Join me for a free creative journaling workshop on Sunday, September 12th! We’ll be trying out some image transfer techniques, including the two demonstrated on this page:
All materials will be provided, except for your own art journal. Click here for more details!
Whew! It’s been a while, but we’ve finally got a fresh new schedule for our FREE creative art journaling workshopping at It’s a Grind in Laguna Hills. We’ll be gathering on Sunday afternoons, now, the second Sunday of the month for the foreseeable future. Here is precise information on the next event:
Join me for an afternoon of exploration, creativity and fun as we use pictures, symbols and design to express our thoughts and dreams. Combine images and words to create a visual map to your own inner landscape, and find new tricks to invigorate your journal writing. No experience required!
Bring Your Own Journal, Sketchbook, Notebook or other Blank Book
Some supplies will be provided, but feel free to bring your own. Recommended: colored pencils, markers, pens, rubber stamps, stickers, decorative paper, glue, scissors, pictures, magazines, watercolors, paintbrushes, hole punches, etc.
I will have a small number of blank journals available for purchase, priced $5-$20 depending on the journal.
I hope we’ll see you there!
It doesn’t look like there were be a creative journaling workshop in Laguna Hills this coming Monday. The hours of the coffee shop have changed, and my contact person there hasn’t returned any of my emails, so I don’t know about rescheduling yet. If you’re interested in attending future workshops, please leave a comment here or send me an email, and I’ll be sure to let you know as future plans are made!
ETA: Developments are in the works, so please stay tuned for schedule info!
Today, I’m thinking about spring.
It’s not far off, now. The rains will mean a brilliant greening of the hills within a few weeks time, and I can’t wait to wander among the canyons and oaks. And wildflowers! We’ll for sure have to plan an expedition to the desert to photograph wildflowers!
I’m also thinking about birds.
They’ve shown up in my current journal a few times, probably because the story I’m working is about a bird who is transformed into a woman. It was a received moderately well at my writers group on Thursday…they liked the writing, I think, but the plot has some major problems, and there are metaphysical issues to be sorted out. I like how I can use my creative journal feeds off the symbols and imagery that I’m using in my fiction. They are intertwined, growing from the same source, becoming more and more in sync all the time.
Also thinking about friends and fun and sharing the joys of art making.
Last night’s workshop in Laguna Hills was a hit. We had five new participants, for a total of nine all together. What a great time we had, cutting and gluing and coloring. I did a demo about shading, using my new chalk pastels (great product, with a fixative in the mix so that you don’t have to worry about smearing). A few people tried them out, too.
(Unfortunately, most of my shots were blurry, and I’ve become too vain about my photography to post bad photos, so I only have a few to share).
I brought a few blank journals for people to purchase, if they didn’t have one, and have some left over. If anyone is interested, I’d be happy to sell them to you via my Etsy or Artfire shop.
There are four all together. Each is 8″ x 10″, constructed in the model of Teesha Moore’s “16 Pages from one sheet” journals, which is to say there are 12 full-sized pages, and 4 interior flaps. They’re bound pamphlet style with linen thread.
Two are made of Strathmore Aquarius II watercolor paper, 80 lb (I think) cold press. This is exactly what I used on my Create Your Own Reality Journal . Ideal for watercolor backgrounds, but a little bit fussy with pens—felt and brush tips are okay, and most gel pens, but the fine tip pens (like Pitt) were a but stubborn, probably due to the porous texture of the paper. (The same reason, I think that my transfers on the Fragments of Butterflies page were so irregular.) These are $5.00 each.
One is made of Arches 90 lb hot press paper. Very smooth texture, sturdy but not heavy. I haven’t used this kind of paper in a journal myself, but it looks like it should work well for most mediums. This is $10.
The last one is made of Arches 140 lb cold press paper. The texture on this is yummy, and I am swooning over the irregular edges:
It’s substantially weightier than the other journals, and the paper will no doubt withstand most wet mediums (paint, glue, etc). I suspect that like the other cold press journals it will be fussy with pens and transfers because of it’s texture. But it is a lovely, lovely book, that will elevate whatever it is you put on the page with its substance. This one is also $10.
If you are interested in purchasing any of these journals, just leave a comment below, or send me an email and we’ll set up the sale. If there is a lot of interest, I’m perfectly willing to make more, so don’t hesitate to comment even if there are other people ahead of you!
Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to enter my One World One Heart giveaway. The deadline is February 15th!
Monday, February 8th, is the next free creative journaling workshop at It’s A Grind in Laguna Hills. Most supplies are provided by the coffeeshop, and I will have a small number of 16-page journals available for sale for $5 (like the one I used for my Create Your Own Reality journal). Feel free to bring your own journal and supplies, as well. Did I mention it’s free?
