Entries from: August 2009

Creative Every Day Challenge: August 31 – September 6

August 31st, 2009, Comments (18)

Ced2009Welcome, Creative Every Day Challenge participants! 

This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.

Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 8/31/09 - 9/6/09.

The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.)

You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.

Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here.

If you want to sign up to be a part of the challenge, leave a comment on this post or email me to let me know. When you contact me, please let me know how you'd like to be listed in the list of participants, which resides in the right sidebar (I can list you as your name or as a link to a blog if you have one. A blog is not required to participate!) Please email or comment to let me know you're participating before you start posting links in the comments or on the "Mr. Linky" widget.

Theme: The (totally optional) theme for August is move and for September it's inspiration. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the move theme here and the inspiration theme here.

Happy Creating!


Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes the difference. -Nolan Bushnell

Wishing Well – Setting Your Wishes in Motion

August 30th, 2009, Comments (17)

dandelionwishes
dandelion wishes

I grew up in a house on the edge of a State forest, so there were no big city lights around to dull the sky. When you went outside at night and looked up, you'd be overwhelmed by stars. As a little girl, I used to wish on stars out the living room window. I remember wishing to win the lottery a lot, which looking back now, seems silly. I mean, how many little girls do you know buy lottery tickets? I didn't even have a grandmother who gave out scratch tickets and my parents never played the lottery either, so the choice of a wish there was a little odd.

I think when I wished to win the lottery, what I was wishing for was lots of money, so that I could then go out and get for myself all the things I wanted, like the mini motorized car that I circled and starred and dog-eared in the Sears Christmas catalog every year.

In my teen years, we got an incredibly sweet, buff-colored cocker spaniel named, Sable. It was my job to take her out every morning, around 5:30 am, and last thing before I went to bed, around 9 pm. Growing up in New England, it was usually frigidly cold at both those times of day and I'd often dance around the grass to stay warm while Sable sniffed out the perfect spot. One night, I looked up a the light-bright sky and made a wish on the first star I saw. It became a habit, something I'd do every night when I took Sable out. I'd look up into the sky, focus on the first star I saw, and whisper, "Star light, Star bright, First star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight." And then I'd wish...

By then I'd realized the folly of wishing to win the lottery that I didn't play. I'd moved beyond wishing for the "how" and moved into wishing for the "what." I wished for that certain boy to notice me and ask me out, to get a part in the play, to travel abroad, to do well on the SAT's, to get into the college I applied to, etc... I made my wish with all my heart and then just as quickly, I'd let it go, mainly because by then the dog and I would be quite numb and ready to get out of the cold. Amazingly, this time around, an astounding amount of my wishes came true and in record speed.

bythelightofthesilverymoon
by the light of the silvery moon

I've always had an interesting (and seemingly contradictory) balance of the "practical/cynical" and the "anything is possible" going on in my head. I'm not sure why this is, but it's there. I picture it like I'm holding a balloon that sometimes has my feet lifting lightly off the ground, but never strays too far. I can't see completely delving into either side. Both feel necessary to me. I appreciate the logical side while being fascinated by possibility, magic, and synchronicity.

In my 20's I was introduced to The Artist's Way in which Julia Cameron talks about her "God Jar," a place to tuck wishes and worries that you simultaneously put out there and let go of. I made my own out of an old spagetti sauce jar that I painted with dancing figures. Every couple years I check all the little folded pieces of paper inside to see what has come true and what I might like to add. About once a year, I also have a practice of writing about my ideal day. In both cases, I'm amazed by how these practices have worked for me. I think I hold them lightly in a, "well, it can't hurt" kind of way.

Thinking about it now though, I realize that I clearly do believe in the power of wishing. I've developed a regular practice of making mixed-media vision boards with the full moons along with Jamie Ridler's dreamboard group, I often take advantage of Havi's personal ad posts, I used Jennifer Lee's "Unfolding Your Life Vision Kit", and I'm taking Jen and Andrea's Mondo Beyondo course right now.

