BONUS Day 31: 30 Day Journal

“Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.”   ~ Lao Tzu

Today, for some reason, when I thought of this #30DayJournal and the theme of FLOW, I didn’t think of water or a river. I thought of honey flowing.

After that, the phrase “Life is Sweet” popped into my head and although our prompts steered us in the direction of letting go of hardness or letting in softness and gentleness, I was focused on life’s sweetness.

Imagine if this was honey dripping on the page and you could just swipe a finger through it and taste the sweetness.

Tomorrow, my nephew Jake and his fiancee, Chelsea, are getting married. He is the first of my parents’ grandchildren to get married and I know in the midst of this celebration, there will be an ache of sadness that Papa isn’t here to witness it.

But, even with this, I believe there will be enough joy and love flowing to ease that ache.

My mom just had her 80th birthday and we’ll be celebrating that event in a few weeks. Lest you get the wrong mental image of this grandmother-of-six let me share a few details: she is active, well read and she does yoga weekly and stretches daily, she walks her dog Molly six days a week, will be retiring for the third (and final) time in about a month, and will be wearing red patent leather pumps with her chic sheath dress at her grandsons wedding tomorrow.

There is so much to celebrate, including the completion of this project!

I will be returning to my craft desk tomorrow to create a wedding card, but I’m going to catch my breath and catch up on a few other things in my life, including getting enough sleep!

Thank you.

Day 30: 30 Day Journal Project

“The creative force flows over the terrain of our psyches looking for the natural hollows, the arroyos, the channels that exist in us.  We become its tributaries, its basins; we are its pools, ponds, streams, and sanctuaries.

The wild creative force flows into whatever beds we have, those we are born with as well as those we dig with our own hands. We don’t have to fill them, we only have to build them.”  ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The prompts for Day 30 are:

• My wild creative force looks like…
• My wild creative force feels like…
• My wild creative force is asking me to…
• My wild creative force wants me to experience…

In my journaling, I wrote that my wild creative force doesn’t feel that wild. I feel as if I have a persistent, deeply-rooted creative force, and maybe that’s pretty much the same thing.

What came up for me is that I want to take a class, probably in water color, and learn more about how to do it. I’ve been fooling around with paint but I think I would enjoy getting some basic skills with this medium.

I was working on my page and Rem was in the kitchen and I asked him “What is my wild creative force telling me?” His immediate answer was “Be awesome.”  Yep, I think he’s right!

Maybe brightly colored tiles, cut from paint chips, don’t look that wild, but not only was I inspired by the tile wall behind the dancers and musicians,

I had a beautiful mosaic staircase in San Francisco in mind.

I used light molding paste mixed with some water with watercolor crayons as the grout between these little tiles.

Although this has been billed as the #30DayJournal, we have a bonus day! So there is ONE MORE PAGE, and more accurately could be called the 31 Day Journal Project.

After the 31st page, I’d like to let my Wild Creative Force get some rest. Perhaps I can let my Wild Physical Force out to play and catch up on a few walks that have been cancelled while creating pages, photos and posts.

Thank you so much for your views and comments.

Day 29: 30 Day Journal Project

“Row, row, row your boat. Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream.”  ~ Nursery Rhyme

My dreams, or the ones I remember, are either mundane scenes of everyday life, or stressful, complicated dreams in which I’m trying to get somewhere or do something but I have to keep moving from room to room, and place to place in confusion. With the boring ones I sometimes pause when I wake up and think “now was that a dream, or was that something that happened yesterday?”  But I will sometimes wake up with my heart pounding after the anxious ones.

In this page I wanted to convey layers of early sleep and falling into dreaming. This is not one of my ordinary dreams, nor my stress dreams. Instead it is a fantasy dream.

First, you close your eyes, relaxing into your pillow. It is night but the sky is bright with stars and a full moon is overhead.

[Hubble Telescope photo of outer space. National Geographic photo]

A wave of tiredness carries you into sleep. You start to dream.

[Ocean waves from surfing article. National Geographic]

A zebra appears.

