Words of Me Challenge-Week 1

I am soooooo over the moon excited about my NEW Art Journal Challenge, girls!!

Six Words in six weeks.

 And remember it's not just about the art....but also about growing ourselves.

Each Monday I'll post the Word along with a few of my projects, quotes and whatever else inspires me.  Lots of daily inspiration via our Face Book page, too...please join here...

Alrighty...so are you ready??!

Oh don't you just LOVE that word??! I do. It makes me stand tall and gives me confidence. It makes me want to be a better me.


 Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.  ~Winston Churchillt


When I was trying to decide the six words for our challenge this one in particular kept coming to mind. I think it's because it's one of my favorite words.

This past year I have had to have more Courage than I ever thought I could muster. It takes Courage to ask for help, to pour your heart out and share...to admit your worn out and broken.


Courage doesn't always roar.  Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.  ~Mary Anne Radmacher



That quote by Mary Anne is one that has hung in my office for over 10 years. I read it often throughout my marathon training but never have I related more to those words than this past year.

Courage takes on many forms, many faces. There is Courage in the Kindergarten girl who walks into school all by herself everyday. There is Courage in my friend Sheri who has been dealing with breast cancer for more than 10 years. Courage is on the face of every American Soldier fighting to protect our freedoms.

Courage is in YOU. It's in ME. And even though we may not feel it enough...its there.

Just for today think about YOUR Courage. 

Make a list of courageous things you've done throughout your life. Make a list of every courageous thing you WANT to do then put a star by each one as you complete your goal. Keep these lists to remind you that YOU ARE STRONG ENOUGH.

When I was 32 years old I decided to train and run in a triathlon. The catch was...I didn't know how to swim. Not only did I not know how to swim...but I was deathly afraid of the water.


Courage is doing what you're afraid to do.  There can be no courage unless you're scared.  ~Edward Vernon Rickenbacker

What did I do? Did I learn how to swim and cross the finish line??? You will find out in my next post, girls:)

Enjoy your day...make your Courage list....create an art journal page, doodle, paint, whatever your inspired to do today.. Be sure and post your work on our Mind.Body.Soul. page and share any Courageous stories you have, girls!!!! Inspire us!!

Be sure and grab our Word of Me button to let your friends know about this Challenge!!!

You can link it to this page.

The bravest thing you can do when you are not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly.  Cora Harr

Our Final Class Give-Away!!!

What a wonderful weekend I had!! I can't tell you how very much I needed time away with a dear friend. We talked, cried and encouraged one another. We laughed so hard tears ran down our face. We shared inspiring stories, read scriptures and prayed. It was exactly what my soul needed at this time in my life.

 There really is nothing quite like a good friend.

Me, Lisa and Eva

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.  It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.  We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.  ~Albert Schweitzer

The sweet woman in the red shirt above is Eva. She was already a friend of Lisa's and now a friend of mine. What a strong woman Eva is! Talk about  a Brave Girl! I will be sharing more about my trip later in the week.

We have LOTS of soccer this week. 

That's #31...my Emma girl. She's a freshman on the Lady Hounds Soccer Team. 

A Defender.

So tough and strong-willed my Emma girl. {more on that later, too}

My latest photo. I had to see what my hair looked like today. Nothing works like a photo ya' know? 

At last it's growing. So happy. Liking it better...

I just can't say enough about the last 6 weeks. I am soooo grateful for each of you that participated in my Mind.Body.Soul. e-course. It has been such a delight getting to know you through your artwork. 

To answer a few questions...YES, we will keep the Face Book group. I would love to see us continue our friendships, our dreams and our art. I am thinking of continuing with more Art Journal prompts in our group. What do you think??

We have one more give away!! 

I went shopping on my retreat and found a few treats.

The pad of paper that says Autumn Collection on it is from Daisy D's. It's a complete 6x6 paper collection along with cute die-cuts like this....

A complete kit!

 Along with that here are some beautiful papers for your collage projects.

