Journal Spilling

I recently picked up Diana Trout's book Journal Spilling and WOW is it awesome.  This is my version of one of the exercises she describes:

It was supposed to be a self-portrait but it didn't quite end up that way - this doesn't resemble me at ALL.  (I wish...)  Anyway, it was still a fun page to work on, and I still love working in my newsprint journal.  In fact I think I might make more pages and add to it.  That's the beauty of making a book with binder rings, it's so easy to add or remove pages and to work on one page at a time by removing it from the book.   Plus the pages are 9 inches SQUARE and sometimes I just love to work on a square page for a change. 

Okay, back to the drawing board!

Love Shelley!

Shhhhhh....

This is one of my favourite recent pages.  I don't think the colours are exactly true on this picture but at least you get the idea.  It's a pretty bright and fun page!  Lots of watercolour crayon, and of course alphabet stamps.  Where would I be without my alphabet stamps?  I'D BE SAD AND LOST, THAT'S WHERE.

The quote is about not announcing your plans to the world.  I think that for some plans, it's great to spread the word, because you get help and support from the most unexpected places.  But sometimes, things happen much more easily if you just go ahead and make something happen instead of talking it to death first. 

By the way, I hope you don't come here looking for me to say something intelligent.  HA!

Anyway, that's all for today.  I'm off to Minneapolis tomorrow for the weekend and hopefully I'll have some good road trip stories to share when I get back.  I'm going down with a toothbrush and a pocketful of bail money.  What could possibly go wrong??

See ya Monday!

Love Shelley

Cookie Therapy

I was recently given a piece of really good advice in the form of a quote:

"We each have two cookie jars inside of us. One is for ourselves and the other is for all the people around us. We have learned to fill the cookie jar for the others and we bake a lot of cookies for this cookie jar. We have been trained not to bake cookies for our own cookie jar and we have also been trained to not even think about doing this for ourselves. Somehow, if we keep on baking cookies for others, our cookie jar will have cookies in it. Supposedly, others will be baking for us and everyone will be happy. But in reality it does not seem to work this way. Our cookie jar is usually empty and if someone does put cookies in it, they are never exactly the kind that we want at that time. No wonder that we start to feel deprived and resentful and angry as we watch others eating the cookies that we have baked. The paradox is so simple: fill your own cookie jar first with exactly what you want and let the overflow go to the other cookie jars. Keep your cookie jar full. Teach your family members to fill their own cookie jars first.” (Susanna McMahon)

I had this page started in one of my art journals, where I had tried out some copper paint and just basically played with some colours and made a mess.  So I came back to it to do this page - and where I tried another experiment on the bottom right corner and it bombed, I just stamped that number stamp over top to hide it.  Nobody was more surprised than me when it actually seemed to balance out the page!  Another happy mistake... I love those.

This is making me hungry for cookies!!!  Maybe I'll bake tonight.  I love baking cookies from scratch but right now I'm thinking of Pillsbury rolls of cookie dough and it's making my mouth water.  What's your favourite kind of cookie?

Love Shelley!

Personal Growth - No, Really

A few weeks ago I was at an annual conference that I like to go to because I ALWAYS win a really good door prize, and also they serve grown-up dainty food like wee bits of toast with salmon and goat cheese and I get to pretend to be fancy for a couple of hours.  

Anyway, this year's speaker was a local woman named Stephanie Staples and honestly, she was one of the best speakers I've seen.  Maybe because she seems so refreshingly normal - she shared stories of goofy things she'd done, which made me admire her unself-consciousness, and was very encouraging, with lots of practical ideas.  She seems like the kind of person you could drop in on for coffee in your pajamas.  Anyway, one of the best things things I learned was this:

This explains A LOT.  It's not that it's BAD - this is probably the quality that lets me strike up conversations with strangers in public washrooms, and long lineups, and elevators.  And put all my ridiculous ramblings up here without really giving much consideration to my own public speaking career... HAHA!  Just joking.  Really though, the less I care what other people think, the more satisfying my life becomes. 

Aaaaaaaand, that was probably my last heavy thought for the week, hope you enjoyed it! 

Love Shelley!