But it doesn’t seem strange to see a zebra in San Francisco.  The moon is visible behind the Transamerica Pyramid.

[Zebra in front of Transamerica Pyramid picture scanned from cover of textbook]

You notice you are in a boat floating, gently, on sparkly pink clouds.

[Vanity Fair photo]

A large bunch of balloons bobs along behind the boat.

[Vanity Fair photo]

Your shoulder is cold, so you tug on the covers, burrowing into the warm nest of sheets, floating gently back into your dream.

Or was that life? Is life a dream?

Thanks for coming on by. Go gently, dream sweetly.

Day 28: 30 Day Journal

“We are all thinking, willing, knowing, conscious centers of Life.

We are surrounded by, immersed in, and there is flowing through us a creative something… call it what you will.” ~ Ernest Holmes

It was a hot day yesterday and our apartment was pretty warm when I started to work on this. I often manage to start journaling or maybe pick out some images before work and spend some time on the project during my lunch break. I had some images but lunch came and went and nothing went in the journal.

After dinner, I sat down at my desk. With a fan wafting a faint breeze I reviewed the magazine pages I’d pulled out in the morning and reached instead for watercolor paint and Neocolor watercolor crayons and went at it.

Section by section I created a vibrant heart with drips and splatters of paint spreading outwards from it. Some drips start at the edge of the page and move inward to the heart.

Around 9:00 I had made good progress. Rem and I left for a drive, wanting to get out of the stuffy apartment.

An hour, one ice cream cone (each) and 6 degrees cooler later, we returned and I sat down to finish my page.

I added the lyrics from a song by Tina Greene, from the Threshold Choir repertoire:

In this moment, I open my heart. In this moment, I open my heart.

And receive all the love, that’s always surrounding me.

In this moment, I open my heart.

For Day 28 of this #30DayJournal project, this was my journaling, this was my page.

Thank you for your visit.

Day 27: 30 Day Journal Project

“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” ~ Rumi

These lanterns are used in a ceremony of remembrance. Names of loved ones and messages for them are written on the sides of the lanterns.

In my journaling for this page, I wrote about singing with other women in Threshold Choir. The choir sings annually at a Hospice Service of Remembrance as well as individual services throughout the year. But most of our singing is done in twos and threes, singing a cappella, at the bedsides of those people who are on the thresholds of living and dying.

Our goal is to bring ease and comfort to those for whom we sing: people on the threshold and their loved ones and caregivers.

“Andante con espressione” means at a moderately slow, walking tempo with expression.

Yes, I know I wrote just yesterday that I would like to be more metaphorical in my images and here I am today using lamps to illustrate a quote about being a lamp.

But I already had both lamp pictures, and I especially love the floating lanterns. I’ve been waiting for just the right project for them.

I looked through my paper to find background material for this page, using the sunset colors in the floating lantern picture.

When I came across “You are the light of my life” I tucked it into the pile to see if it would work on the page.

Our apartment is on a corner and often in winter Rem will light candles that I can see in the window as I arrive home. In this and so many other ways, he is a lantern in my life.

Thanks for checking out my page today. Only a few days left of #30DayJournal project!

 

Day 26: 30 Day Journal Project

” You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” ~ Hericlitus

This is what I wrote in response to the question, above:

I feel like I’ve just started a crash course and so far we’ve gotten an overview of the topic: Art Journaling.

Now I can continue learning, copying, trying things out and when I’m lucky – flowing.

My images have been very literal. I’d like to be more metaphorical sometimes too!

I’m trying to find and maintain balance with my art, my health & my life.

To curate, to keep a space ready for creativity, and to keep journaling (but NOT daily).

Thank you to my friend Margaret for the beautiful and unique old stamps that I used as embellishment on this page. We crafted together on Friday when I was working on Day 24.

Cheers and hugs for everyone who is still hanging in with the #30DayJournal project! I’m now caught up with both the journaling and blogging.

Day 25: 30 Day Journal Project

“When I am…..completely myself, entirely alone… or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not nor can I force them.”

