The blog-along is over but The Unworthy Art Therapist is not.

Yesterday was the last day of the blog-along that Effy Wild hosted and I did it. I posted a blog post every single day for the month of April, despite the start of the month being in a 5-day intensive WitchCamp and then straight off that having a 5,000- to 10,000-word literature review to write. I still managed to blog every day and I enjoyed it. I have truly enjoyed reading the other participants blogs and wish I could read every single one and hope to keep reading those who keep posting. I have also truly enjoyed writing. I love writing. I love creative writing. I love writing the stuff that is going on in my head. I love receiving comments from those who have read it and resonate or have their own view of what I'm writing about. I have loved it all.

Julia Cameron wrote 'The Artists Way' book and I highly recommend it.

I like to think I will keep going. I might. I won't beat myself up if I don't but it feels really good to write every day and post every day. Now I guess it's time to see if it still feels so good if only sometimes it is read and only sometimes there might be a comment. Without that hit of dopamine will I still enjoy it so much? I do not know. I do know that I agree with Julia Cameron, writing is good for MY soul. I think whether people read it or not, whether people comment or not, I think the writing is helpful for me on many levels. So, I am hopeful I keep writing each day and if I don't, that is ok too.

So that is my goal. To keep on writing. Because writing sings to me, calls to my soul. Writing IS my art therapy. Maybe writing will help me pull myself out of the quagmire when I find myself wading in it again and again - like the past week. Perhaps writing will allow me the space I need in my mind. I guess we'll see what we see.

In Joy, Dear Reader.

The messengers

I am that person. The one who sees signs and symbology everywhere. The one who knocks on wood and won't walk under a ladder. The one who sees a rainbow and knows everything will be alright. I trust the signs I interpret and the symbols I delve for information, even when they lead me into a toxic marriage. I learned a lot. Some of it was hard lessons but I really did need them for I am stronger, more powerful for the lessons I have learned and I also happen to now have lived experience so if someone comes into my art therapy room having been in a similar situation I won't fob them off and dismiss their experience. I will know. I will know what they are still trying to figure out and I will be capable of holding space for them while they figure it out.

So when an animal or symbol keeps popping up in my life, I take notice. I take notice and then I go hunting in my Symbol books and Dream Dictionary and my own personal dream dictionary to see if it has shown up in my dreams lately and what meaning I might have made from any dreams with it in it - it's the Dream Therapist in me. I might also go a-Googling but usually, my own collection of books will give me what I need to know.

At the beginning of the year, it was Frog. Frog was hanging around everywhere. So many different people posting about frogs on their timelines, walking through Woollie's and the Freddo Frog bags had pictures of real frogs on them and more. In fact, Frog is still hanging around cause another friend has just today posted a photo of a saved frog on Facebook. A timely reminder that the message from Frog is still relevant and the magic and medicine of Frog is still with me. Frog is a symbol of transition and transformation, it supports us in times of change. It symbolises things such as renewal or rebirth, abundance, metamorphosis and ancient wisdom. Frog is also symbolic of coming into your power. There is more but this post isn't about Frog. Nor is it about Spider, the weaver of fate, the builder of connections, the birther of the threads that connect us all. Spider is still with me too. 

Just recently the crow has been showing up for me. It started with the story about the girl who would feed the crows and they would give her gifts in return and that they watched the whole family, returning a lost lens cap the crow knew was an important thing for the family member who lost it. Another person on Facebook was talking about building a fairy garden and how the crows kept coming and taking the little dark blue pebbles and leaving a gift in return. There's been a couple other things just the past week or two that I'm forgetting and then as I was watching Effy's Journal Jam and she uses a bird stamp that starts off as a crow and it kind of hit me then, oh hey - Crow has a message for you!

Crow is not inconspicuous, they show themselves without apology (ummm, Onion spell on myself anyone?). They are destructive as well as helpful (lol, I'm trying to destruct my protective walls so I can help those who need my help - including myself). They can be disruptive of the status quo (well that's always been me, it's part of what my ex-husband hated so much about me in his mainstream rule-following way). They do not necessarily wait for doors to be opened, they do it themselves and of course, like me, they like to hoard shiny trinkets. They are the tricksters, the shamans and magicians. They are incredibly intelligent, more so than the average human so it is said.

Scott Alexander King's book, Pocket Guide to Spirit Animals, states that the Crow is telling me I'm on the verge of manifesting something I've been working toward for a while (I'm in my final year of my Bachelor degree!). I am to expect a big change very soon (My second placement is about to begin!). I am about to get a glimpse into some future event that affects me directly. In his book Animal Dreaming Scott speaks of the crow existing in the past, present and future simultaneously as they are creatures of the void, they are the yin and yang symbol embodying darkness within light and light within darkness, watching over all the worlds and dimensions from all viewpoints in chorus. Ahhh poop, another message to sit in silence - I've been getting that one and successfully ignoring it for some time now. The Crow encourages us to seek wisdom found within our inner silence. The appearance of Crow heralds a sudden but necessary change, a wake-up call or a lesson in self-discovery (I'm so ready for this). 