Have you heard of Thirty-One? They make the CUTEST bags!! I bought one just for YOU!

Perfect for your pens and pencils or little bits of ribbon, buttons, word strips and lots more!!

For your chance to WIN these goodies please leave a comment in THIS post by answering the following question...

What kind of classes would you like to see me offer in the future??

I hope you continue to stop by Words of Me Project often. I promise more inspiration is on it's way. So many stories and art to share with you!

Dreams Matter!!!

My Brave Art

Hey, Girls!! Mind.Body. Soul. is coming to an end.

I have grown sooo much over the past few weeks and am ready for the next artsy adventure. This one is gonna be a big one, girls. This dream of mine is happening and I am so grateful.

What's so interesting to me is that right now is not the ideal time to be thinking about my big dream. We just shut down a business, my kids are making poor choices, and money is super, super tight. I have never been more stressed as I am right now. This is the worst possible time to be making dreams come true.

But then I thought about my mentor Melody Ross. That sweet, darling Brave Girl has been through soooo much yet she has created a community of women, created works of art and is living her Big, Bold. Beautiful Life.

My Brave Art

That's what I am doing. Starting right now...I am living my Big, Bold, Beautiful Life. I am going after what I know in my heart I am meant to do.

I am Anxiously Engaged.

I am going ahead with my ART RETREAT dream full speed ahead. I am inviting some of the most creative and inspiring and uplifting people I know. I am actively looking for a beautiful place in the woods. I am making contacts. So many exciting things. My heart is full.

My Brave Art

In our last assignment I asked you to really think about your dream. What you looked like living your dream, what it feels like, who is by your side. If you haven't made the time to answer these questions I hope you do very soon. The emotions that come up while you're thinking about these things can help propel you towards your BIG DREAM!  


Art Assignment #2:


Let's take the following two quotes and create journal pages. These quotes really speak to me!

"Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you. "
 ~Marsha Norman


Pay attention to your dreams - God's angels often speak directly to our hearts when we are asleep.  ~Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994

My Brave Art

YES! There will be one more give away.

 I am going away for the weekend to a big scrappy retreat with my friend Lisa Bearnson. I am going shopping for our last prize during the retreat:) Soooo....our final give away will be posted sometime Monday as well as a wrap up of our class.

You are all so amazing. Can't wait to see your work on FB!!

Our Final Week!

I have been trying to figure out where in the world the weeks have gone!! It's WEEK 6 of our Mind.Body.Soul class...I can't believe it!! The past 5 weeks have been amazing. I appreciate each one of you...your artwork, your stories and comments have uplifted and inspired me to keep reaching for my goals.

This class has been on my "To-Do" list for nearly two years. I am so grateful that I finally listened to my heart and just did it!! Over the course of the class I realize that this is where my true passion lies...connecting with other creative women, sharing my stories and messages of inspiration.


My next step is organizing a real, in-person ART RETREAT in a peaceful, cabin setting. 

As we speak I have enlisted the help of others and this ART RETREAT will become a reality in the next year!!! I will keep you up to date. Again...THANK YOU for being here!!!

My Brave Art

Several things to share with you today. First of all we have TWO winners!!! Mary Langley and Sharla....you need to contact me with your addresses. Congrats to you both:)

This weekend I would LOVE for you to join me and my friend Lisa Bearnson for a day full of artsy goodness!!

Lisa Bearnson

"Table Scraps" is a full day event of scrapping and card-making in the middle of the Heartland...Columbia, Missouri. Please follow this link for all the information.



My weekend begins Thursday evening. I'll be picking Lisa up from the airport then hanging out with her and her cousin who lives in the area. Friday morning we are up bright and early for a 6 mile walk from the Liberty Jail to the new Kansas City Temple!

Kansas City Temple

That night we will be in Columbia then on Saturday I get to enjoy a full day of scrapping!! I am sooo excited! Sunday we drive back to my home in Maryville and meet a few friends. This is gonna be a great weekend..please join us if you can on Saturday!!

