A New Journey

Hello all!

Today I begin a new journey. I am taking an online course from Christy Tomlinson called Your Living Canvas. Here is the short description from her website:

We all have a story to tell... one that we live and paint and breath everyday... through our heartaches and trials, joys and celebrations, insecurities and moments of clarity.  What story are we telling now and what story do we have yet to create? At the end of the day, it's our living canvas that will tell our story.

In this six week course we will help you discover that through art, techniques,journaling and soul searching exercises... that will help you create your canvas by design not by default. 

I would be lying if I said I thought this was going to be all about making fun art.  Christy and her friend Art McCracken (fun name lol) are helping us do some soul searching to discover more about ourselves.  I'm on a path to learn more about who God wants me to be.  If you read my post a few months ago about the 6x6 canvas I created for the 100 Women, 100 Words exhibition you will remember it really got me to thinking about Proverbs 31 and whether or not I was striving to be the virtuous women God wants me to be.  Very soon after I finished that piece I got an email from Christy's blog about this workshop and it made perfect sense to take it to help me along this journey.

It's not a cheap workshop, $104 to be exact and with me wanting to get my car paid off I didn't feel good about spending that so I went to work crocheting some purses thinking I might be able to sell them and lo and behold, I have sold 5! Here is what a few of them looked like.

The class doesn't even start until May but we have a private Facebook group where we are doing journaling exercises and other challenges to prepare us for the workshop.  So in order to really get into the journaling, which I have tried for years but never really followed through, I created a fun cover for mine and began with a few pages before my first journaling prompt.

Here is the cover:

This is the first page I am not finished with, but I was looking at one of my favorite artists websites, Junelle Jacobson and she had done a mixed media piece similar to this an it really spoke to me so I wanted to sketch it, then I wanted to paint it.

Below is the background for my first journaling prompt.  Not sure if I am going to share my actual entries yet though.  The prompt went something like this...for any of you that would like to play along:

Write down one moment of clarity or accomplishment that you are proud of that you remember and write one trial or heartache that shapes you in some way.  How did these things change your day to day way of doing things? from the experiences, did you find a purpose or motivation to do better or be better?

I have always wanted to do an art journal so here I go!

So that is what I have been up to and will be working on for a while.  I promise I will sprinkle in a few paper projects and some Pinterest playtime, so keep checking back.

Blessings,

Jana