Do you believe in Magic?

“Those who don`t believe in magic, will never find it.” –Roald Dahl (1916-1990) Writer

Remember when you were a child and everything was so magical and you used your imagination everyday to create as you played, often including imaginary friends?  It was a magical time – there was Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, fairies, Peter Pan and yes sometimes monsters under the bed.

A few weeks ago I picked up Rhonda Byrne’s (The Secret) latest book “The Magic” at Costco and had planned to give it as a gift for a girls weekend I was going on but instead kept it and gave another gift. I have since started reading the book and it is a great learning tool when it comes to gratitude.  I always practice my nightly gratitude and through out the day but since I have been reading this book I have escalated my gratitude even more because gratitude is the real magic ingredient in our lives.  I have found that I feel even more joy and happiness in my life and some great things have been manifesting as well, I wake up feeling energized after sleeping really well and just have an overall feeling of calmness. It really does change your life and it’s like MAGIC!

Bring Magic into Your Life with Gratitude

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” – Willie Nelson (B.1933) Singer Songwriter

I was working on another digital collage and used a drawing/painting that I did when I was practicing my drawing skills which was inspired by  mixed-media/digital artist, Debbie Kerkhof  who was featured in Somerset Digital Studio magazine (Autumn 2011 issue).  I loved her whimsical faerie mannequins and thought I would see if I could draw something like that and lo and behold I did – I keep discovering all this drawing talent that I never really knew I had, after so many years ago when I was in Jr. High being told that I did not have drawing talent so was not allowed to take the art class, instead I had to take Home Economics. A special Thank You to Debbie for her wonderful inspiration,this is one of my favorite drawings that I have done so I scanned it so that I could use it in other art forms.  I also incorporated a few different art journal pages I had scanned and created this new digital collage and including an inspirational affirmation  – “Bring the Magic into Your Life with an Attitude of Gratitude.”

Until next time I thank you for taking the time to read my post  – please feel free to leave a comment.

Michelle

Artist With Training Wheels

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced” Vincent Van Gogh

I see myself as a budding artist with training wheels, and I am very new to the collage and art journaling community I am loving the growth I have made in the past few months and know that the training wheels may be required for quite some time. If you had asked me 8 months ago if I would be painting and doing art journaling, I would have likely said ‘me I’m not a painter’ – because I have this voice inside –  that ‘EGO’ voice that stops me from doing so many things in life because of the fear it can instill if I allow it to.  That is why I chose to start off this post with the quote from Vincent Van Gogh  so we can remember to silence that voice otherwise we stop ourselves from experiencing our creativity and many other adventures in life. 

This past week I have continued to experiment with my art pages by incorporating and altering  magazine photos.  It is such an interesting transformation and it is amazing how something so simple can create such different and unique art pages. 

I was reflecting on the past few months and am so pleased with the progress in my art and all of the different techniques I have been learning.  When I think that up until 4 months ago I had not tried  painting or doing collage for that matter I  had really no thoughts of trying these different mediums, instead  I had been  creating wire wrap jewellery for about 4 months which I loved but I was searching for more.  Creativity opened  another door to me in December when I was inspired by a couple of collages a past co-worker had hanging in her office.  She had recently taken a class and created these striking wax collages and ‘ voila’ I was overcome with  inspiration and a tweaked curiosity to sample collage as an art form myself – it stirred some excitement within me.  I remembered doing collage of sorts back at the age of 19 when I covered the exterior of an old claw-foot bathtub with pictures and quotes to cover the ugly peeling paint – I wonder what the landlord thought of my artistic refurbishing of the tub? 

So now with  a new area to explore I started searching on-line and found many videos to watch on the collage process, painting, mediums, etc. – trying to learn all that I could.

Collage art page prior to being altered

I am so grateful that I stumbled onto the 21 Secrets Workshop Artists Workshops  http://www.dirtyfootprintsworkshops.com/2008/09/21-secrets-art-journal-playground.html through Violette’s  Creative Juice blog http://www.violette.ca/  where I discovered 21 talented artists who are willing to share their many talents – feeding my hunger to learn more techniques and try new things.  I look forward to where my creations will go in the next months while I wander down this exciting road of art discovery with my training wheels firmly attached – learning not only art techniques but more about my inner self from  these very talented instructors but also from the incredible 21 Secrets community that is rapidly growing with other artists willing to share their new artistic adventures and growth. Still three more months of fun in the playground.

So who says you can’t paint? – just give it a try, have fun, art journaling is a wonderful way to discover that child within and to experiment, use your hands – get messy and learn so much more about yourself as it is a very therapeutic past time.

After altering the magazine photo collage

Til next time happy creating

Michelle