 Assignment #1 for Week Six:

Instead of  one WORD for our final week, I have chosen a phrase.

ANXIOUSLY ENGAGED

What exactly does it mean to be anxiously engaged? I think it means to be excited about life. Willing to take on our dreams and goals with a full sense of purpose.

My Brave Art

To be Anxiously Engaged means to be living in the moment. To be Actively Doing.

Over the past 5 weeks we have thought about what lights us up. What careers we would love to do. We  created our Wheel of Dreams and made a list of "micromovements" we must take to make our dreams a reality.


Now it's time to take everything we have learned about ourselves and become Anxiously Engaged in living them.

Art Journal Assignment:

Imagine you in the middle of Living Your Dream. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Is your heart so full it could burst? Who is by your side as you take flight?


We will have one final assignment later in the week as well as one last give away. For those of you that have already won...Next week I will be mailing all packages out. Thank you for being patient:)

Renew Your Day with Yoga-Guest Post

Hello, girls!! Please forgive me for my absence this week. It has been a doozy and there were moments when I thought I may drown in all the muck. If anybody needed RENEWING this week it was ME!

Please take time to read this uplifting Guest Post from my blog friend Angela from Om2Art. Not only is her artwork whimsical and inspiring but her love for YOGA is contagious...seriously. Angela's blog was one of my inspirations for this e-course of mine!! Her darling artwork is sure to inspire you as well:)

Yoga means many things to many people.  Most know of it as a form of exercise and relate it to spirituality, calm, and peace.  Yoga poses (aka asanas) are one small part of a very large science.  While understanding that most people teach what they know....here is what I know for sure based on my own personal experience and it is my hope that is may serve you.  

My yoga mat is my best friend.

She is always there for me and usually asks "How are your feeling today?"  Notice  she doesn't ask about yesterday or tomorrow...but today, right now.  She realizes that I am not my past nor am I my future, therefore granting me an opportunity  

to be renewed each and every day...

and every moment.  My friend the yoga mat is never bossy, never waiting impatiently for me to arrive, she just simply waits until I'm ready.   When I am she says, "sit and stay a while."  "I'm here whenever you need me, I know your secrets, and I'm someone you can confide in.  I will show you your habits if you let me and I'll teach you how to create an extraordinary life out of ordinary moments."  Seriously she is my bff for life!  Then she slips in messages like,  "for once you start to become aware of your habits that do or do not serve you, you invite an opportunity to choose a different path."  This is when transformation takes place...organically.

I think the editor of Yoga Journal recently got it right when she said "Yoga is an opportunity to foster awareness, to get to know yourself, and on a practical level, make conscious choices in your life."  I know what you're thinking....seriously?  How does that work?  How is putting myself in ridiculous shapes going to help me make conscious choices in my life? Well, I'll tell you.

Think about this.  Like a box of chocolates, in a typical yoga class you have an assortment of people.  Young, old, happy, grumpy, injured, stressed, etc.  I typically teach a class room full of 20-35 students.  In one class someone had been in a car accident and had major MAJOR back surgery, another just had his shoulder reattached, another had an old knee injury, another had just lost her mom, another was nursing pulled muscles and soreness, another was battling a serious illness.  I also had fellow yoga instructors in class, people who had practiced for more than 20 years, and a student who was just trying yoga for the very. first. time.  And yet, nobody knew but me.  Did you know that even the kind of day you have had, has an effect on how your body show up? The crazy thing is that I watch as they all try to squish themselves into the same shape comparing themselves to everyone else as if everyone else is doing it "right".

But here's where opportunity is found - in noticing.  Notice that you are comparing yourself to others, and then take it a step further and notice how it makes you feel?  This is your habit.  This is your natural reaction.  But does it serve you?  Or does it make you miserable?   Now take that practice off the mat.  Do you compare yourselves to other artists? mothers? wives? (insert your role here) and most importantly....does it serve you?  If it doesn't  - don't do it....it really is that simple.  All we need to do first is notice, then feel.  This is why it's called a "practice".  Because we practice over and over again noticing what our reactions are to the poses on the mat and then relate our reactions to our poses (or difficult situations) in life.

