I hope you've been enjoying the guest posts this month! I've got some fabulous ones to come this month and next and I'm so grateful to the creative souls who've been sharing their stories here, while I'm deep in new mama land.

Annabelle is keeping me on my toes! I feel like the last two weeks have been simultaneously the longest and shortest weeks of my life. It's amazing to be filled with so much love and so much exhaustion at one time, but oh, her cute little face and sweet snuggles make it all worth it. I know she won't be this tiny forever!

Before I return to the world of babyhood and the endless eat, sleep, poop cycle, here are a couple posts I saw recently that relate beautifully to this month's theme of BIG:

First, this post and video from Laura Hollick about being seen. I love her tips!

Second, a beautiful, post in images from Vivienne McMaster on Roots of She.

Enjoy!

I've collaged together some rice paper prints of leaves and stamps that I made while in Judy Wise's class at Squam. Rice paper collages so beautifully! I plan to work with this image more, painting and/or drawing on top of it once it's dry. It definitely feels like fall and fits right in with the earth theme.

By the way, make sure the top on giant containers of gel medium are closed before you carry them around. Yikes! What a mess! Thankfully, I couldn't help but laugh, scrape up what I could salvage and clean up the rest.

Two quick things:

1. Today, I have a video up at SPRING, all about creativity, cycles and the beautiful community of Art Every Day Month. If you haven't checked out SPRING, please do. It's full of inspiration and this month the focus is all about creativity!

2. Art Every Day Month is right around the corner. It's a low pressure challenge that draws a great group of creatives every year. Your daily art could be jewelry, knitting, cooking, collage, drawing, anything else you can dream up or a great mix of lots of creative activities. I'll write more about it in the coming week, but you can read all about the process here and sign-up here.

And if you want to join in, but would like a little extra support, inspiration, and daily prompts to keep you going, you can sign up for the Art Every Day Month Survival Guide here.

p.s. Connie is having a sale on her fabulous Art Journal Love e-course through May 30th!

Wow, what a fun time of year to focus on the senses. I think my senses are already on high alert in Spring, especially as I've gotten older. Summer has always been my favorite month (I love the warmer weather, my b-day is in July, and summer used to mean vacation!), but in the last few years, I've been especially enamored with Spring. I can't get enough of its young, green, flirty ways. I've been especially loving the flowering trees all around this new neighborhood I'm living in, the young birds visiting our yard (cardinals, blue jays, robins, and a woodpecker, among others), and just being outside. When I was feeling a bit funky on Monday, I took a long walk through the woods and snapped these pictures. Doesn't the path look mysterious? And then below, another mysterious looking picture of the sun reflected in a bog. It felt like I was looking into the moonlit sky, a through-the-looking-glass kind of image.

The senses theme this month also seems to lead perfectly into the theme of Intuition for May. A bunch of people mentioned Intuition or their sixth sense in the comments this month, so I sort of hinted about the upcoming theme here and there. I could barely contain myself from shouting, "Yes, you're right on the money, Intuition is next!" Hehe. I'm terrible at keeping secrets.

I love the way one theme has flowed seamlessly to the next this year. But really, getting in touch with your senses is a great way to tap into your intuition. And speaking of Intuition, today I have a guest post about creating sanctuary to help discover your purpose over at Intuitive Guide, Bridget Pilloud's fabulous blog. I've taken a Chakralicious class from Bridget and think she's just awesome. And I'll be sharing much more about Bridget next month, so stay tuned!

I love that the Creative Every Day theme for March is stories. I love stories. There is magic in them. It got me thinking about stories, and creativity, and reminded me of something.

I used to have a story that said I wasn't creative. Now, I have a new story that says I am.

The old story said that I wasn't creative because I couldn't draw as beautifully as two of my siblings. The new story says that I am creative because I look at this photo and see a castle rising out of the mist.

The old story said that I wasn't creative because I wasn't in a creative profession. The new story says that I am creative because I tell my puppy stories about a girl and her dog and their adventures together.

The old story said that I wasn't creative because I wasn't regularly creating artwork. The new story says that I am creative because I can take a bunch of random food items and turn them into a meal.

The old story said that I wasn't creative because I'm not a real artist. The new story says that I am creative because I make birthday cards for friends and family.

I could go on and on.

The funny thing is that nothing has changed except the story. Well .. and my state of mind. The old story used to make me feel sad. I really wanted to be creative, but the story made me feel like I was failing at it. The new story makes me feel happy. It reminds me that creativity happens in moments, and it is so much bigger than my idea of it.

Really, when it comes down to it, life itself is a creative act. We are creating our own life moment by moment. And every moment can be a new story. Maybe all we really need to do is pay attention to them.

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Elizabeth Halt is always looking for beauty - in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. She shares photos from her search on her photo blog, retinal perspectives.

Sheree of Raven Moon Magic created this super cool outdoor kitchen for her daughter. The pictures brought back so many memories of making "food" with sand and sticks. So fun!

Sandy Coleman of Creations by Coleman created this mixed-media piece, Safe at Home, reflecting on how "home feels like an embrace." Yes, love that.

