I Am the One Who Is Creative

I Am the One Who Paints

I created this card last year, just after my birthday. I use it now for my profile picture on facebook. 

It represents a favorite part of myself, the creative, the painter.  Somewhere I read, when I was working

on my BFA, that in ancient Japan it was considered the artist's duty to bring the beauty of nature to

those who had to keep their eyes on the world of commerce and politics, who did not have time to

glimpse it in their day to day life.  I took this to heart. In this card are: Victorian flower images, garden

flowers, forget-me-nots, cans of paint and a painter's brush, Tibetan tanka imagery and colorful South

American painted pottery. These different images represent the idea of memory, the beauty of nature,

(especially flowers), tradition, the joy of color, my spirituality. All these aspects ignite my love for painting

and my sense of responsibility for bringing my ideas/visions/dreams to birth through my art.

I Am the One Who Loves Color

I Am the One Who Loves Nature

I Am the One Who Brings Beauty to Others

I Am the One Who Seeks the Path With Heart

I Am the One Who Trusts Intuition

I Am the One Guided by Spirit

I Am the One Inspired By Elizabeth St. Hillary Nelson

SoulCollage: I Am the One Inspired by Elizabeth St. Hillary Nelson
Collage using Gelli Plate, acrylic paint and deli paper plus images from
Elizabeth's promotional flier and images from her collages

I attended a Paper Painting Collage workshop with Elizabeth the first weekend of September, 2014.

It was so inspiring! As one gets older, I'm told, new experiences become connected to related experiences

from the past.  So this experience took me back to: being in painting school, working with children in

summer recreation programs, a workshop with child book illustrator Ed Young, seeing the paper

cuts of Matisse, as well as reading the wonderful books from Eric Carle when my son was young. 

So great to connect to all those experiences of with a common theme: being playfully creative while

delighting in the pure sensual and intuitive pleasure of making colorful marks. Additionally we traded

bits of paper that workshop participants had painted and worked to assemble our individual collages.

Here is my first collage from that workshop.

First Apple

collage with painted paper

I Am the One Who is Inspired by Elizabeth St. Hillary Nelson

I Am the One Who is a Whimsical Collage Artist

I Am the One Who Remembers Being a Creative Child

I Am the One Who is in Love with Color

I Am  the One Who is a Painter

I Am the One Who  Puts the Torn Pieces Back Together to Make a Better Picture

I Am The One Who Hears the Call

magazine clips, scissors, glue-stick, 5" X 8" support

The Soul Collage  process has been calling me, and I'm heeding the call.  I've been making a card

or so a day and I can hardly tell you how powerful this process is.  In the past I've made a card

here or there for years but have recently picked up the thread because I've had a coaching client

who has been bringing her cards to our phone sessions.

I returned to Anne Marie Bennett's website and looked around.  I pulled out Seena Frost's book

about Soul Collage and enrolled in a teleclass called "Journaling With Our Cards".  The class 

just ended, although I'm staying active on the related facebook page.  I started the journal

and have committed to creating and journaling with my cards as often as I can.  

Another thing that I've returned to is this Healing Art Works blog.  I started blogging with this

site, with a  focus on art therapy and "Healing Art Works", which had been embodied in my

artist cards a few years ago.  For the last year I've been blogging on another blog, Creative Collage

4 Visual Journaling, focusing on my visual art journal pages and my group in Colorado. 

Now my art and soul explorations will include my Soul Collage cards and process.

Soul Collage is a registered trademark but anyone can click on the link in this blog for free

instruction on how to make cards.  I think I am so hooked because of the deep feelings that have

come up for me in the recent class and to experience again what a dynamic process it is to engage

with the parts of self.  I've experienced this process before with other techniques: Sand Play

Therapy, Alchemical Hypnotherapy, Dream Work, Art Therapy, art making (especially as a 

collagist), and as a Tarot reader.

Somehow Soul Collage is just the perfect inspiration and healing modality for me now,

although I will continue to delight in many of the above processes as well.

More Brown Bag Journal Pages

Brown Bag Journal 2 (Cover)

I used the Tsukinek Antiquing Solution (Walnut Ink) with
Tim Holtz masks, black stamp ink and metallic markers.
Tim Holtz gear. Tatter Angels Glimmer Mist (Marshmallow).

Brown Bag Journal 2 (pages 3 & 4)

Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist (Marshmallow), magazine clips
Black Pitt pen, handmade paper, quotes.

Brown Bag Journal 2 (pages 1 & 2)

Stencils and masks with Tsukinek Antiquing Solution and
Tatter Angels Glimmer Mist (Marshmallow). Quotes.

