Why you should be Art journaling (with me)

On Wednesday, four lovely ladies gathered around my table to discover the magic of art journaling.

To an onlooker, someone who hasn't heard of art journaling or doesn't understand what art journaling is, these photos may look as if we are just doing kids' stuff: playing with stencils, glueing and sticking, a bit of doodling, playing with paper, collage, throwing a bit of paint around, playing (there's that word again) with some art materials (OMG are those felt pens?) and drinking coffee.

Well, we did all of those things and we did drink coffee and herb tea, while eating almonds and Cadbury's chocolate.

But the key words are 'kids' stuff' and 'playing'.  They are UTMOST important.  Art journaling invites your inner child out to play.

Which is in itself incredibly powerful. And if that was all that art journaling did, that would be enough. When did your inner child last come out and run round the playground shouting and screaming for the sheer joy of it? Choosing yummy textured paper to use for collage or pushing around gloriously coloured paint does just that, if a little more quietly. 

Art journaling lets us explore our creativity like we're a child again.  

In fact, art journaling lets us explore our creativity. Full stop. When I was re-connecting with my creative self after many years of zero creative activity, art journaling was the main method I used to reconnect with the muse.     

But art journaling goes even deeper than that.  Art journaling is soul work.  Deep soul work.

When I asked these wonderful women to dig deep and answer some journaling prompts, they replied with such passion and enthusiasm you could feel the energy sizzling off the pages.

Your art journal gives you a safe space to spill your questions and feelings, your deepest thoughts, your doubts and your fears.  It's a place to face your gremlins but also to celebrate your blessings and all you are grateful for.  It is a place to explore who you are.  

Other things you need to know about art journaling:

Art journaling opens up the channel to the secret messages from the Universe.  Are you listening to the whispers? This magical tool will help... 

An art journal is also the most powerful tool I know for manifestation of dreams and desires... Bring on the magic...

There are no rules for art journaling - except that there are no rules...

Is the sky blue?  No, it's orange or purple or green.  Actually there is no sky, here in my art journal I'm outside of time and space today.  Which is another thing art journaling does - it puts you in the moment and allows you to be part of the flow.  

And being part of the flow is making your own connection to Source - wherein lies the joy.

Create art (journals); create happiness... (Did you see what I did there?)

Are you an art journaler? Are you already partaking of the magic?  Yay! 

Or are you yearning to be creative and don't know where to start?

Do you need some direction?  A little step up and a helping hand while you do?

I'm creating a series of online workshops for 2014 including at least one on art journaling.  If you are interested please leave me a note in the comments box below or hit reply and send me an email.

There will also be more in person workshops if you live in the North East of England.

Sign up for the newsletter to make sure you're kept in the loop.

AND as you may already know I'm going to be a tutor in the 21 Secrets art journal playground in 2014. Read more about my own Glorious Goddess art journal workshop for 21 secrets here. 

I'm off to play in my own journal - I have goddesses and an inner child to keep happy... 

From my heart to yours

Rachel xox

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Art Every day month #aedm2013

It's Friday and for me that means a day in the studio painting.  It's also November and that means it's Art Every Day Month.  We're already a week in, but if you haven't started yet you can start anytime.

I've been working in my journal in preparation for my Glorious Goddess workshop on 21 Secrets 2014. And I've been posting on IG and FB with the hashtag #goddessjournal so if you like, you can see all the goddess pages together.  

You can join in #AEDM any way you like - a page a day in your art journal, a painting a day if you feel so inspired, making art with your kids, baking a cake, knitting, a photo for IG, writing a poem - whatever you have time for in your busy schedule.  And if you miss a day (I missed a couple this week) it really doesn't matter.  It's just a gentle reminder that we can be creative every day even for just 10 minutes to doodle in the coffee shop or while you're on the phone to your friend or like today, spending a good chunk of time with the paint.

AEDM links in nicely with my last post about Maintaining Creativity - if you're looking for some peer support and a creative tribe to join for a few weeks, this could be it.

Five ways you might be creative every day: 

• Junk mail journalling once the mail arrives
• a doodle with your morning coffee (journaling in the coffee shop seems to be a trend)
• blind contour drawing your workmates at lunchtime
• a scheduled art date - gallery visit, art material shopping (one of my favourites) or getting together with friends to make art
• full on journaling in the evening 

Once you've created your piece  of art, you can share online on your blog, on IG, FB and Twitter using the hashtags #aedm and #aedm2013 - or don't share at all, just know that you have honoured your creativity for another day.

Art Every Day Month is hosted by lovely Leah Piken Kolidas over at Creative Every Day - for more info just follow the link.

There's been a bit of a blue and green theme going on the last couple of days - seems like lots of healing on the green ray for the heart and general balancing is what's needed around here.  Are you interested in the effect colour has on us? On our physical and emotional being?  

Would you like to know more about colour for healing through art?  Using your journal as a safe and sacred space to do this?

I am putting together ideas for online courses for next year and would love to know what you think.  

Please leave me a note in the comments box below or contact me  and let me know.

From my heart to yours

Rachel xox

maintaining creativity

There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time this expression is unique. and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it! It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.' 

 Martha Graham

Did you keep your creative channel open this week? Life got in the way for me; some of it was good stuff - catching up with friends, writing a new holistic therapy course .... some of it routine - admin for the business, running errands - but somehow it transpired that four days passed without my getting into the studio :-(  By day four I was feeling a bit desperate and determined that I would spend a good chunk of my next day painting.  