"You have all the wisdom and knowledge you need within you to make the right decision. Call upon it now and you cannot make a mistake." (King, 2003, p. 139)

And so it is.

Journal Jam with Effy Wild

 I don't often have the time, or allow myself the time, to listen to some of my most favourite instructors in the art journalling world. Work, Kids, Uni, Sketchbook Project, Time to Myself all tend to take precedence (notice how I didn't say housework cause #nothanks). Anyway, I randomly watch one of Effy Wild's Journal Jam episodes because I absolutely adore the entire concept of it. Maybe one day I could make a live one but these are not the days so instead, I watch the unedited replay because I love unedited sometimes.

I love the randomness of the journal prompts and the ideas it springs forth and most of all, I love that we can all have the same prompts and create something completely different to each other, if you aren't following along with Effy's ideas of each prompt. I thought to myself awesome, I have an opportunity to create something I wouldn't normally create or it will be composed in a whole new way. How naive of me. Apparently, I do what I do and that is what I do. Granted, this one pushed me to use colours I would not normally use, so that made it different in a same-same kind of way. At the end of the day though, I love to create art that has sayings and usually art that has a face or some kind of figure on it and of course, regardless of the prompts that were produced, that is what I ended up with!

I did follow the prompts as each one arose but then I still did what I usually do. Actually, with the first prompt being a feather, because I fell in love with and have remained enamoured of Tamara Leporte's feathers she taught in one LifeBook or other, as soon as I hear feather that is what pops into my head. Then with the draw lines prompt that came later on it kind of sealed the deal and I did a Tamara-esque feather though nowhere near as refined and exquisite as hers. When the stamp prompt showed up I pulled out my drawer of stamps and was immediately drawn to the fairy silhouette's and the big stroppy fairy so that is what I used - along with some stars cause I love that stamp so much.

So once the prompts were done, this is what I ended up with:

Interesting enough, yellow, orange and green are probably my least used colours ever. While Effy used black gesso for her feather-cum-leaf, I rolled the dice and ended up with yellow and while I'm not a fan, I tend to roll with it, perhaps that is why the stroppy fairy appealed to me! Look at all that space though. Of course I was going to fill it with a saying and have it end up looking like just another spread for my Sketchbook Project! Perhaps I'm so invested in finishing it that I just can't seem to do anything else anymore. Not that it is a bad thing. I love sayings in my spreads. I always have and I probably always will and that's ok. I guess that's just my thing. I wasn't a huge fan of the add pretty paper prompt as late in the process as it came though, I'm never really sure what to do with the pretty paper so it feels a little clunky and awkward but that's ok too. I can be a little clunky and awkward sometimes too.

So once the prompts were done it was time for some tending. I love that term by the way. Tending to what is there. It's nourishing, yes? Just as art is nourishing. So I spend time filling in the fairy stamp and adding my saying and doing the final finishing touches that I always seem to want to do to anything I create et voila!

Ze finished product

It's tempting to shrink it down and add it to my actual Sketchbook. This is A4 though and the sketchbook is between an A4 and A5 for a double spread. Maybe I could do just the fairy and the saying to fill up one of the pages I have left though and perhaps some different colours.

Nonetheless, it was such a fun process and, as I said, nourishing. How I would love to do this at a big round table like the Knights of the Round Table but the Art Witches of the Round Table instead, hah! That would be pretty damn awesome don't you think?

In Joy!

Full Moon Shenanigans

 

Technically, it was the full moon here at 11-something AM today rather than last night and even though we're now kind of in the waning half of the full moon trilogy of days, tonight is when I will do my magical workings. I have a few crystals that are overdue for some moon bathing so they will be put out but tonight I am spellcasting... on myself.

I am not a fan of casting spells on others. There's the whole issue of informed consent and manipulation that I'm entirely uninterested in. I have cast a spell on someone once I am ashamed to say but it felt justified and I actually wonder if the spell was cast on me as a way to empower me through a tough time. It was not a hex. It was simply an onion spell to reveal the person's true intentions, to reveal their true self to the world. I bring this up because I am going to do the onion spell on myself.

I have remained hidden most of my life. It's safe being hidden, remaining unseen and unheard. However, I'm getting old and I'm getting very tired of being invisible. How can I possibly help others if they can't see or hear me? I would like to be able to help people if they need it or if they are so-called to be held energetically by me or learn what I have to teach. In order to do that, it is time I begin to tear down my layers of protection, my walls, my screens, my invisibility cloak and take a deep breath to reveal myself to those who will benefit from seeing me, hearing me, knowing me.

