Collaged Gratitude Mandala

Tags

100 Mandalas, art journal, collage, gratitude, intention, Mandala

Sometimes the planets align in such a way that joy abounds. This week Kathryn at 100 Mandalas posted a lovely tutorial about creating a mandala on a collaged background and then the Journal 52 prompt for this week was Collage. Joy! I’m rather fond of collage, as you may have noticed. It is also one of the wonderful things about altered book journaling that is so fun. I love the way the tree on the right hand page extends the energy of the mandala to the edges of the page. I used a post it with my to do list, some spirographed papers, and papers that represent my gratitude for various people in my life for the background. Then I just dove right in with my Prismacolor markers. They kind of soak into the gesso, so I may try this with acrylic paint on top next time. It was really fun to do the mandala creation in color. I generally start with a black and white mandala, but it was easier to experiment with different design elements using the big colored markers right from the start. All in all I really enjoyed the journaling and mandala creation for this week.

Have you tried something new this week? How did you like the process? The result? Check out all the beautiful mandalas at

You can see different art journal pages on the Journal 52 blog and the link to their Flicker gallery. I hope you can find some inspiration today!

Spring Cleaning

Tags

acrylic paint, Altered book, art journal, gratitude, intention, Mandala

Last week the Journal 52 prompt was Spring Cleaning and that is what I was doing! We had overnight guests over the weekend and it was so much fun.

I have started to do a quick mandala in the morning with my coffee. I write down things that come to mind and my to do list and intention for the day. I’m not managing it every morning, but it is a nice way to start the day. That is what is going on the left hand page. The right hand page is my spring cleaning page. I used the palm leaves I got from church as a mask. I dabbed a cosmetic sponge in 2 shades of green paint and a dark blue and yellow and dabbed it all over the leaves. After that was dry I painted in the leaves using the lighter shade of green, yellow ocher and white. Then I journaled over the whole thing with my white Sakura pen.

Kindness in Communication

Tags

art journal, gratitude, gratitude journal, intention, kindness, Mandala, New Year, zentangle

My intention for 2015 is to increase my kindness in my communication. I have been doing a lot of reflecting on my intentions for 2015 in the last 10 days. In the process of reflection I have created this mandala.

I have been looking through a few different blogs that have challenges that I intend to follow this year to aid me in keeping to my intention.

http://kindnessblog.com/

My good blogging friend http://suzjones.wordpress.com/ has been a guest blogger on the kindness blog. The idea of making a commitment to speaking kindly really resonated with me. In discussing my struggles with this commitment with my husband I discovered that one thing I can do is to communicate what I am grateful for to the people I am grateful for. This may seem obvious to you, but it was kind of an aha moment for me. One of the greatest struggles I have with speaking kindly, other than the whole humanity thing, is the ever present migraines that I have. I always feel a little bit crappy at best and that tends to make me feel crabby. The introspection on this topic has led me to the awareness that as a consequence of feeling crabby and crappy, I don’t communicate very much with my friends and family in fear of being a whiner and being too negative. So I don’t say much of anything at all.

Here comes the TaDa:

I have been keeping track of things everyday that I am grateful for and I take time to illustrate them in my art journals. Then I take the time to blog about them and share them with all of you. How have I been doing on sharing them with the people who are directly involved? Not so hot. Well, here is one area of kind communication that I intend to improve upon! I will keep you updated on how this plays out.

This year I plan to step back from teaching art and/or gratitude workshops and focus more on making art and blogging. That has led me to the other 2 websites that were part of the introspection process. The first is http://collagediva.typepad.com She is hosting a 100 mandala challenge that I plan to take part in and may incorporate into my gratitude journal. Also http://journal52.com/2015-week-1-pathways/ This blog is a natural support for my art journal and I am very excited about seeing how weekly prompts impact my journal. The introspection mandala is a nice synthesis of both of these paths. I’m curious to see where they take me.

I would also like to ask you a specific gratitude question each week. My question for this week is who was kind to you today or this week? Take a moment to relish that kindness and maybe even pass it on.

Happy New Year!

Intention

Tags

art, art journal, beauty, collage, gratitude, gratitude journal, intention, Peace

Good intentions…
Set your intention…
This is a word that is pregnant with meanings for me. In 2013 I set an intention to explore 3 possible paths and art, including blogging about it, is the one I have chosen to follow. This photo is my intention for 2014. I was starting to get stressed out because here I am thinking about posting about intention and that was all I had and I needed to …
Breathe.
Last year I think I found my path. This year I hope to follow my path to the best of my ability. This blog has become a fabulous source of support as I continue on my path.
May I be at ease.
May we have peace.
May we know beauty.
Living on purpose.
Happy new year.