With the month of move coming to a close, I've been thinking about how making a wish is a way of setting things in motion. Even if you can't always see the movement happening, just putting it out there may be aligning the stars in ways that we can't understand. There's also something quiet brave about speaking your wishes out loud. Wishing is a vulnerable act. It's often why we whisper our wishes to the stars or don't tell anyone what we wished for after blowing out our birthday candles. It's not just that we're risking them not coming true, we also risk being disappointed, we risk failure, we risk feeling unfulfilled. But in the wishing we gain a sense of empowerment and sense of valuing ourselves.

Taking the Mondo Beyondo class has inspired me to reexamine my own big wishes, to grow some of them larger and to wonder about how much I really want some of the things I thought I did. Some of my newer wishes include owning a home in Maui and teaching at a retreat in Costa Rica. Some wishes are ones I've had a long time, like publishing a book about creativity and writing/illustrating a children's book. Some are still too young and tender to share quite yet. But just writing them down, it feels like I've taken some great big, bold leaps forward.

Do you dare to wish for big things? What are the ways you put your wishes into the world? What wild things might you set in motion by expressing your deepest longings?

Creative Every Day Challenge Theme for September: Inspiration

August 28th, 2009, Comments (10)

ced inspiration

The *totally optional* theme for the Creative Every Day Challenge in September will be Inspiration! I'm thinking of it in terms of exploring what inspires you, what you do when you're feeling uninspired, sharing your inspirations, etc..

Because I'm in the process of moving and things are a bit hectic, I've asked a few of the wonderful people who inspire me to do guest posts on the blog this month around the topic of inspiration. I'll still be posting as well, but I thought this would be a fun way to fill in the gaps I might have left otherwise. And I'm super excited to share these guest posts with you! We'll get to be inspired together!

You can use the posts here for jumping off points or interpret the theme in your own creative way. If you need some suggestions, here are a few ideas to get you started. You could:

  • *Keep a notebook with you at all times to record everything that inspires you throughout the day.
  • *Explore the ways you find inspiration when you've lost your creative mojo.
  • *Find inspiration in unusual places (that wildly shaped tree, the colors in a puddle, the junk mail) and incorporate them into a piece of art or writing.
  • *Incorporate an inspiring quote into your art.
  • *Make a piece of art inspired by an artist you admire.
  • *Leave inspiration in unexpected places. For example you could leave a piece of art in a coffee shop with a note that says "free art" or you could leave a favorite quote tucked in a library book.
  • *Write freely about something that inspires you.
  • *Visit an inspiring place.
  • *Make one small change in your space to make it more inspiring (flowers in a vase often work wonders!)

How to use the CED themes:

If you're feeling creatively stuck or blocked at any point during the month, use the theme as a source of inspiration to get you moving. 

Using the theme is entirely optional for CED participants. Use it if it inspires you, ignore it if it doesn't. I'll be sharing posts throughout the month around the theme (among other things) to get you thinking about how to incorporate it into your life. I'd love to hear how you use the theme in your creative world.

Feel free to focus on the theme in your creative activities for the entire month or as much as you'd like.

And have fun with it!

I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness. ~Brenda Ueland

Links to Move You

August 26th, 2009, Comments (8)

ap birdcutout

So many fun links to share. Hopefully some of them will move you!

-Jamie Ridler has this great video and post about dancing in response to Gretchen Wegner's Muse Cubes. So fun and fabulous!

-If you want to see some more wonderful movement in action, head on over to Creative Every Day Challenge participant, Shamsi's blog, where she talks about her own movement practice, her work, and she's also got some wonderful videos of her belly dancing!

-Another beautiful belly dancer, Tatty Franey has some gorgeous pictures of her dancing on her site as well. The costumes and colors are so gorgeous, especially as they move! Oh my, super inspiring to me!

-Tammy Vitale has a wonderful discussion on her blog with Molly Gordon about how artist/entrepreneurs can set goals vs. expectations as you move towards your big dreams. If you leave a comment, you'll be entered to win a gold membership to the Self-Employment Summit.