THIS IS TERRIFYING FOR ME.

Being hidden is safe. Being hidden prevents any criticism or judgements from coming my way. Being hidden means I cannot be targeted or hurt with words or actions. Being hidden means I.Am.Safe. So revealing myself is a pretty big thing for me. I have technically been working my way toward being seen more and moreover the past few years and it is not easy for me. I feel a little like a clownfish, poking its head out of the anemone and then going back into the safety of its confine then peaking my head out again, so on and so forth.

Yet I have still kept myself pretty invisible from the world at large. I have some new friends now that I've allowed to see me and that has shown me that there is safety in being seen. Recent experiences with some humans has also shown me that I have grown and learned a lot, enough that I can see red flags now, I'm no longer colour-blind seeing the red as green. I've come to understand that in seeing the red flags I have the power to disengage or withdraw from that person's energy field and continue to carry on with my life unharmed focusing on the actual green flags instead.

Effy's blog-along has also helped me in this regard too. The blog-along has encouraged me to create posts that are read and commented on by scary humans and shown me that for every scary human out there, there's a handful of good, kind, encouraging, supportive humans out there, I just need to look for them more than the scary ones. This blog-along has given me a little bit more confidence in allowing myself to be seen and heard and I know - I KNOW - if I do not want my life to keep being the way it is (not that it's a bad life, I love my life and my kids, there is only minimal areas that need tending to), then I need to let myself be seen. I need to stop hiding. I need to risk emotional pain for connection gain.

Thus, I am going to do the onion spell on myself. So, what is the onion spell? Here, my Pretties, is the onion spell:

ONION SPELL: TO REVEAL THE TRUTH

This spell is to be performed when you know someone is being dishonest about something important but their manipulation is keeping you and others from the truth. 

(This is incredibly relevant to me because in not allowing myself to be seen for who and how I am, I am keeping myself and others from seeing the truth of me! While keeping myself is not dishonest, I am still manipulating the world around me to keep myself safe and hidden which is dishonest in its own way)

This spell takes several days to complete and is begun during the waning moon.

(This is also why I am starting this on the waning part of the full moon trilogy of days)

Cut off the top of an onion. Insert a pin or sewing needle directly into the centre/core and push it all the way down. This pin represents the truth. (or in this case, my true self that I often keep hidden)

Peel the first layer off the outside of the onion. Visualise a barrier (one of my walls) being broken in your situation. See yourself getting closer to finding out what you need to know. Each night, at the same times, peel off another layer. By the time you reach the pin at the centre, the truth will be revealed.

This is an incredibly quick and easy spell. I mean, yes, it takes a few days but each step is relatively quick. For deeper effectiveness I call in my guides, allies, higher self, the dragons, I call in the directions and elements and I cast myself between worlds inside the circle before I take off each layer. As I peel the layer off I speak words about what the intention is. I toss the layers into my garden to be absorbed into the earth and renewed for new life.

I think something I love about spells I come across is that I can alter or change them or slightly adjust them to meet my needs. Maybe you will find use of this spell too. I think this will be a wonderful spell to help me remove my layers of protection, to allow the truth of who I am to shine through my barriers so people can actually see me. Sure, not everyone is going to like me and that is fine. I am not for everyone. Yet, those who need me, need to see me, will benefit from having me in their lives, at least they will be able to see me now. So yes, revealing myself has the potential to subject me to criticism and judgement and emotional pain but at the same time, those who need to find me will be able to now. So this is a sacrifice I will make, so that I may serve those who wish to be served by me.

And so it is and blessed being.

Still more from the Sketchbook

 I'm actually writing this one in advance while I have the bandwidth. Because the Sketchbook Project posts are the easiest. I just get to show you the pictures and tell you what I used on them and voila! A blog post! So, I'm making this one for the future day where I don't have time or energy to create a post. Sometimes I think smart and I do Future Me a favour. 

Three more spreads to show today and I'll start with the one that is one of my all-time most favourite sayings and I was reminded of when I created this post. I can't believe it took me so long to think of this quote to add to my book of quotes. I feel remiss.

This one is actually on the second to last pages of the book and unlike the rest of the quotes I've done so far, I've kept this one simple. I like the yin yang of the spread. So it's only done in Uniball Signo white pen and my ever-trusty black posca pen.

The next two are on the same page technically but with a bit of scrapbook paper sewn in between them, just for some added interest to the book.

This is on the left-hand side of the page before I did the next one. I love this quote. It's one I put in the notebook I made my daughter. I just splotches a bunch of copic juice all over the page and then used my black posca to do the lettering and added some Sakura gelly roll pens, glittery and metallic. I pasted a copic coloured digital stamp onto the scrapbook paper and there you have it. Have I mentioned how much I adore lettering? I have been doing lettering since I can remember. Seriously, I remember writing people's names in fancy lettering since I was six years old. It is still something that can completely absorb me.