This is the last page of my “Create Your Own Reality” journal. The butterflies, which became an unanticipated motif in this book, forced themselves onto the page here. For example, the image of the woman was something I pulled out of a magazine a month ago, and I didn’t realize until I went to glue her onto the page that she was holding a butterfly in her hand. (It was a very tiny, hard to distinguish butterfly, though, so I replaced it with a larger one.) The rest of the butterflies were from a sheet that I was given at a recent craft show, synchronicity at work to be sure!
I tried to do a gel medium transfer, but as you can see it worked very poorly. I don’t know if it was that I didn’t wait long enough, or something with the paper, or what. I only know that I ended up with a mess on a page. But, as I like to say, mistakes (mess-takes, in Anna’s vernacular) are only an opportunity to try something you didn’t expect. In this instance, the fragments of butterflies led me to express a thought about my writing that has vexed me for a while now.
This is the cover of my new gothic arch journal, which I first posted pictures of last week. Atypically for me, the title of the page came first — Word Painting is the title of a book we’ve been reading in my writers group, about descriptive writing. At some point in our last discussion it occurred to me that it applies to creative journaling, if in a slightly different way. And then I found the quill image in my clippings box (you DO have a clippings box for your creative journaling, don’t you?) and knew it was a fit. The red also looks very striking against the brown background (I do like red and brown, as you might guess from this site’s layout). In another move of synchronicity, Melodye posted a page today that used the exact same quill and ink image.
The text was a little problematic. I knew I wanted to do found poetry—words clipped from a page and arranged in unexpected combinations—but all the magazines I had available have text so tiny that it would have been a chore worthy of Psyche to carry out. I ended up going to MagneticPoetry.com and playing with the online version. When I came up with something suitable, I did a screen grab, printed the result, and cut out the words for re-assembly on the page. I particularly like the phrase “deep ink” … I think that’s what I’m going to strive for in my work this month, to dive deep into the words to discover what truth and story lies underneath.
Which reminds me that it’s time to get back to that short story once again. My writers group has tried to shame me for being so long without presenting anything for critique. Now I’m at the top of the list, and If I don’t have something ready to go by Thursday, I will face their condemnation. Okay, maybe not that, but I can expect a little indulgent condescension, all of which will be deserved if I don’t deliver!
The storms persist, and I decided to abandon my writers’ group tonight in favor of staying home and dry, and not trekking down over-crowded freeways with lightening and thunder sparking overhead.
Likewise, Tuesday’s second class at Juvenile Hall was canceled due to weather, but I thought I would take some of my free time tonight to share a little of the class plans Melodye and I made.
Our first objective was to introduce the concept of creative journaling, but we knew it had to be quick and lecture-free. Besides having a sharply limited schedule and kids who we knew would be more interested in doing than talking, I don’t know if you can really tell someone what a creative journal is. You have to see them to have a even a glimmer of understanding of what it’s all about, and you have to do it to really, really know.
We started with a quick succession of sample pages we had made. Who here has kept a diary? Did it look like this? How about like this? Or this? With each page, we could see that the girls’ eyes widening with the possibilities. We had them hooked.
Then came the handouts. First, a one-page summary of what Creative Journaling is, along with some quick steps to get started:
We also included a one-page cut-sheet with ideas and inspirational quotes on the theme of the evening, Change:
To be honest, I don’t know if any of the girls paid much attention to either handout. They were more interested in the art supplies being handed out right then. Though they were invited to incorporate either or both handout on the pages they were making, I only saw one girl actually cut into hers, and that was only to extract the letter “D” from the word ENDURE. That’s all right: creativity shouldn’t be obligated to use anything it doesn’t want to.*
We asked the girls to write “Change” on their pages (12″x12″ sheets of scrapbook paper in pastel shades) anywhere they wanted, as big or as small, as simple or as elaborate as they imagined it should be. After that came magazines, and a pile of strips that I’d cut out from scrapbook papers to use as borders if they wanted (I was very gratified to see at least one person choose a strip of pirate-themed paper with skulls and swords…I’ve had that paper for ages and never found a use for it).
That was about the extent of our lesson plan. We spent the remainder of the class moving around the girls, making sure they had what they needed and encouraging there efforts.Some of the girls spent the whole time tearing pages from the magazines, while others quickly settled on a few and started gluing. Unfortunately, we did not have nearly enough time for them to complete their pages. When time was up, we collected their papers and all the assorted elements they were planning on using (they could not, due to an oversight of supplying contraband stickers, take the pages with them). The plan was to bring them back to be finished this week, and the girls asked if they could have colored pencils the next time, for shading and coloring.
Unfortunately, next time didn’t happen, and it’s uncertain when we’ll be able to go back. When and if we do, it’s likely we’ll have an entirely different set of girls, and we’ll have to start from the top once again.