-Vicki of Faint Heart Art is celebrating her 200th post with giveaway of a lovely travel art set. Great for art while you're on the move!

-Pema Chodron has a new book available for pre-order called, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears. This looks like it would be a great book to continue playing the move theme of this month!

-For a completely different kind of movement inspiration, check out this time-lapse video of NYC that was tweeted by the lovely Kirstin Butler (she's @kirstinbutler on Twitter.)

-There's less than a week left to take advantage of early bird pricing for the Creative Play Workshop, happening in the Boston area on September 19th. Jenn and I would love to see you there. Spots are filling up, so grab yours soon!

-The art above was something I played with during the Art Picnic Workshop on Saturday. We had such a great group participating in this class! One of the participants was actually having her picnic in the backseat of her car while her husband drove. So cool! You can also check out Beckie's experience of the workshop here. The next Picnic will be in October and I'll announce the date soon.

-As I mentioned earlier, this month's theme was especially poignant to me as the hubster and I just purchased our first home. Well, the closing happened today and we are officially homeowners!! I'm super excited to share next month's theme with you, so look out for that announcement tomorrow. In the meantime, keep on movin'!

Creative Every Day Challenge Check-In: August 24-30

August 24th, 2009, Comments (22)

Ced2009Welcome, Creative Every Day Challenge participants! 

This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.

Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 8/24/09 - 8/30/09.

The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.)

You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.

Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here.

If you want to sign up to be a part of the challenge, leave a comment on this post or email me to let me know. When you contact me, please let me know how you'd like to be listed in the list of participants, which resides in the right sidebar (I can list you as your name or as a link to a blog if you have one. A blog is not required to participate!) Please email or comment to let me know you're participating before you start posting links in the comments or on the "Mr. Linky" widget.

Theme: The (totally optional) theme for August is move. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the move theme here.

Happy Creating!


I think there are two keys to being creatively productive. One is not being daunted by one's fear of failure. the second is sheer perseverance.--Mary-Claire King

Deep Rest

August 23rd, 2009, Comments (17)

rest
rest

It's funny, but all the themes get me thinking about their opposites. I'm just contrary like that. :-)

So with this being the month of movement for the Creative Every Day Challenge, I've been doing a lot of thinking about rest. And I'm not talking about any old rest here...I mean deep rest. The soul-nourishing, replenishing, much needed kind. 

Do you give yourself time for this kind of rest? For more than 5 minutes? What does deep rest mean to you?

Giving yourself the time and space to rest is so important for creativity. When you're better rested, you'll have more energy to create, to make connections, to do the things you love, and to be there for the people you love. And yet, it can be hard to give ourselves permission to slow down.

When I slow down, I often feel this sense of, "Oh, there's something I should be doing!" It's even harder to do when I really do have a lot to do. But when I give myself permission to stop and relax, it's amazing how much better I feel. And all that stuff gets done much more easily.

Deep rest for me, might include a nap, or turning off the computer and reading a book purely for pleasure, or spending the day in my pajamas, or taking a bubble bath, or getting a massage, or rubbing lotion on my feet. Maybe you can just squeeze in five minutes of lying still or maybe you can schedule in an hour, a day, or a weekend. Try playing with adding some deep rest to your life and see how it impacts your creativity.

Looking for some more ideas? Check out Jennifer Louden's The Woman's Retreat Book or check out her blog, Comfort Queen.

Move with InterPlay: An Interview with Cynthia Winton-Henry

August 19th, 2009, Comments (9)

CynthiaHeadshot

This week I had the honor of speaking with Cynthia Winton-Henry, co-founder of InterPlay. I was introduced to Cynthia and InterPlay by the lovely Gretchen Wegner, and I was immediately fascinated by the process.

InterPlay fits so well with the Creative Every Day Challenge theme of move this month because it's all about unlocking the wisdom of your body through movement, stories, and interacting with community. Plus, it involves some of my favorite things: play and permission.