Yes, desperate... I recently attended a workshop about developing my practice and we had to do a 'speed dating' exercise.  We had to introduce ourselves by saying who we were, what we did and WHY we did it.  I found myself saying over and over again that the reason I made art was because I had to and that if I didn't I got depressed.  I said that making art is a fundamental part of me and that to not make art is to deny that part of my self.  (I should know, I denied it for over 25 years - you can read more about that here.)  What was interesting (although not surprising) is that most people were saying pretty much the same thing. 

So how do we maintain creativity?  If we have other lives to lead, jobs to go to, businesses to run - how do we maintain our commitment to our creative soul? 

I know other people have written about this but one of my favourite writers is Austin Kleon in his little book 'Steal Like an Artist'.  He recommends keeping a calendar and a logbook.  The calendar means that you book your creative time in with yourself and the logbook records what you've achieved.  I have my own version of this; it's my 'to do list'. I log in that I want to 'paint every day' when I set my objectives for the week.  Sometimes it doesn't happen, most times it does.  A good week has lots of ticks :-)  (I like to walk every day too - looks like it didn't happen this week...)

Austin Kleon also says 'Writing a page a day doesn't seem like much, but if you do it for 365 days you have enough to fill a novel.'  It's the same with my painting - maybe I can only do an hour or two a day, and on some lucky days I can be there for 3 or 4 hours but those hours add up and this routine maintains my creativity.

So after my four days away, I made a commitment to myself to get back in there.  The little paintings in this post are the result of a great afternoon in the studio.  They're not finished - they're works in progress - but I feel full, I feel fed and satisfied.  My soul feels replete.

I have to show up, I have to turn up every day I can at my desk and do the work.  At the beginning of the day, I earmark the studio time.  Book an hour in your day, book a day in your week - whatever works for you.  Don'f feel guilty about it if you don't turn up, but ask yourself this - if you booked a lunch date with your best friend and you didn't show, how would she feel?  If you book your art date with your creative self and you don't turn up, how is she feeling right now? (Sorry, that is pretty guilt loaded, but I just know so well what happened and what happens if I do this to myself.)

How do you maintain your creativity? Does it feel like hard work, or is it a necessity? What strategies do you use? Do you show up every day, once a week? I'd love to hear from you.

From my creative heart to yours

Rachel xox

ps just a little reminder that I am teaching on 21 Secrets 2014.  You can read more about my Glorious Goddess workshop here

Transformation and transmutation

I've been journaling about letting go. Again. All this year it seems, I've been letting go of fear; letting go of old, deep seated anxieties of not being good enough; letting go of the fear of being my true self.

But in the letting go there is always something new ready to rush in. If we let go of something we create a vacuum and a vacuum cannot exist; nature abhors a vacuum - it needs to be filled. So, my journaling is not just about the letting go, it's about the new states of my being that are flowing in to replace the old skin I am shedding, the skin that no longer fits.

As I journal on my pages, the positive energy comes in on a gentle wave. The process is one of marvellous transformation. The writing transmutes the dark feelings as fear becomes excitement, the uncertainty a knowing and the hidden emerging into the light.

This is a process which works for me every time. Sure, I need to come back to it again and again. My patterns are old and I need time to change them (and the opportunity to work on them again and again) - there are layers and layers of change to sift through. But each time I sit with my paint and pens I find that joy, I find that light.

As I write my Glorious Goddess course for 21 Secrets 2014 I have to face my dread of seeing myself on video (eek!) and hearing my own voice (meh). Connie's invitation has forced me to confront these issues of self acceptance. It's big stuff...and requires lots of journaling...

Are you transmuting some dark matter as we move towards the winter months? How are you dealing with your own transformation? Perhaps the shifts are gentle, maybe they're pretty seismic like mine :-)

Whatever is in your alchemist's crucible, let it be there, let it transform, let yourself transform dear one...

From my heart to yours
Rachel xox

ps there are two more days of my Etsy birthday sale and you can sign up for 21 Secrets 2014 here

proud to be teaching on 21 Secrets 2014

YAY! I am more than excited to tell you that I am going to be teaching on 21 Secrets 2014!!!!

This is the big news I have wanted to share with you the past few weeks but couldn't until the official launch date which is today!

21 SECRETS is an annual online art journaling workshop, facilitated by Connie Hozvicka over at Dirty Footprints Studio.  It features 21 talented, passionate artists that share a different technique, approach, or method of art journaling that is special to them.  

I took part in 21 Secrets as a student in 2011 and 2012.  It opened me up to so many different teachers and so many different styles of journalling - a delicious feast of journaling!! 

And next year, I will be one of those 21 artists waiting to work with you...

There I am in the middle on the bottom row!! (Can you tell how excited I am?!)

My workshop Glorious Goddess will be one of 21 gorgeous, soulful journaling workshops which you can sign up for here

My Glorious Goddess workshop will help you to reconnect, reclaim, and release your inner goddess. Through guided meditation and some of my favorite art journaling techniques, I will guide you into creating your own Goddess pages. I have worked spiritually and creatively with the Goddess energy for many years now and my art work is about the joy I experience when I make that connection. I’d love to work with you to help you make your own connection.  Absolutely no art experience is necessary.

The workshops are not live until 1st April 2014 but the sooner you enrol, the more money you save as there are lots of early bird savings to be grabbed. To sign up, just hop over here

So looking forward to seeing you next year in 21 Secrets 2014

From my heart to yours

Rachel xox

(ps you may have noticed all the links to 21 Secrets 2014.  These use an affiliate code meaning that each teacher has their own code and receives a small reward for each sale they refer through the link)