The handouts won’t go to entirely to waste, though. I used one on my own journal page, as a tribute to the experience:
*Though, to be sure, being forced to use a certain set of supplies can drive creativity into unexpected places!
Over the past week, I have grappled with my own sense of self-identity, trying to come to terms with the new persona I have projected onto myself in the past couple of months—the persona of teacher. I realized, not with a flash but with the slow rumble of a thunder peal, that I have a lot of growing to do in order to fill that role. It started in classroom in Juvenile Hall, in the midst of a group of young women who had come to learn about creative journaling, and about self-expression, and the potential of creative work to change your life.
Our decision to use the theme “Change” was driven by the curriculum of the Girls Inc. program which brought us into Juvenile Hall. All Melodye and I did was pare it down: instead of asking the girls to journal about things they would like to change about themselves (as was suggested), we decided to leave it open to interpretation. To let them decide how change fit into their lives.
We planned the lesson. We made sample pages. Our Girls’ Inc. coordinator had a list of needed supplies. I put together handouts (a one-page introduction to the concept of creative journaling, and a cut-sheet on the theme of change) and had them printed in color at Kinkos.
We packed everything up and met at the flagpole in front of Juvenile Hall, just as twilight was settling over the sky and the walkways were filled with lawyers and court officials heading home from their jobs.
I should, as a writer, be able to accurately convey what it felt like going into that place. But I find my descriptive prowess failing me, perhaps because the experience is still too raw for me to start defining it with words. I can tell you that it was not horrible. It felt like an institution, yes, with locked doors and check points, worn carpet on the floor, paint dull on the walls. But there were no bars or anything that I (tv-educated as I am) might normally associate with prisons. Only in the yard, where a basketball court sat behind 12-foot fences topped with rolls of barbed wire, was it hammered home that this was, indeed, a prison. For the most part, it felt more like a school. Not a particularly nice school, but a school nonetheless.
Which is good, I suppose, given that the inmates are children.
I came into the world of creative journaling through the back door, as a curator. Or, more accurately, as an editor of an art magazine. I valued my role as a conduit between artists and readers, helping to spread artistic vision, techniques and inspiration. Encouraging others to experiment and grow, both artistically and spiritually. I benefited exponentially myself from these lessons, and felt my own spirit grow as I began to express myself creatively—visually—in ways I had never dared before. But I never imagined myself to be the source of these lessons. I was, as I said, simply a conduit.
When Melodye seeded the idea of teaching workshops in creative journaling, I was a little nervous at first, but I was confident I could make it work. I knew the techniques. I was familiar with the tools and materials. I had wide-spread knowledge of styles and methods. I had no problem getting up in front of people and teaching what I knew. If it worked out, I thought, I might be able to turn it into a money-making venture down the road. It would be nice, I thought, to find some positive take-away for myself from my time editing the magazine.
Tools. Materials. Technique. All wrapped up with a philosophy that emphasized process over product. I was ready to go.
When we got into our classroom, we ran into a few hiccups with our lesson plan. We ended up having half the time we planned on, and our coordinator had forgotten to bring any glue (it’s very difficult to do collage without glue!). Fortunately, we were able to acquire glue from the staff, so we weren’t at a complete loss on how to proceed, bu the near catastrophe left us both with a few jangled nerves.
We passed out paper, magazines, scissors, gel pens, stickers. We passed around the glue. We told them the basic steps to follow (“Write the theme, ‘change’, anywhere on your paper, add borders if you want, add images that express the theme for you…”) They got down to the creative work with a clear sense of enjoyment, and it was great to see their own creative skills come out to play. Lettering, for example—some of the girls had the most expressive, elaborate handwriting that I could only dream of emulating some day.
But five minutes into the “lesson” I began to sense a growing unease in myself, not because of anything the girls did or said—I never once felt a moment’s discomfort working with these girls. If I’d met them under any other circumstances, I never once would have suspected them of having trouble with the law, or any of the troubles that lead up to people having trouble with the law. They were friendly, energetic, creative…they were just girls.
My problem was all about me: I began to doubt what I was doing there. I began to wonder what I had to offer these girls.
It has taken me the rest of the week to figure out why I felt the way I did, back in that classroom, and it would be impossible to track the course of thoughts and scattered conversations as I tried to wend my way through the puzzle. I can only try to share the realizations I came to eventually, and hope it all makes sense.
Some of it you may have already guessed at, because of the way I have structured my tale. Much of my early confidence to teach revolved around my familiarity with the tools and materials of creative journaling, a legacy of my time as an editor. Much of what we published was “how-to”—how to use this material/tool in order to replicate this effect. Such instruction was what I was most comfortable with, and it became the core of my teaching program.