Brown Bag Journal 2 (pages 5 & 6)

Magazine clips, post cards cut, quote, brads, with
stencils and Antiquing Solution and Glimmer Mist.

Paper Bag Journal 2 (Back Cover)

Magazine clips, Tim Holtz masks, Antiquing Solution,
Glimmer Mist, patterned tape. Quote.

King Crow Artist Card

Card image cropped from Paper Bag Journal 3

(Cover, below) made with Martha Stewart bird punch and

crown punch, patterned tape, stencils, Glimmer Mist and

Antiquing Solution, heart shaped brads.

Paper Bag Journal 3 (Cover)

These Brown Bag Journals are so fun and fast to make--a great way to try out new techniques. I was remembering a book I made for my sister Jane, many years ago, that had drawings and quotes in it. I love reading quotes and collecting them. These little journals are perfect for adding thoughtful phrases. What a great bonus to be able to crop the pages (digitally) to make a point of departure for an artist card. I think I am going to add faux encaustic to this card.

It has been a month since I have blogged although I have been making Paper Bag Journals, looking at craft books, journaling, making art cards and attending trades, as well as working on my outline for a book that is tentatively called: Creative Collage for Visual Journals, Artist Cards, Art Therapy, Fine Art and Crafts. I was working on writing a book about Artist Card techniques and applications but it kept on expanding. I love collage and it makes sense to me to create a more general "how to" book that also discusses applications such as journals and the other lovely things mentioned in the title.

Tonight I went to a writer's group, my attempt at making myself more accountable in terms of getting this book done. Love the group--the lecture was about "Writing With Heart". I have no lack of passion for art and the book topic so we will see how long it takes me to create it. I am committed to getting the first three topics in my outline written and illustrated by our next meeting. All, send me some good vibes for courage and keeping my feet (and hands) in motion, one step at a time.

Nourishing Your Creativity

Nourishing Creativity

Collage made with scrapbook paper, Campbell soup ad, stamp (redline) with sepia ink (Ranger).

This card is actually a miniature (ATC sized) version of the cover of one of my visual journals. I am excited that today I proposed two new classes I want to teach for the Colorado Free University. Later today I got an email saying both of them were accepted, and will be workshops offered in the Spring. They are: "Nourishing Your Creativity through Creative Art Journaling" and "Make and Trade Artist Cards".

I love doing workshops like these and hope that my full time work, in the future, will be conducting workshops from my own office/studio as well as around the country, along with practicing creativity coaching, teaching and art therapy. Oh, and selling my art work as well. Fingers crossed.

Birthday Girl

Red Path and Lemonade

This card started out as a journal page. I've begun to work larger and then reduce images to artist card size. Redline stamp "Birthday Girl". Fortunes from my birthday dinner: "The future comes one day at a time" and "Most success springs from an obstacle or failure". Sharpie accent markers, glitter glue (Crayola). Starbucks "treat receipt" stamp. Memento Dual Markers (Tsukneko).

I love how the process of making art always surprises and informs me. At the center of this card I pasted on my fortunes. I ripped one of them at the restaurant but it seems appropriate since this is the one that talks about success coming from failure. A lucky rip. I originally drew fortune cookies but they turned into lemons as I worked on them. I had put bits of my Starbucks "treat receipts" on the lower left, this became a frosty glass of lemonade. My inner self reminding me to alway lemonade when life gives you lemons.

Each of the quadrants of this piece ended up representing a part of my creative life. The lower left seems to be about comfort and nurturing myself. The lower right has card shapes flying around my head. These are my artist cards, the ones already created, and ideas for cards. I am thinking this also represents the Tarot. The Tarot deck is a wonderful source of symbolism and wisdom. It has been called "The Book of Life" because it represents the stages of the hero's path from birth to death. My friends like me to read for them.

The upper right represents transformation (books as butterflies) and a few books I want to write. The upper left represents my paintings and also some framed mirrors I want to make.

I added a wavy connecting line--a river. It became a stream of vitality--the life blood that energizes activity. I am reminded of Navaho lore: "The Red Path" is the path with heart that means you are following your dreams and destiny with courage.

Kind of a busy, messy piece but a wonderful reminder to continuing to follow my creative spirit despite my "senior" status (or maybe because of it).

Thin Band of Humanity

Thin Band of Humanity

Collage made from larger tempera paintings cut up with fancy scissor and altered with gesso. Some of the edges were rubbed with copper colored stamping ink. Some stamping with an organic image on the lower part of the more distant mountain.

