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!

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!

This is the collage i created while at the Chill and Spill Intensive training.  Now I’m not really happy with it because it doesn’t look “pretty” or cool.  I was hung up on it looking nice however during the training the facilitator kept emphasizing that it’s not about the end product but it’s about the process and what you learn about yourself in the creation of the piece. I thought it was pretty funny that i was hung up on the finished product being an artist. This was like “speed collaging” – we had a short time to find images and create a collage – it was all practise for when we work with youth in a limited time setting.  We basically went through some of the projects in the book so that we would know what it would be like for the youth we are working with.

I am tempted to go back in and polish off this collage – it’s supposed to represent “Powerful”. The woman in the collage has a chair for a head (don’t ask why – I’m still trying to figure it out).  She has 4 arms – the cards represent that we can choose the life we want, the ring in on hand is the “brass ring”, the hammer is strength, the hand with the palmistry line represents what you come into the world with (however i believe you can change your destiny). 

Often when you are creating a collage you intuitively grab images that you are drawn to but don’t know why.  Often the meaning comes to you later on.  The image of the bird and the violinist came as a pleasant surprise to me – they both wanted to be on the torso.  Essentially they are about “letting your song out” – don’t die with the song still inside of you! 

If anyone has any idea about the orange chair for a head maybe you can let me know – I’m still puzzled about that one .

"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so ? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Congratulations to Nici and DaisyJane!!!!!!  YAY!!!!!!  You have each won a copy of the Teens Dream Journal DVD!

I am moved and impressed by your stories and the advice you wish you had been given as a teen.  Do check the comments out if you have not already done so.  Thank you so much to all of you for having entered the contest! You can still grab a copy of the DVD here.

The Art with Heart Chill and Spill Intensive training was awesome – I was so impressed with the level of organization, the fabulous kits we received and how the presentation was handled – the organizers thought of everything.  Annie McCall– the therapist who facilitated the 1 1/2 day workshop was very thorough.  She was a great “model” teaching us a number of techniques, teach back opportunities and group discussions. I would highly recommend this training to anyone who is working with at risk youth and want to utilize the guided journal Chill and Spill. 

The above photo is of Steffanie Lorig the founder and director of Art with Heart. She’s demonstrating collaging techniques and fun painted backgrounds. I really enjoyed taking part in this hands on project – it was the messiest project we worked on and i loved it .  Most of them were pretty neat and tidy – we used pens and coloured felt pens in our books, some of the projects were writing exercises.

We had a variety of refreshments to enjoy throughout the training. 

If you are unable to attend a training but want to use the books that Art with Heart have created then you can order them online – i have all of them! They would be awesome for therapists, youth workers, school counsellors, community rec workers, hospital rec workers, hospice volunteers, workers at transition houses etc.

In the building where Art with Heart is located there hung a large triptych on the wall that was absolutely stunning – i was inspired by it and didn’t want to forget about it so snapped a quick photo.  You just never know how you might be influenced by a piece of art.  Notice the cut out piece of the bear’s face?  So cool!  

I was staying at a hotel right next to the Artfest Annex in a sketchy part of town so i did not venture out too much on my own in the evening however the first night my art friends Jenny and Kym met me and we went out for Vietnamese food and art journaling!  Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out how to download a few pics from my phone so i can show them to you tomorrow.  I spent over 2 hours creating a two page spread for Jenny before and after we ate – fun stuff!