This one I just finished this morning and is the right-hand side of the page. You can see the 'remember' from the previous page in the photo and I actually kind of love that because it's like the quote starts with remember. The music score is a bad rendering of Somewhere Over The Rainbow with at least two wrong notes and a couple things missed but I'm not a music person so it is what it is. I also messed up on the spacing with the lettering. 'Is' is meant to be on the top line and I forgot I was meant to be 'else' on the second last line so it ended up squished in the end. This is the problem with not being able to use acrylic paint, I can't just paint over it and start again. Oh well. So, the music lines were done in Sakura glitter pens, the notes and lettering done with black posca but one size up than I'm used to so probably not as refined as usual. Then another digital stamp glued onto the scrapbook paper and coloured in copic.

There you have it. I only have a few more pages to fill before it will be ready to send off! I need to buy a new battery for my video recorder but I want to do a little video going through it before I send it off that I'll pop up on my YouTube channel and link to in a blog post in the future :)

In Joy!

Sometimes the art tells me what it wants to be.

 My daughter commented the other day that I have been painting more than usual this month. It is interesting that the more I write -  as in blog - the more I also create with paint. Somehow the two are related for me. I'm not sure how or why but writing definitely creates this juicy well of creativity in me that seems to overflow outward. I don't always know what I'm going to paint though, actually when it comes to painting on canvas I almost never know what I'm going to paint. I just kind of follow my intuition and I start putting colour down. I might start with the idea of I want to put a pentacle in this one, or I want to have a face in this one. That's how this one started. I decided this one was going to be a face.

A bunch of my canvas' actually end up going over the top of old paintings. I scored a number of pre-loved canvas' from an art school once so some of them go over the top of those and some are also over the top of my own paintings that I just don't like. So this one began over the top of a previous pour painting I attempted and hated. I just gessoed right over the top and then got out my neocolor II water-soluble crayons and put the base of a face down. At this point, I was thinking some flowing hair, big beautiful blue or green eyes, maybe a flower crown, something cute.

Then I painted the background black to start putting in layers to the background but I must have been off with the muses cause I painted around the whole face, not leaving space for a neck and I thought uh-oh, can't have floating head syndrome, ain't no one like floating head syndrome, how am I going to fix this? I mean sure, it's acrylic and I could probably gesso in a neck and add the neocolor II on top but as I went about my business while the black background was drying it kept catching my attention and as much as I've been told not to have a floating head, this painting was screaming to be a floating head. I also like to just roll with my mistakes. I'm very much of the Bob Ross philosophy of allowing the happy little accidents. Yet still, the voices in my head were saying, you can't do a floating head, that's not okay, you have to give it a neck, you have to embody this face. I thought you know what, that is Future Samm's problem, I'm actually liking the floating head right now and art doesn't have any rules really, not at the end of the day. Art can be whatever you want it to be and if I want a floating head, I can have a floating head.

So I ignored my Inner Critics and let me tell you, there was a whole chorus of them. Instead, I just started doodling on the black with my white posca pen when I got right into the swirls and dots. I kind of fell into a meditative state doing it and didn't even want to stop when I'd filled the whole canvas. At this point though I was thinking I'd have some butterfly's flying in and around her hair and kind of exploding out of the top of her head. That was the plan. Hah! The best-laid plans and all that... I outlined the features of the face and then put some neocolor II's over the top of the swirlies knowing it was all just layers, intending to brayer over the top of that and maybe put on some stamps or stencils. I even had the thought I could give her a neck with this layer as though she has a high neck jumper on or something. Pfft.

No, she said. I will be a disembodied head thank you very much. I will also not have hair, I want a very tall cranium and I want a lot of features that are just a little bit off, a little bit alien. I want to be a beautiful, psychic, disembodied, humanly alien head. She very definitely did not want pupils though she allowed me to put a shadow of a neck in. So I brayered the background after all. I put on some blue and red neocolor II's in the head as well as my usual skin tone and then used my Ceramcoat Old Parchment to blend it all in. Added some highlights and some shadows along the way, re-added the posca pen outlines and recreated the flowers attached to her head. I kept meaning to put on eyebrows but she successfully kept distracting me from doing that and I realise only RIGHT NOW as I am typing about this finished painting that I literally forgot to put them on LOL! She clearly did not want them. I finished her off by adding black neocolour II around the outsides of everything. 

She is weird and humanly alien and disembodied but I actually really love her. She intrigues me, she has this all-knowing energy like she can see right through me. She hasn't told me her name yet, maybe it will come with time. I find her intriguing and interesting and I really love her flaws, those parts that make her asymmetrical and just a little left-of-centre.

