Catching Dreams and Lighting the Campfire...

I was at a one-day session for women at a local state park the other weekend, and while the yoga session was sort-of a fail for a number of reasons, the kayak lesson and the boat tour of the lake re-affirmed my desire to take up kayaking!

But what made me come back here to this blog, and has me thinking about the importance of posting here regularly -- and what made me change up my blog name - was my last session of the day.

We met in a pavilion to make dream catchers. And while admittedly the instructions were a little vague... the women at my table just kept saying "I don't get it. I'm not creative."

And that made me sad. My poor little dream catcher was, well, catch as catch can ... but at least I finished it. The women around me couldn't seem to get past that story they were telling themselves ... or that others had told them ... that they weren't creative, and so crafting wasn't for them.

So sad.

And I get it. I do. All my life I told myself that I couldn't draw. I still don't think I'm that great at it, but last July I started a daily drawing practice (or an every couple of days drawing practice, let's be real). And I started posting those drawing to Facebook and the reception has been overwhelmingly positive. I have friends stop me all the time and tell me how much they like seeing my little sketches. Which frankly blows my mind.

All of which makes me want to encourage creativity in any way I can. And maybe by sharing my efforts, I can help in some small way. So let's gather around the creative campfire and tell each other stories of success and hope, not failure.

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”― Vincent van Gogh 

The newest obsession

Three days in and I'm completely obsessed with my faux Hobonichi. I've watched endless flip-through videos on YouTube and have stalked Pinterest and the internet at large. I get so obsessed with things!

While I'd really like to try out the Tomoe River paper in a Hobonichi, the ever popular Miquelruis grid journal will do for now. Actually it's taking the watercolor pretty well. There's bleed through if I get too heavy-handed with the water, but crinkles and splodges don't really bother me that much. And I have bookmarked a few places where I can get paper samples, so maybe I can get a few sheets when next to have a few splurge dollars and see that the fuss is about!

I did opt for the 100 page version of the Miquelruis as my squirrel mind would never be able to put a whole year in one of those 300 page versions. I love the idea of that, but I just know I wouldn't last through that many pages. Proof of squirrel mind ... after only three days I'm already thinking about changes to make! I've lined off and stamped out dates for a page a day for the whole month of July, but I can already tell that next month I might not bother and just date stamp the pages. That way if I have more writing or more images than one page will hold I can adapt as I go.

Which is where I laugh at myself as one of the things I was drawn to about the real Hobonichi is that page a day format. And as soon as I start using that I want to change things up. (See the day three entry under "my brain is an arsehole.") And I've been wondering if when I finish this book I shouldn't just use loose pages and keep them in a ring binder. Having lots of thoughts about that today. But we'll see how it goes.

I'm totally in love with the way the first pages have come out. I've been telling myself for years (decades?) that I'm not a natural artist. And let's face it, I'm not. But I'm crazy proud of the few drawings I've done here. I'm trying to give myself permission to just do something that is at least recognizable, and try and ignore the perfection monsters in my head who like to shout things like "that's so not what that thing looks like stupid!" SHUSH MONSTERS!

Footnotes:
Hobonichi website
Miss Vickie Bee's super inspirational DIY Hobonichi video
Dinglydellification keeping it real and just having fun with this kind of journaling!

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Doing it anyway.

I was tired. I was cold. I just wasn't into it. But I made myself sit down and crank out collage #3 for my dreams class. The journaling/sharing had been done on Facebook earlier in the day. Raw painful truths unearthed. And I feel like this little collage honors that. At any rate it's pretty. 

I need a better set up for photographing these, but I do what I can with dodgy lighting and my iPhone. 

Scrapbook paper scraps glued and sewed to some watercolor paper, covered with layers of gesso (both random and through a stencil) and a variety of mists and watercolor. I'm addicted lately to sticking thread (I'm using very fine crochet thread I thrifted mostly) in bundles behind my focal image lately. 

The real struggle is knowing when to stop the "add color" "take color away with gesso" dance. 

Still on the hunt for my watercolor crayons, but making do with an exceedingly cheap set of watercolors ! 

Dream away

I'm currently taking an online class about encouraging your dreams, and as I was feeling a need to get back to something akin to art journaling, I've been making collages to go along with the daily class prompts. So much fun to get my fingers inky and painty. Now if I could only figure out where in the house I lost/left my watercolor crayons...

Day #1

Day #2

Planner Fun!

I recently switched up my planner yet again into a half-size three ring binger, and I'm loving the flexibility of it so far! I can have my monthly calendar, and then daily planner pages, daily to do's (mostly for work), daily journaling, and add in any other bits I feel like. So yesterday I took some scrap flannel and a couple of older fabric collages and made a cover for my little three-ring-binder-brain! That pink and blue floral flannel is just the cutest now isn't it?!

Now to work on pretty-ing up the insides a bit more!

A little weekend inspiration in honor of the new moon

We made the paper!

Not the actual local paper, but one from a nearby town. And just look at these lovely goofballs I get to spend my playtime with!