Art Journaling Workshop

On Saturday I attended an art journaling workshop at Tranquil Space yoga studio in DC. Carolyn was in town and Valerie was going, so it was the perfect time to give it a try! I was a little bit apprehensive about cutting my magazines up and making a mess (thank you, neat freak tendencies!) but that soon went out the window. Kimberly encouraged us to start in the middle of our journals and to tear out images rather than cut them out. She also provided some prompts and lots of ephemera for us to play with. I spent most of the time finding images that spoke to me and getting them on the page instead of writing. However, when I got home on Saturday night, I immediately found more images, got to pasting and added in some writing. I'm afraid this workshop has created a monster! Here are some of my pages:

My ideal weekly calendar. I blocked out work time in pretty colors so all the time dedicated to that was less jarring. Essentially, an ideal weekday would be working out in the morning, followed by a healthy breakfast or a green smoothie, shower and work. After work time would be dedicated to cooking healthy meals and eating dinner with Jesse, yoga, journaling, blogging, reading and catching up with friends and family. Instead of nailing down a weekend schedule, I made a list of things I'd love to spend my weekends doing, which includes sleeping in, going to the farmers' market, reading, road trips, exercise, cooking and baking, etc.

I got on a muted colors kick for quite some time.

I'm not sure what I will do with this page, but I like the layers and love that, thanks to the Oprah magazine issue on poetry, I was able to title it "One Wild and Precious Life".

I loved the soft colors and dreamy quality of these ones. I filled in the spaces between the images with quotes that I like.

One of the prompts Kimberly gave was to find a large image and write over it with a Sharpie marker, responding to this: "Lately, I've been feeling...." I LOVED this! I even went through last night and found a few more large images to get into my journal for later writing. Something about writing over an image feels bold, creative and powerful. It also helped me overcome the writer's block I've been feeling lately.

After the workshop, I headed to Cafe Green with Valerie and Carolyn to catch up (and Carol met up with us too!) and have a late lunch, which you can read more about on Valerie's blog. A perfect Saturday indeed!

The Joy Diet: Creativity

I admit that when I saw that this week's menu item from The Joy Diet was creativity, I had thoughts of coloring, stickers, glue and modge podge.  I was a little disappointed when I saw what Martha Beck really had in mind.

I tried to think of at least ten innovative solutions to problems I had or decisions I had to make.  And then ten more after that.  The problem for indecisive people like myself is that the more options you think of, the harder it is to pick one.

Then I moved on to "perservate on your enemy", or, in human speak, thinking of things you dislike about your enemy and seeing if it might be a quality you either need or already have.  I have very few enemies but I sincerely hope I do not have the qualities of the people I dislike.  This exercise did not sit well with me, which I realize was precisely the point, but I kept moving along to the others.

Another interesting exercise was to "unify false dichotomies", or to think of things you believe you can't possibly do or be at the same time and see if there is a way to bring them together.  This was one of those things where I know it is useful but I think the results need more than a week to manifest.                

The odd thing is that the easiest one--to do one thing differently--was the one I did not attempt this week.  

My favorite part of this week?  When Beck said, "Uncomfortable truth #1: You are always responsible for creating your life, whether you like it or not."

I think this week taught me to be easy on myself and to let some of Beck's ideas simmer.  I can't expect answers in seven days.

{Photo credit: laffy4k}                                                                                                                        

Creative destruction.

Two nights ago in my Survey of International Economics course we discussed the principle of creative destruction. While we discussed it in terms of what it means in a free market system, I started thinking about it in other ways, such as how sometimes what seems like ruin actually has benefits. There's also the fact that sometimes you have to (figuratively, of course) burn the whole house down before you can begin again.

I find that's often the case with writing. I would imagine it applies to other creative outlets as well. It takes a lot of courage to do away with something you've created, but it can be done in a way that doesn't hinder, and may actually help, the process itself.

It also made me think of this book, which I don't have but I have heard good things about.

I find creative destruction to be beautifully liberating when it is applied to life in general. I have a hard time letting go of something I've created or worked on, so this was a good reminder. There is definitely something to the "out of the ashes rises the phoenix" concept.


{Photo credit: kh2rac}