So this is obviously not even close to anything I could have imagined at the beginning but I love letting my painting guide me, following the flow of my intuition, allow the mistakes to remain and seeing what comes of it. After all, I could always just paint over it again one day if I wanted to right? At the same time, I like to keep my mistakes or my first attempts, they are great to look back on and see how far the skill has grown over the years but this one? I think this one is a strange and beautiful keeper of secrets and knower of all. I would totally encourage everyone to allow the mistakes to flow and just follow what the art is asking of you. You never know what you might create.

What is arts therapy exactly?

 Today I find myself blog-blocked. I'm not sure what to write about so I thought I might talk about what arts therapy is and is not. I will sprinkle this blog post with some of the art I made during my uni progress for your viewing pleasure and to break up all the writing.

A clay creation while listening to music.

So first up let me tell you that arts therapy is not adult colouring-in books. I am by no means dissing adult colouring-in books, I LOVE them. They are great and can be a useful tool, especially if you use them with intent. You could come at them with the intention to meditate while you colour, become very mindful with the colouring, practice your breathing while you colour, practice letting go of your to-do list or even use it as a way to puzzle out a dilemma while you colour with the intention of untangling whatever it is that has you all twisted up inside. Used that way, it can very much be art therapy for sure but just sitting there and colouring in is not art therapy.

Some sandtray play where you choose the pieces first. It wasn't until after I had set them up that I realised it was me and my three kids! Completely unintentional.

Arts therapy is not drawing something and having a therapist interpret your drawing. An art therapist cannot look at your drawing and know what it says about you. At best they can make some educated guesses based on a wealth of literature but at the end of the day, only YOU know YOU. Black for one person might mean depression while black for another person might mean the comfort of a cool dark room to rest in. A storm in the sky for one person might mean anger or impending doom, while another might mean fun and snuggly lazy days curled up with a good book. No one thing can mean the same thing for every single person. So an arts therapist is not an art interpreter or an art critic. That is not the role of an arts therapist.

There are two schools of thought on what arts therapy is and I admit to subscribing to BOTH of them! Some say arts therapy is about the doing of art, the process of art-making. It's about using the art materials to express yourself without the need for words, without the need for analysis, it's simply about - as the above photo suggests - getting the mess in your head out of your head in order to create space inside yourself to breathe. As someone who does art for this very purpose, I happily agree with this type of art therapy. Doing art has therapeutic benefit whether you do it alone, with others or with a therapist there to hold the space, supply the materials, witness your process and/or give some direction on what to do and what materials to use that are best for what you are experiencing, they all have great benefit.

An open studio experience using cheap acrylic paints. This was more about the process.

Part of my training is to learn what art materials help with what kind of experiences. For instance, using watercolours can be beneficial for grief and sadness, while gritty charcoal can be useful for those things we might feel are dirty or grating, or even for some shadow work. Paint is great for moments where you might be feeling a bit stuck and you need to experience a bit of fluidity and movement in your life and clay can be great for those times where you need to knead and push and mould a new way of seeing into existence.

This one was depicting what I wanted to get out of my uni journey, done at the start of my uni journey.

Arts therapy encompasses a lot of mediums, not just the art supplies you might automatically think of like pencils and chalk pastels, acrylic paint or even collage but it can encompass sand tray therapy, drama therapy, music therapy, voice and sound therapy, dream therapy, ecotherapy, ephemeral art, it's all included under the umbrella term of arts therapy and it can all be useful in gaining a new perspective, stepping back and looking at things from a distance, it can help with new insight or knowledge, it can help show where you might need more support or where you may need to finally step off that cliff into the unknown.

Some ephemeral art done in a local park.

Others say that the making of the art is just the bridge. The bridge to explore the issue or problem deeper. The art once completed can be built upon or manipulated to create change. The art can be analysed and interpreted by the person who created it with the help of particular questioning by the therapist. So while the art therapist is not there to interpret, they can help guide the art maker in interpreting their own symbology and metaphors that arise in their artwork. It never fails to delight and leave me in awe seeing how serendipitous art can be and so incredibly relevant. My degree has been an experiential degree, meaning we all do the actual processes ourselves so we can understand by doing, we understand by experiencing the processes and I have had a number of times where my mind has been blown wide open by the symbology that shows up without me even realising I was creating it.

This was a class group art installation. 

Art therapy is great for non-verbal people or people who don't want to talk about it or if you just don't have the words to adequately describe it. Art therapy is a great way to express how you're feeling without secondarily traumatising someone else or to simply get the blocked trauma or emotion out of your body. Art therapy is a gentle way to begin the healing process and a great way to go on your own hero/heroine's journey allowing the art to transform you. I might be biased because I'm an arts therapist but art therapy is the best form of therapy in the world as far as I'm concerned!

Another awesome group collaboration using natural products after a glorious meditation.

I love the flower creation I made and the connections to other people's creations. It was a beautiful process.

In Joy!

