Everyone is born with creativity. But those people who appear to be super creative have a secret. They know that creativity has to be developed and exercised to come easily. I am on a quest to immerse myself in creativity of all kinds. I hope you will join me!

And, how beautiful are the native kids????



 They traced stencils or drew their own designs, and watercolored them in. They really did a great job.






The most awesome part was that I saw several of them actually continuing their journals throughout the week. 


A little Vitamin C added to the week!


If you have never used watercolor pencils, you can give them a try for a very small investment. I took my coupon to Michaels and found them at several different price points. I bought the value box of 24 that cost $3 with my 40% off coupon. They worked as well as the $15 box. 


Just draw or color on watercolor paper. Then brush over the color with water. We used hollow brushes that are filled with water. The water makes the pencil bleed and smooth out. The color will travel a long way across the paper and give you a nice watery look. It is so easy, anyone can do it, and it looks just like you painted it.


Take your Vitamin W! (watercolor!)

These are some pics from a very simple bit of journalling I did a couple years ago. I was on the road, in a hotel in Grapevine Texas, and working on a Bible study about which I wanted to journal or make a few notes. 


On the plane to Dallas, I challenged myself..... "Do not drive over to the the bookstore and buy a new journal. Use what you have on hand, nothing more."


The pages of this mini journal are those annoying cards that fall out of magazines. I found as many as I could possibly ever use while reading magazines in flight that day. My pages are not all the same size. I also ripped out magazine pages of pics or colors I liked, and took them with me. In my bag I had scissors (but I have done this by tearing everything because I had no scissors), a glue stick ( but have used a stapler), a hole punch, and a black permanent marker. Luckily, because I am a jewelry maker, I almost always travel with some basic supplies. I had some wire and beads too.


You can tell I used a glue stick. The pages do not look fabulous, but they are reflective of the study I wanted to remember and I think creating is always better than purchasing. Certainly, no one else has this journal. 


It also provides food for thought when I teach journaling. 


Tell me about your similar experiences when you used your journal-making Vitamin C??

 Earlier this week, I did a collage project using my cloud punch.  And, in the tutorial, I suggested you save the cloud punch outs for another project. So, here is my other project!


 This is inside a journal I have been working in. It is a work in progress and what I am showing here is not the final, but the beginning of these two journal pages. 


You see the cloud punch outs that I glued to the page. I also punched small daisies with my Oopsie Daisy punch, and glued them in with button centers. The frame was simply traced and colored in with marker. Michaels has some very cool laser cut wood frames down their seasonal aisle right now. Different shapes and designs. This is one of them.


So, some very simple craft techniques were used to make a clean background for whatever I will do next.


Use your Vitamin C and look at the materials you have in a different way!

I have a tendency to replay the bad or worrysome things that happen to me, inside my head like old reruns. Are you like me? I have been wearing out an old memory for about a week. It isn't good, I don't like doing it. Thankfully, God came to my rescue with these verses from Isaiah.


I do see that the future is where my focus should be. The past is past. And that makes me thankful too. I just need a reminder sometimes.


I added this page in my journal and though I would share this verse that snapped me out of it....


Take your Vitamin C!

• I prepared and defended my thesis this morning...and passed with flying colors. My committee chair wants me to come to the university and give a seminar, and then take it on the road to national worship conferences. Stinking cool.  
• I have a couple nice big jobs pending, I so love that!
• I am trying to prep for my mission trip which is in 12 days. I am buying online a lot, but still have other shopping and prepping to do. I now know everything you might ever need to know about all available flooring. Just ask me.
• Have two bracelet classes this week and a jewelry sale.
• Sweating a lot. Seriously, I thought I moved back to Michigan and it feels like I still live in Texas.
• Oh, and I am trying to get a few hours of sleep in too.

And I did one page, I guess it will be the cover. I did a little doodling and added some paper and paint. The flowers started as circles of paper cut out with pinking shears. If you look closely, you can see the pinked edge. It adds a bit of texture. Then I added some swoops of paint with a big round brush. That added some depth. Pretty OK for a midnight, eyes slamming shut, project.


I am feeling thankful that God is blessing my mission trip so much and so visibly.  

• People are supporting us with money and encouragement.
• We had 65 women come to a bead soup party and we raised a lot of money. 
• A group of women at church paid for the flooring we need to install.  
• I got a great discount on seven cabinets that I bought to build and install.  
• One team member bought 4 high chairs on her account that gets free shipping. 
• Three amazing women, out of the blue, volunteered to take care of all of our meals for us during the trip. It is such a huge relief not to have to worry about feeding everyone on top of 4 full days of projects and the logistics involved in all of that.
• And so on, it has been going like that for everything.

 I made her a big envelope in case she has notes or things she wants to save.

 The cover and the first section is watercolor paper. I painted the backgrounds with watered down acrylics.

 I stuck in a pencil bag filled with adhesive, markers, paint pens, and stickers.

The second section is plain white paper. The third section is scrapbook papers of colors and prints.

Since everything is hooked together with the round clips, she can take it apart and rearrange the pages if she wants.

Hopefully, she will fill the journal with memories of every day of her trip. And when she is my age, she can look back, smile, and remember.

Take your Vitamin C!

 On the first day of the New Smyrna Beach Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Art Retreat, we started journalling. We watched all of Teesha Moore's videos on how she does visual journalling. It was almost like having Teesha there with us teaching a class.

Taking a class from someone whose work we admire, is a fun way to get to know an artist/teacher, and to add tricks to our own repertoires. We will not copy what Teesha does, but we will learn technique from her and combine them with our own.

So, we each made a watercolor paper journal using her instructions. Try this if you like to journal. It is easy and makes a cool journal. You get a 16 page journal from one sheet of watercolor paper. Look for a big piece of watercolor paper 20" x 30" when you have a good coupon for Michaels.

We painted the pages first and then started adding things we cut out of magazines, and lettering.



 Lettering is not amongst my own competencies, so watching how Teesha does it was very helpful.

 Some pages done by the famous Barbara East.....

You can see that although we took the same "class", our pages have very different, distinct looks.

We have learned that visual journalling has no specific end point. We keep adding things to the pages. Personally, I think I could add a lot more, and probably will over time.

The whole exercise was enjoyable and relaxing. The great thing is that you can journal anything: feelings, ideas, topics...anything.

Take your Vitamin C!