I had two large tempera paintings from a process painting workshop. Process painting is a spontaneous art process where intuition and the natural creativity of the inner self are invited to play. I liked my big paintings but they were getting damaged just leaning against the wall, and would have cost a fortune to frame. I decided to cut up my paintings into 8 1/2" by 11" pages for my visual journal. Makes great pages of you can deal with the ongoing smell of tempera. Reminds me of my first agency studio as an art therapist where I spent time mixing tempera and working with clients.

I had a number of scraps left over so I took some decorative sheers and began to cut and collage. At first I just had a shape that looked like a prairie dog, but suddenly it began to look like a sunset bathed landscape. The tempera colors were very vivid and raw so I started to experiment with softening the colors with gesso. Since gesso is water soluble I was able to vary my muted colors by using the mixture of tempera and gesso to make a sort of spontaneous gouache. I left one thin strip of tempera colored paper vivid at the bottom. When a glued on that strip it looked like houses and foreground foliage to me. I was struck by the huge beauty of nature in contrast to the "thin band of humanity".

Haunted

Haunted

This card is one from yesterday. Left over castle pieces (acrylic transfer) from the "Perfect Harmony" card(s). Perfect harmony background (printed copy), Musical notations emphasized using Glossy Accents (Ranger). Clips of an image of candles. At first I had no idea where this came from--yet I liked it's other-worldly quality. But when I wrote that it had a "Perfect Harmony" background I got it. I need to address what "haunts me" in my life--in order to create more peace. What haunts me? Money issues, negative self judgement, clutter and disorder, health worries, family of origin issues. I need to meditate more frequently in order to align with what is behind it all (harmony) rather than dwell in the twilight of my "issues". In addition I will make gradual progress on the life items that sometimes keep me in a mournful place.

Light and Airy

3 Wingeds

This art card is very simple but has some pleasing textures. The base paper is gold cardstock that has been embossed using a "Splatter" stamp (All Night Media) with a tinted embossing pad (Emboss It) and Kalidoscope embossing powder (Stampendous). Next, two different rice papers. I got a nice thready deckle by folding the top and bottom of the blue rice paper and running a line of water with a paintbrush along the fold, then ripping. The "wingeds" were cut from a greeting card. I think two are moths and one a butterfly, but not sure--hence the name. Antenne added with a fine Pitt pen.

Steampunk Spring

Steampunk Spring

Collage with embossing (VersaMarker watermark pen and Stampendous embossing powder: Hematite and Detail Gold).  Derwent Intense Watercolor pencils. Lettering printed on vellum: gold Sanford Uniball gel pen . 

You know, I think she looks like a "tourist" dressed up in native costume.  She has given me the idea to do a time traveler series--with costume and background of various ancient cultures. That might be fun.  In the background of this card are: a Kraken, a flying ship.  In the midground: men in Victorian suits pointing.  In the foreground: our Steampunk adventurer and Spring flowers.

So "What is Steampunk"? you say.  http://steampunkscholar.blogspot.com/2010/03/disney-and-steampunk.html

Imagine that there was wonderous steam powered technology in the 1800's, now you are getting warm.  Think the Wild Wild West TV series (not so much the movie), Dr. Who, Sherlock Holmes.  So you want to have your computer outfitted with fine polished wood and brass as if it were a Victorian artifact?  That would be current day Steampunk. Say you want to dress up like a Victorian adventurer complete with time travel proof googles.  Yes, that's it.  Now throw in the works of a few literary geniuses, for example, H.G Wells and Jules Verne.  Stir in Walt Disney and other inventive movie makers,(2000 Leagues Under the Sea, Atlantis, The pirates of the Caribbean, and other movies with a science-fiction/steam powered technology/fantasy bent), and you would be "there".  Playful, nostalgic fantasy.  I'm putting together a few
H. G.Wells and Jules Verne cards.  I'll post them when they are done. For more crafty "Steampunkery" check out http://www.amazon.com/Steampunk-Ann-VanderMeer/dp/1892391759

Also check out a book in the process that is calling for Steampunk submissions: http://www.barbesaintjohn.com/steampunk/

ATC "Baggie Swap"

Participating in a "baggie swap". Each participant makes up 6 baggies of ATC "ingredients" and mails them to the swap host. You get back 5 assorted baggies and need to make 5 cards with the provided ingredients. Fun, and a challenge--not everyone gets inspired by the same things. I finished one tonight.

This is called "Library for Heidi". A picture of a bookshelf was provide plus photo corners, a small black shell charm (became the clock), picture frame hardware (became dangles), ribbon (become edges of bookcase), a paper tag that I never did figure out how to use and destroyed in the process of altering it (things happen).  I was asked to include the figure of a woman as well. I had a transfer image that I had made that was about the right size, that I cut out--she is the "ghost" at the right. I made her a bit more dimensional with Ranger Glossy Accents. The word "library" came from a scrap of found paper.