The Unworthy Art Therapist

I thought I'd take a beat to talk about the title I've given myself. The Unworthy Art Therapist. Some people might view that as being quite self-deprecating or derogatory but it's not. It is akin to the term the wounded healer.

The wounded healer is strong and courageous. The wounded healer knows they can help others through their own wounds. A wounded healer knows they do not have to be wholly unwounded to help, to serve, to guide, to hold space for others wounds. The wounded healer knows they are more capable of witnessing others wounds because they have their own. The wounded healer knows what it is to have a wound and so can be more empathic toward those who seek them out for healing.

In the same way, I am the Unworthy Art Therapist. Not to say I am unworthy, for I know I am not. I know I am worthy of love, acceptance, kindness and all that life has to offer. I know I am worthy of being treated kindly. I know I am worthy of offering art therapy to those in need. I know I am worthy of holding therapeutic space and offering therapeutic tools to those who seek it from me. Even though some nights, deep in the depths of my being I have a beast that whispers, that tears, that renders me unworthy, I know it speaks not of truths but of falsehoods that have been fed to me by those who were supposed to love me and support me. However, this beast that dwells inside me is why I am capable of witnessing other people's struggle with self-worth. I come from a place of having spent most of my life feeling unworthy, being told by others that I am unworthy or having others leave me feeling like I have no worth. I come through that veil though knowing that even when I am feeling unworthy, I am worthy. I know that seems paradoxical and it is, which is fine but what I'm getting at is, even when I am feeling unworthy, I still have worth.

My feeling of unworthiness does not define me and does not take away from the fact that I have worth. From this, I can hold space for others who feel unworthy. I can witness their journey, their pain, their process as they travel along to discover they are, indeed, worthy after all.

So essentially, In Lak'ech. The shadowy part that holds my unworthiness sees the shadowy part that holds your unworthiness and I honour you. I honour your journey without judgment but with deep lived understanding. I also honour the shiny part that holds my own and your worthiness. We are worthy.

More still from the Sketchbook Project

Today is a cheat day for blogging if you will. A cheat day? Yeap, a cheat day. As in, I simply do not currently have the mental or emotional bandwidth to think about something to write so instead, I'll post the rest of the Sketchbook Project pages I've done that I haven't shared yet and talk about them. So here they are:

You are allowed to alter the Sketchbook they send you in whatever way you like as long as it remains within a certain width, height and depth and because I wanted to put a canvas wrap-around cover on the book I decided to pull out the staples and also add a few scrapbook pages at the front and partway through, just to add a bit of interest for people who come along and have a look. I admit I prefer to always be different from the crowd and that includes when I do something like the Sketchbook Project. It's both a blessing and curse, trust me.

So the Mother Goose is actually drawn on some scrapbooking paper and while the head looks pure white that's just a trick of the photography because I actually painted her with the pearlescent paint and you can actually see the scrapbook paper underneath it. If you look at the bottom of her belly it gives you a better idea of what it looks like. All the black is of course my trusty Posca pen and my usual lettering with Sakura pens for interest. As you can see the scrapbook paper isn't the same size as the book so once I do the next page you will see part of it from this side of the spread.

I wanted to use one of my most favourite fonts. I first saw it a couple decades ago now when I was a teenager and the saying that came with it was not PG so I won't share it here. I have made it quite obvious to read but if done in a certain way it can be quite challenging to make out that there are words there so I wanted a fitting saying to go with it. Is it just a brick wall, or is it words? All depends on how blind you want to be. The deeper meaning of this saying really truly resonated with me too though, so it did seem to fit. This one was all done with Inktense watercolour pencils and of course my trusty Posca.

The left-hand side of this one was actually the very first thing I put in the Sketchbook and I was not particularly fond of it. It's ok but nothing special in the great scheme of things and also, nothing of my own. It's all scrapbook paper and already printed sayings and die cuts. I just went over the words in a the Sakura black and went around the outside of it all with a black Scribe-All. So much later I decided on the other page I'd just draw a face and give her some sings so she could fly. The face is all done in Inktense watercolours with some Uniball Signo white.

I'm currently working on the next page to add and I still have a bunch more to go but I think I'll get them all done by July so I can send it back to the States :) For now, this post is done.

In Joy!

Ogres have layers.

I don't know why everything in my life is some movie quote (or usually a movie misquote) or other but it almost always is. It's either a movie quote or a song line popping into my head at random moments of time in my life. Like this post, it has nothing to do with Shrek or ogres. It has to do with a painting on canvas that I just finished and I was thinking I love that it has heaps of layers and that only little glimpses of the first layers are showing through and how much I love that only I (and my kids) know what it looked like in those first few layers before I even knew what the painting was going to be before I even knew there was going to be a face in the painting.