I spoke with Cynthia about how movement impacts creativity, what an InterPlay class is like, and she shared a simple InterPlay exercise we can all try during this month of movement! You can listen into the conversation below or right-click and save it to listen to later.

Listen here.

You can find out more about Cynthia, InterPlay, and find an InterPlay class near you right here.

Did you try out the exercise Cynthia suggested? What did you think of it? To learn more and see someone else do it, check out this post and video over at Gretchen's blog.

How does consciously moving your body impact your creativity?

Creative Every Day Challenge Check-In: August 17 – 23

August 17th, 2009, Comments (16)

Ced2009Welcome, Creative Every Day Challenge participants! 

This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.

Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 8/17/09 - 8/23/09.

The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.)

You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.

Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here.

If you want to sign up to be a part of the challenge, leave a comment on this post or email me to let me know. When you contact me, please let me know how you'd like to be listed in the list of participants, which resides in the right sidebar (I can list you as your name or as a link to a blog if you have one. A blog is not required to participate!) Please email or comment to let me know you're participating before you start posting links in the comments or on the "Mr. Linky" widget.

Theme: The (totally optional) theme for August is move. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the theme here.

Happy Creating!


Whatever coaxes us out of hiding, to write, record, and express, is a revolutionary act. It says that we believe our lives count: our lives do count. - SARK

Good Stuff Galore!

August 14th, 2009, Comments (6)

I've got other posts swimming around in my brain since I wrote the Swimming Lessons post, but I had to stop and share some of the good stuff going on!

greetingcards
greeting cards

Firstly, I've got some gorgeous new greeting cards for sale in my art shop. They're lovely. Right now there are three to choose from and you can purchase one or save money by buying them in a set. Checkity, check them out right here.

vaplogo

Secondly, time is absolutely flying by and it's nearly time for another Art Picnic Teleclass! The next one is happening Saturday, August 22nd from 1-3 pm Eastern time. This is a great opportunity to schedule in some creative time for yourself and learn some tips and tools to help you get going when you're feeling stuck with your art.

Third, I'm super excited about making my second appearance on the Connie's fabulous Creative Juicy Life radio show this Sunday at 6pm EST. I'll be on with my pal, Jennifer Lee to talk about living the creative life and our upcoming Creative Play Workshop, which is taking place in the Boston area on September 19th. If you can't listen into the call live, you'll be able to hear a recording of the call here. EDIT: Due to technical difficulties, the radio show was canceled and rescheduled for Sunday, September 6th at 6pm EST.

cp2 large

The Creative Play Workshop is going to be a blast. Lots of giggling, creating, and mess-making will be happening and we'd love to see you there! There's an early bird price for this workshop through August 31st and space is limited, so be sure to scoop up your spot here.

Lastly, I've been doing lots of tedious, behind the scenes kind of work this week and haven't had as much time as to get around to see all your fabulous work. I plan on doing some blog-hopping on Sunday though! Tomorrow the hubster and I are going to do some measuring at the new house for things like curtains and blinds. Weird. We've been living in this bachelor pad type apartment for so long, it's going to be quite a switch to do things like actually decorate!

Hope you all have a wonderfully creative weekend!

Swimming Lessons for Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone

August 12th, 2009, Comments (17)

wip bodyscape
work-in-progress where i'm practicing taking some risks!

The painting above is a work-in-progress, where I'm painting over part of a very old mixed-media piece. I do not know where it's going yet and it's in the stage where every step is a bit of a risk.

As I said at the start of August's move theme for the Creative Every Day Challenge, I also interpret "move" to mean taking risks. To me, risk taking means moving out of your comfort zone into the land of the scary, the exhilarating, the dangerous, and the empowering. I immediately thought of my pal Jessie's Be Brave Challenge and our recent discussion about how sometimes every movement we make as we create can be an act of bravery.