However, in that classroom in Juvenile Hall, we reached the limits of tools and materials instruction in about five minutes. I walked around the table after that, making sure everyone had everything they needed, offering encouragement and admiration at the creativity that was in progress, but more and more I just kept asking myself, “Now what?” If this had been a normal class setting, I would have moved on to some other technique: “Look what you can do with watercolor crayons!” or “Check out this cool effect you can do with packing tape.” But we didn’t have any of that stuff for the girls to use (and some of what we did have was actually contraband!) and so there was, in my perception, nothing more for me to teach.
How can I be a teacher if there is nothing left for me to teach?
I know—and Melodye has reiterated this to me—that the really important thing about that class was giving these girls the space and the permission to express themselves creatively. I knew before I walked in there that it isn’t the number or the quality of your materials that make creative journaling a valuable exercise. It’s process, not product, right? In the end, a pencil and a piece of notebook paper is all you need. I never thought that a lack of materials was going to inhibit the girls’ experience (well, except maybe the lack of glue, but we would have managed that somehow).
But my experience was inhibited because, after the first rush of introduction and explanation and instruction, I didn’t have anything else to do. I felt useless. These girls didn’t need me to show them how to cut pictures and words out of magazines or glue them to a piece of paper. They certainly didn’t need me showing them how to do pretty lettering. What did they need me for? The rest of it, the creative exploration, discovery, play, all the intangible things that make journaling valuable…all that is up to them, isn’t it? How do you teach that part?
Ironically (or maybe not) it was creating this journal page that helped me to get here, to be able to make sense of this experience at all. I knew I wanted to use the gold mesh on the page, with something trapped behind it, even before the trip to Juvenile Hall. After Juvenile Hall, I knew that it would somehow represent that experience, but I wasn’t sure how. I was on the search for some other image entirely when I found the butterfly image on the pages of a magazine I’d already been through three or four times before without ever noticing it. The colors were perfect for my page, and so was the symbolism. I knew immediately how the page was going to look then, down to the snipped wires freeing the captive butterfly.
As I composed the words to accompany that image, I finally came to understand what all my discomfort was leading to. I had limited myself in my original definition of myself as a teacher, and I came crashing headfirst into those limitations during our class in Juvenile Hall. My discomfort was the discomfort of imminent change, because I would have to change if I was going to truly teach anybody the value of creative journaling. I was still thinking of myself as a conduit of information, merely repeating what I had learned elsewhere. If I want to be truly effective as a teacher then I need to become a creative source myself, to dip into the wealth of my own knowledge and experience and offer it up as inspiration for others.
Is it any wonder I balked? Change of that magnitude is pretty intimidating, and it would be very easy to run the other way right now. But it’s because I made these pages that I understand the problem in the first place…how can I abandon the opportunity to help other people find this same kind of understanding of their own issues, after having personally experienced such powerful demonstration? I don’t know yet how I’m going become this new sort of teacher, sharing these intangible lessons of creative journaling in a meaningful way, but I know I’ll be back in the classroom on Tuesday trying to figure it out. At least I know the question I need to answer now.
That’s a start.
Reminder to southern California locals: the TOTALLY FREE Creative Journaling workshop is tomorrow (Monday, January 11) at It’s A Grind coffeehouse in Laguna Hills. Click for more info!
I’ve been having fun this week with a new journal project, this one based on techniques and methods of Teesha Moore. She has a great series of videos that show her own journaling process, and they are a great introduction for anyone who is just getting into creative journaling–lots of tricks and tips provided. But even for people like me who have been doing this a while, it’s really inspiring to just watch her creative process in action, to witness how free and unconstrained she is as she lays down paint, paper and ink. I think fear is a major stumbling block for a lot of new journalers–fear that they’ll do something wrong, make a mistake, ruin whatever it is they’re trying to do. Watching Teesha creating “in the moment” sets a good example for releasing that fear. There are no mistakes when there is no final product in mind! It’s all about process.
It’s also very intimidating, I think, for burgeoning artists to look at a finished page from an artist like Teesha and not have the slightest clue about how to make their own pages so rich. Watching a page grow from basic building blocks–background, borders and rough collage–to an elaborate work of art is encouraging to say the least. And instructive, too, because it helps to understand all the layers that go into a finished page like Teesha’s, and how important giving it your own, personal touch is.
These are some of my “just getting starteds” from my new journal. As you can see they look pretty unfinished, with nothing more than watercolor backgrounds and some basic collage from scrapbook paper. I have no idea yet what I’m going to do to finish these pages, but I can’t wait to see them come alive.
I’m working on materials to take to Juvenal Hall on Tuesday, when Melodye and I are teaching creative journaling to a group of incarcerated girls. Were working with the theme of CHANGE, so I’m trying to come up with some quotes and so forth as inspiration. I’m also playing with Photoshop, and the idea of using some of my photos to create some collage papers to use in journaling.
Finally, here’s a really inspiring video that I found on someone’s blog earlier today. It’s a great message! We should all take it to heart.