Yet, as I sat there thinking about how I love layers, what pops into my head? Shrek and Donkey talking about how ogres are like onions because onions have layers and that everybody loves parfait (for the record, I do not). This is what happens in my head all the time. I will have a thought or someone will say something and invariably a movie quote or song line will pop into my head. I will randomly quote or misquote a movie line and if someone recognises it for what it is I automatically love and adore them haha.

And now look at the tangent I went off in! All I wanted to do was show you the latest canvas I finished and close-ups of the layers.

I also love texture, as in the lumpy bumpy bits, the bits that stick out where they probably shouldn't or the bits that dip in and create interesting craters reminiscent of the moon or unexplored planets.

I find it rather frustrating how photos never do art any justice. This is why whenever I see people's art online I look at it knowing that it probably looks a billion times better in person. The camera lens is harsh and exacting, missing nuance and sparkle and the magic and feel of a piece. A photo never *feels* the same as witnessing art in person. Like this, you can't see the glittery-glitterness of the pentacle, you can't see the subtle deeper layers trying to poke through, the depth of the painting is off. I mean, it's still adequate, it's just missing the feel, the energy of the painting when it's flattened into a 2D form. You cant' quite see just how many times that pentacle was actually painted, first black, then white, then black again, then the deep red of the goddess moons on the human's forehead.

Anyway, for those interested in the products used it is primarily cheap-ass acrylic cause I don't have money for awesome brands like Global. I go to the cheap $2 shops and buy the cheap $2 acrylics and work with them as best I can. However... this also has Mont Marte Fluro acrylic, blue and green posca pen on the eyes, neocolor II water-soluble crayons for the hair, eyebrows and a green-tinged layer over the top of the layer before which was just gesso brayered over all that came before. There is also glitter of course, piles and piles of glitter and the paint of the pentacle is actually really thick. I think that's a bonus of having cheap paint, you can go crazy and just squirt it on the canvas and not feel guilty about wasting good paint. I have discovered I truly love doing that and the effect it creates. lastly one of my super favourite mediums to almost finish it off - Imagine Crafts irRESISTible ink. That is the goddess moons plus outlines, that is the outline of the face and the splotches coming out of the outline, that is the choker, that is one last drawing of the pentacle, that is her eyelashes and the dark squiggles and outlines of her eyes. I freaking love that stuff! Then lastly last was some white opal Liquid Pearls by Ranger, which I also love and adore. 

There you have it. Art as therapy rather than arts therapy. Yes there is a difference :) Art as therapy is simply the fact that doing art, being creative, fills the cup, replenishes the batter, generates the feel-goods. Arts therapy on the other hand is much, much deeper than that. But this, this was art as therapy, art for the sake of doing art because I want to make something pretty that I love. Hope you like it too.

In Joy!

Bracelet, Bloodbowl and Keto

 Today I finished my bracelet. I need to do something else about the clasp but I'm not sure what but it will do for now. I don't think I can wear it all the time like I did when it was leather but at least I don't have to never wear it again.

Today is my one true day off a week. Even so I still did uni work. It's the high-achiever in me. Also I know the more I do now the better off Future Samm will be. Plus, the sooner I get my research proposal written, the sooner I get to start reading about my next subject - Voice and Sound, which I'm both terrified of and very excited for but more of that in future posts no doubt.

I did get some art in today though, I'm working on a canvas. I've had this need to work with pentacles since WitchCamp so I'm doing another pentacle painting. It's not quite done yet and the paint I'm using is being put on super thick because apparent that's how I love to paint. What that means is, it takes FOREVER for each layer to dry before I work on the next layer! Which is kind of a bummer but I like the end result, so I didn't art as much as I would have liked to. Instead, I finished wrapping of above bracelet and then went to a friends and played our fortnightly BloodBowl game.

What is BloodBowl you ask? Why it's a (nerd-alert!) tabletop fantasy board game played with miniatures and is essentially a very brutal football game where you bash each other up and try to score. Killing is always a bonus! Some teams are more brutal than others.

Typical fantasy-style the teams are made up of races like the Orcs, Halflings, Goblins, Dark Elves, High Elves, Wood Elves, Chaos Demons, Dwarves and more. Of course, my son, his father and I, being the people we are, like to make-up our own rules and create our own teams, so this league we have a few teams we created ourselves, such as I made up a team of Dark Crystal characters, while The Father created a Labyrinth team. The Son went ahead and created a team entirely his own not even based on tv, movie or computer game characters - it's the game designer in him.

We don't have as many miniatures as we would like unfortunately and definitely don't have enough to match our teams but we make do with what we have.

In that photo on the right-hand side of the field from top to bottom we have a row of Skaven (rat creatures), a row of Chaos beasts and then the three big guys who are basically giants.