Earlier this week, I went into town to put up some flyers for the Creative Play Workshop I'm leading with my friend Jenn in September. I'm super excited about the workshop and have been happily talking about it online, but putting up flyers in person scares the crap out of me. Don't laugh. Heh. It sounds totally ridiculous when I write it out. I mean, what's so scary about hanging up flyers anyways?

The things is, it doesn't matter how ridiculous your fears seem to you (or to anyone else for that matter), they're your fears and you don't need to be ashamed of them. But once you've noticed them and acknowledged their existance, perhaps you'll want to nudge at those boundaries a bit.

Swimming Lessons

When I was little, I took swimming lessons at a local pond. I wasn't the greatest swimmer and as much as I loved splashing around in the water, sometimes the depths of it scared me. One day, the teachers told us we were going to learn how to dive. We were instructed to tuck our head, point our hands out in front of us, curl our back, and then kind of roll and drop into the water. The pond we swam in was a muddy one with teeny fish swimming around in it. When we stood at the far end of the dock, toes over the edge, all shivering in our little swimsuits, you couldn't see the sandy bottom. All you could see was dark, dark water.

One by one, kids dove off the dock. Some rolled in with grace, natural swimmers. Others belly-flopped. I stood frozen, with my toes curled tight over the wooden edge, staring at the sun reflecting off the water, breathing fast, and not wanting to dive. I didn't want to go into that dark water head first. Time passed. The teachers waited. I just couldn't get myself to step off the edge.

One teacher coaxed me. She then tried counting down, "1,2,3,...go!" I didn't dive. Eventually she pushed me in. That wench. I can laugh about it now, but how many times have you been rudely pushed through your fears? Some people would prefer the push. If that's you, then find someone to push you! You might like that bootcamp exercise class that I tried and despised this year. Heh.

But if you don't like being pushed, there's another more gentle approach.

Stick Your Toes In: You know how when the water's cold, some people will wade in bit by bit and others will just dive in to get the cold over with? Neither way is wrong. Try out both styles and see what works best for you. If the baby step approach works best for you, go with that. Slow steps forward is more than ok. Honor your style of approaching the scary stuff. What teeny-tiny step could you take with something that you're avoiding?

Splash Playfully: Before the swimming lessons, I used to play around in a neighbor's pool. I would never go underwater without plugging my nose because of a few times when I breathed in water and it stung like crazy. But one day, I was playing games with my friends and I ran straight into the water without plugging my nose first. I breathed out and came up for air with no troubles. And just like that I could swim underwater without plugging my nose. What playful or sideways approach could you take with something that's difficult for you?

Treat Yourself: At the pond where I went to swim lessons, there was always a visit from the ice cream truck. I love picking out a treat after a hard day of swimming. When I went to put up flyers this week, I stopped to get my favorite iced tea from Peet's. Sometimes knowing there's a treat at the end of your action, helps you get started. What are some ways you reward yourself?

Spread out Your Towel and Rest: A day of swim and sun would always leave me tuckered out. But I also realized recently that any kind of risk-taking, especially when done in bunches could leave me feeling exhausted. If that's the case for you, put in a little buffer time around activities that stretch your boundaries. Give yourself some space to rest and get rejuvenated. After hanging flyers, I gave myself some time to sit in the air conditioned bedroom and watch Project Runway Canada on youtube (don't tell me who won. I haven't seen the end yet!) Do you give yourself time to relax after you've moved forward on something big?

How's the Water?: After you've completed something that moved you out of your comfort zone, notice how you feel. I often feel super empowered after conquering a fear and it often energizes me to take it one step further or conquer a fear in another area. Other times, I just feel drained. How do you feel after you've taken a risk?

Dive at Your Own Pace: I did eventually learn how to dive gracefully, but not at the pond. I learned in a more comfortable environment (back at the neighbor's pool), without any pressure or pushing. Don't worry so much if you're not moving along with your art, business, or whatever as quickly as you think others around you are. Respect your pace, keep moving forward playfully, and have fun with it. You'll enjoy the journey much more.

Play with moving out of your comfort zone with your art, your writing, your movement this month and let me know how it goes for you!