~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

This picture is from the back cover of a magazine. I love the graphic black and white and extended it onto my page.

The quote and prompts for today, Day 25 of #30DayJournal, are about tracking creative patterns. My journaling (in white ink) mostly got lost when I did the grey ink wash over the sides of the page, but I wrote about this: my ideas flow best when it’s quiet, when I don’t feel rushed and generally when I’m alone.

.

Sometimes I appreciate the feedback from others, bouncing ideas around and having some company, but most of the time, and for the most productivity, my ideas flow best when I’m solo.

When do your ideas flow best?  Thanks for stopping by.

Day 23: 30 Day Journal Project

“It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.” ~  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

After the last page, which was a struggle, I greeted this one, and the prompt which asked “Remember a time when you acted freely, unselfconsciously,” with open arms.

My journaling is about floating in a hot tub on a recent vacation. This picture captured that feeling of total relaxation.

Small pieces of pale blue vellum have been cut to echo the shape of the water. I think they look like tiny rafts.

Can’t you just imagine sinking into this water in this beautiful space?

Ahhh.

The name of the author of the quote, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is pronounced something like Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high, in case you were wondering.

Thanks for your visit.

#30DayJournal

Day 22: 30 Day Journal Project

“Be like water making its way through cracks.

Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it.

If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water.

If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash.

Be water, my friend.”  ~ Bruce Lee

This project has been fascinating and frustrating! I read the quotes and prompts and think about them and sometimes my response is is fairly quick. Other times, like today, I don’t know how to respond.

What usually happens when I’m stuck is I set a kitchen timer and give myself 5 minutes to write. For this page I was stuck on the art part. I decided to set a timer and give myself 5 minutes to paint.

I made  a mess! I swirled blue paint around the page making sideways figure 8’s. Or, I realize as I write this, the symbol for infinity over and over. That was going ok but when I added some green I lost the shapes and it become murky. In frustration, I covered the page with paint. Art from head = not working!

However, once I looked at the green page I thought of a wide, turning river and started collaging that and things started to…well, flow.

In fact, as has happened several times now, I experienced a few instances of serendipity. Opening a plastic envelope of blue  and green paper scraps, the little square printed with “Divine flow” was right on top and wanted to be included on the page.

My writing tried to express how I felt stagnant when I set out on the page. Black and white zigzags on washi tape represent the static in my head when I try to empty my mind.

As I was adding finishing touches I scanned a few torn-out dictionary pages, seeking a word to add by the river. “Living” is what presented itself. And another moment of unexpected rightness: it was only after I’d pasted the bit of paper onto the page that I read the full definition, which includes “gushing forth; flowing.”

After taking the first photo at the top of the post, I added the words “journal/journey” as seen in the second picture. They are both derived from jour, French for day or daily, as in a day’s travel or daily writing. This journal project has been a journey for me. I appreciate you traveling along with me.

Day 21: 30 Day Journal Project

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.

And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”  ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I went through my saved magazine pages seeking happy images and pulled a bunch out. These are the ones that made it to the first draft of the page, below.

On the lower left is a box from a bar of chocolate, but it didn’t make it to the final page.

I do agree that happiness is, at least in part, a consequence of personal effort, as Elizabeth Gilbert writes. But for me, it is not something I have to fight for.

Orange and blue are a happy color combination for me.

On Day 21 I made a decision to take a walk in the morning rather than work on my page, and go to my choir rehearsal in the evening rather than work on my page. Although I didn’t want to fall behind on the #30DayJournal project, I wanted to take care of myself, both my physical and mental health.

I have a peach-colored T-shirt that says “Do What Makes You Happy” with a cheerful sketch of a bicycle on it. Wearing it while shopping the other day, one of the store employees commented on it. She then turned her back to me and pulled her shirt away to show me a tattoo with the very same words! She explained that her best friend had a matching tattoo in the same place that said “Be With People Who Make You Smile.”

Those two phrases are really what helps keep me happy.  Doing things that I love to do around the people I love.

I think Blue-Footed Boobies should wear blue bow ties more often.

Thanks for stopping by.