So go ahead, make a new friend.  Preferably a long, flat squishy kind of gal and let her be your confidante.  Let her teach you what your habits are and help you transform them.  It might be a love/hate relationship at first but with a few skilled instructors or just a willingness to notice your habits while doing your yoga dvd at home, you can mindfully become more of yourSELF and create an extraordinary life out of ordinary moments.

In peace, love, and light

Angie

Thank you sooo much, Angie for being a guest here on Words of Me Project!!

**A reminder, girls. If you haven't left a comment on this post...be sure do so today. I will be picking TWO winners Tuesday morning. 

Our final Week is coming up...I can't believe 6 weeks went by so fast. Since I was a bit off this past week I won't be posting Week 6 assignments until Monday night. 

Girls, I appreciate each of you. Your work is so uplifting to me!!

It's Time to RENEW-Week 5

Coloring Easter Eggs-2012

Welcome to Week 5!! I know, I know...it's a few days late but I have been living my life with this beautiful family of mine AND still sharing my son's laptop with him. We are hoping that sometime in May I will be able to purchase MY OWN laptop! I sure do love that husband of mine:) By the way a BIG Happy Birthday to Dave!! He is 47 today!

Your works of art in our Face Book group are beautiful. What a talented bunch of women we are!!

I promised to have TWO give aways this week. Here they are...

Prize #1...

Lots of paper goodies for your collages/art journals, including a few Alice in Wonderland images,  paper tape and ribbons.

A piece of my Brave Art, too.  This is one of of my favorite girly images.

My Brave Art

Here is Prize #2...

Ribbon, a mini album and Brave Art!

My Brave Art

For your chance to win one of these prizes be sure and leave a comment in THIS post!!

Okay...so on with Week 5!! Our WORD this week is

RENEW

to restore or replenish: to renew a stock of goods.

to make, say, or do again.

to revive; reestablish.

With Spring comes the overwhelming feeling to RENEW. I am ready to let go, restart and replenish my soul. 

These past few weeks have been completely crazy and so, so busy.  And while it's all been good, good stuff...I am in need of an Art Day. A day to just BE. A day to put the crazies away, to just putter around in my studio. A day to sift through my treasures, thinking, dreaming and creating. 

The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world. -John Burroughs

Our first assignment this week is simple. Create a list of 21 things you can do to RENEW your soul, your day, your life.

Each of us may have different ways we do this. For some it may be a cup of coffee at Starbucks {Leanne-lol} and a good book...for others a long walk in the woods will do the trick. The best way I know to RENEW my soul is to spend time being quiet. I love spending time alone in my studio with my favorite tunes, the sun shining in and all my supplies. Pure bliss. I am also filled up by reading the Scriptures, sitting on the couch with a cozy blanket and favorite movie or taking an afternoon nap with the sun shining on me. 

The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. -J. Pierpont Morgan

RENEWAL is a big part of living our dreams, girls. It's too easy to be busy going and doing all the time. When we allow our time to be eaten up...there is then no time for our dreams. Our inspiration shrivels up and we start living on auto-pilot.

It's too easy to stay where we are. 

Don't let your dreams die. Take time this week to RENEW yourself. Promise yourself that TODAY you will do ONE thing just for you!! Fill yourself up!!

“I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.” 
― Audrey Hepburn

What fills you up and renews your soul, girls??

Envelope Tutorial!!

Tutorial:  Handmade Envelopes from Recycled Materials

By Andria Kaskey, of Drawing Near (http://andria-drawingnear.blogspot.com)

There are so many embellishments that you can add to your art journal pages to create the look you are trying  to achieve or communicate the message you are trying to record.  While you can have lots of fun choosing scrapbook embellishments from the craft store, I think you will feel a great sense of satisfaction from creating handmade envelopes from pretty recycled papers (or from favorite scrapbook papers, for that matter) as a page element for your art journal.