Salomé of The Sassy Cow used a photoshop tutorial to create this super cool piece. I feel at home in jeans too!

Pat of PAssionarT (I saw this piece in the CED flickr group) created this beautiful mixed media piece. Love the colors!

Eliza of Art Asana wrote a beautiful reflection on home and how she wove it into her yoga class here. She also created this beautiful art piece. Lovely!

Sara of The Painterly Hummingbird created this super sweet embroidery of her grandparents' house. I love how she's framed it like a polaroid!

As always, I could go on and on with these posts. There is so much amazing work to be seen and words to be read. Thank you all for sharing your beautiful selves. I hope you're inspired too!

Over at Liv Lane's blog, Choosing Beauty, Liv is having a giveaway for a print of my mixed-media piece, Lantern. You can enter to win by leaving a comment on her blog by Friday 1/29 at midnight!

I also love the question Liv asks with the giveaway, "What lights your way on your darkest days?" I answered the question in the comments and have been enjoying reading the answers from others! Liv is a fellow Creative Every Day Challenge participant, who also co-hosts a fabulous weekly radio show in Minnesota called Get Real, which I got to be a guest on last month!

You can also be entered to win one of my prints every month by subscribing to my Blue Tree Art Gallery newsletter. The sign-up form for that is in the lower left corner of the site, where I offer original art, prints, greeting cards, and calendars featuring my work.

This month and next, you can also see my work on the beautiful online zine, All Things Girl. The theme this month is Through the Looking Glass and my pieces, Leap and Listening are featured.

A big, heartfelt thank you to everyone here for supporting my growth as an artist. It means the world to me!

I've been head over heels with your responses to the body theme. It's been a really juicy topic to explore and I've laughed, cried, and been inspired along with many of your posts. Here are just a few of the amazing, creative works I've seen this month with some more to come:

Aimee from artsyville recently created a super cute drawing of her outfit (love her style!) and I was going to share that, but I was so tickled by her ode to her addled brain in this piece below that I had to share that one instead.

I was so touched with this poem by Patty of Waking Up that I asked her if I could share it here.

The Body Principle
What if I looked at my body in a different way?

What if I appreciated it for what it can do, not for what it can’t?
Instead of grumbling about my dyed-over-gray hair,
what if I thanked my hair for keeping my head warm,
and for smelling like coconuts when it is freshly washed?

What if I thanked my brain for imagining stories and poems,
for coming up with clever puns and figuring the tip for lunch,
instead of berating it for not remembering some actor’s name
at the instant I wanted it to remember?

What if I walked more, and danced and hugged more, and
Used more expressive hand gestures when I talked,
instead of holding myself so tightly within myself
that sometimes I can hardly breathe?

Wouldn’t my body and I smile with sheer joy?
Wouldn’t that be something to see?

Evelyn from Enjoying the Good Life created this gorgeous drawing of a yoga twist. Love it!

Christy from Sweet Tidings joined the challenge with adorable spool and peg dolls like this one. Too cute!

Melissa aka Dandelionlady of Dandelion Seed on the Updraft created the beautiful sketch of hands that I'm just loving.

Hege of Cloudberry made this fantabulous body flip book with her kids. So cool!

Susan of of The Nest created this lovely torso tile. Love the colors!

Lastly, new CED participant, Angie Fletchall of Thalo Blue Sky, shared this book she created about loving your body with me.  While not created for this month, it fits so well with this month's theme and is such a lovely story, that I had to share it with you here. You can preview the book and its sweet illustrations here.

Click here to listen.

You can find Briana's at Blisscovery and Blisscovery Wellness. Briana has a (diet-free) weight loss teleclass starting up on Tuesday the 19th, which you can find out more about here. You can also find Briana on twitter: @brianaaldrich.

Thank you for the great chat, Briana!

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking with the lovely Laura Hollick, an artist, workshop leader, and creative dynamo. Do check out her site and her blog, she's up to so many amazing things!! Laura interviewed me about my creative process and artwork, and you can listen to our chat here.

"Unicorn and Pink Dragon"
Soul Artist Laura Hollick enters the magical world of Heartland where she is transformed into a unicorn and frolicks through the meadow with pink dragon.
vision, sculpture, costume, model Laura Hollick
photo by Kevin Thom

Fitting in beautifully with the body theme this month, Laura has some absolutely stunning pieces that utilize her body as part of the creation. Some of the work is photographs of her, such as the image above. Last night, while perusing her work, I also noticed a series of images she calls Body Mapping. These mixed-media pieces began as tracings of her body and were transformed into these stunning images. I absolutely love them! And I love how she uses them as a tool to dive into the language of her inner world.

It reminded me a bit of what I've been doing with my body shadows painting (which I shared here and here.) As I've continued working on that piece, it has been a similar process to what Laura has done with her body mapping work. It has felt like some body wisdom has been coming through the piece which has been very interesting. I'll share where that piece has been going tomorrow.

In the meantime, I wanted to point out that Laura is teaching a free teleclass tonight called Shift the sh*t so you can launch: 3 keys to total transformation. Love the name! You can get all the details and sign up for that here.