past have gone on to go for their dreams. I wish someone would have shared this with me when I was your age! The teenager inside of me is every bit alive and well in this workshop…I remember all too well what it can feel like to feel like you are alone or can’t see how great you really are.

That teenager inside of you who is unsure is right next to the part of you that knows you can do anything, and in your Teen Dream Journal, you’ll be able to discover all of this and more – and you’ll feel more empowered, more confident than you can even imagine!

• Are you ready to feel better about yourself?
• Do you believe your dreams are worth discovering?
• Do you want to change your life in a dramatic way?

If so, join me! GO HERE to find out how you can get your DREAM JOURNAL DVD! Just to let you know this isn’t JUST a 90 minute how to video – it’s also a 45 page e-book/PDF file that you can download and refer back to time and time again!

If you know of any teens or young adults (or maybe EVEN YOU) who might benefit from this DVD please forward this blogpost onto them.  If you could like this on facebook or tweet it on twitter or mention it on your blog I’d be so grateful too! 

CONTEST GIVEAWAY Woo Hoo!

I’ll be giving away 2 DVDs – contest will end next Wednesday February  8 at 8 am PST.  In order to enter the contest please leave a comment letting me know what you had wished you had known as a TEEN that would have made your life so much better!  THANK YOU and Good luck!