If you’ve never made your own envelopes, or if it has been awhile, here is a step-by-step tutorial to show you how very fun and easy it is:

Step 1: Collect materials for your envelopes. At the end of the year, I asked a group of friends to set aside any old calendars that they were planning to discard, and asked them to pass them along to me instead. Calendars are great because they have big, colorful pictures that can accommodate a large envelope template. 

I also use papers from books I have bought at library books sales, maps, children's books, graph paper, and magazine and catalog pages.  Envelopes for your art journal may be smaller than envelopes you plan to send through the postal system, so you will be able to use smaller-sized papers to create them.

Step 2: Collect envelope templates. These are the patterns you follow to create your envelopes. They can be purchased, such as the Kreate-a-lope shown here:

You can also find them by doing an internet image search with key words such as "envelope templates."  You may be able to manipulate the sizes of these templates if you want to make smaller versions for an art journal page.

But perhaps the quickest and simplest way to get a template is to open up an existing envelope with a shape and size that works for you, and use it as a template.

Step 3: Place your selected template on your selected paper, and trace around it with a pencil. I like to use a mechanical pencil with a sharp tip, because that line becomes very difficult to see on busy patterns. When it comes time to cut, I end up using the "debossed" line more than the actual graphite line.

Step 4: Cut along the pencil line you just drew.

Step 5: Fold where the template indicates to create the envelope.

Step 6: Use a glue stick (I prefer UHU) to adhere the flaps where they overlap. Word to the wise: Check the front frequently to make sure that you are gluing the bottom flap and not the top one!

When I first started gluing with a glue stick, I would put my project on a piece of computer paper to keep the glue from getting on the tabletop. I went through so much paper, and even though I was recycling it, it just felt wrong. Then I heard this tip: Save your catalogs and magazines to use as a surface for your gluing. When one page gets gluey, flip to the next one. When the whole book is gluey, throw it in the recycle bin. I always mark the magazine with the word "GLUE" really big, so I don't get it mixed up with something I still want to read!

You can put anything you want into your envelopes, as long as it is smaller than the front face of the envelope.  The cards or tags you put inside can be all text; doodled or drawn; covered in paint, stickers, or ink; collaged with images from magazines and catalogs, or with bits of papers; or some fabulous combination of all of these!

Here is a selection of handmade envelopes I have created:

Here are some cards inserts I created for envelopes I was making for sale, embellished with postage stamps and rubber stamps:

Here is an art journal page that uses a handmade envelope from graph paper with a tag insert.  For the page, I glued down sewing pattern tissue, and then adhered an image transfer on top.  The handmade envelope is made from graph paper, and embellished with tissue tape and a rubber stamp image with my handwriting inside.  The tag is painted with watercolor, and includes a handwritten quotation:

In closing, I can think of at least four good reasons to include handmade envelopes in your art journal:

1.        First, because you can use such varied papers to create your envelopes, you can pretty much match any mood, color scheme, or style you might want to create for your journal page.

2.       Second, envelopes provide a kind of “secret hiding place” for things you want to include in your journal but do not necessarily want easily accessible to anyone who glances at your page.

3.       Third, envelopes provide an interactive element to your page, so that the experience of looking at your journal is less passive and more active.

4.       Fourth, handmade envelopes are fun and relatively easy to make! 

 I highly recommend you give it a try, if you haven't already...or if you haven't in awhile. You will never toss a calendar again, I can almost guarantee you!






***Thank you so much to Andria of Drawing Near. Be sure and stop by her blog for TONS of art journaling inspiration!!!


I am taking the next 4 days off. We have a BUSY Easter weekend planned. Look for Week 5's assignment late Monday night rather than Sunday night. Also we will have TWO give aways next week!!


You girls are the BEST! Have a WONDERFUL EASTER BREAK!!!