Tonight The Son and I finished off the 2nd half of a game we had going. His Blood Mages (the one completely of his own creation) v Dark Crystal. Normally, you start a half with 11 players on the field but he slaughtered me pretty good in the first half so I only actually started with 5 players on the field. I felt a little inadequate! Unfortunately, we were playing in blizzard conditions - yeap, you roll on the weather chart to see what the weather is like and in a blizzard you lose 3 movement, you can only pass the ball over 3 of those little squares and if you want to try to move an extra space once your movement runs out you can 'go-for-it' on the roll of a 5 or more on a 6-sided dice (so your chances of making that are slim), normally a go-for-it is a roll of 2 or more. So I didn't really have any hope of winning this match. Now, I am competitive but when it comes to BloodBowl I mostly just play for the quality time I get with The Son (he's 21 so that time is going to get less and less from here on out and I will cherish every second I get) and also because The Father cooks me dinner on BloodBowl night and I am certainly not going to pass up having dinner paid and cooked for me and I don't have to do the dishes either! It doesn't get better than that! Plus, The Father is a good cook who really enjoys cooking. He also enjoys experimenting and trying new things, which isn't always a win but again, I'm not gonna pass that up, I will try most things at least once.

I am morbidly obese and have so much shame around how I have treated my body. There have been a number of causes that have led me to be this way and I'm finally coming out from under a lot of them. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to lose weight and it's not so easy to break out of the addiction to things like sugar. I love keto, when I can do it. I love all the foods in the keto diet and I would very happily go full-blown keto if 1) I actually liked cooking (I do not) and 2) I actually had the strength to say no to sugar (I do not). I am getting better though. I have no had any bread, doughnuts, cookies, ice cream, crisps, carbonated beverages or take-out (other than doner kebabs) so far this year! That's pretty huge for me! That's 4 months without any coke-cola which I love and wish I didn't. I've cut way back on pasta and potato but chocolate, holy lordy wordy chocolate, and slurpees. I have been having way too many slurpees lately. Interestingly, I don't know what shifted but today is day 2 without chocolate or slurpees. I have zero faith that will last.

Anyway, while that seems like a tangent, back to BloodBowl night. The Father knows I am choosing not to eat certain foods and he has been willing to prepare keto meals for me, so I can see if they might be something I can add to menu. Tonight, he made keto cottage pie and oh my goodness it was SO GOOD!

It didn't take that long to prepare and it tasted so good! I could barely tell that was mashed cauliflower instead of potato. It could be a good thing that I love cauliflower though. Apparently, he mashed it with cream cheese. It was SO GOOD! It seems quite quick and easy to make too so this is definitely something I will continue to make for myself. I was so, so impressed with the mashed cauliflower. However, I don't think I can trick my Young One's into eating it. I might give it a go though cause the youngest hates potato, so maybe he would be more likely to eat this!

I'm not pushing myself hard with this change of diet though. Because I don't want to go 'on' a diet. I want to completely alter my diet. I want to change it in such a way that it becomes my usual way of eating. I want a lifestyle change. I plan to do that one meal at a time. So this meal will now be added for the rest of my life. I hope one day I do lose weight but despite my four months of no bread and other crap, I still haven't lost a single kilo of weight so I hold no hope right now. Not unless I can continue to not eat chocolate and not drink slurpees. Baby steps though. One day at a time. Sometimes one moment at a time. It can be difficult for me to say no sometimes. Going grocery shopping is a constant war in my head. The Inner Child crying and stomping her feet for the yummy foods that I wish I hated while the Inner Parent is trying to stay strict with this constant mantra of No, No, No, No, No, the whole time even though the Inner Parent wants to say Yes. It's exhausting. Food is exhausting. I wish I didn't have to think about, prepare or eat food even though I love food. Life would be easier if I could just go cold turkey like I did when I gave up cigarettes 15 years ago. Alas, I am human though and I need food to survive. So baby steps. Taking one day at a time. Onward and upward!

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

Have you ever heard of Alice in Wonderland Syndrome? It's apparently an incredibly rare neurological disorder. I'm pretty sure my daughter experiences it. She's been experiencing it since she was young. At first she would randomly wake up about an hour after falling asleep, upset, freaking out because the walls felt so far away but too close at the same time. She said it felt like things around her were small and she couldn't touch them. That's what first led me toward Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.

As she's gotten older she still gets random attacks but often through the day where she will say she doesn't feel like she is in her body. She doesn't feel like she's out of her body either, just that she isn't in it and she pats herself down and says it feels really weird. She can sometimes feel a little uncoordinated because she's not fully in control of her body. On her birthday she mentioned having something weird going on with her ears but didn't really elaborate. Today she said the ear thing was happening again. She described it like her ears go to sleep until someone is talking and then they wake up and things get really loud and something about how she described it made me think of the Alice in Wonderland Syndrome and just as I was saying that she said Yes! She was about to say it made her feel the same way she feels when the AWS happens. We were going to do our weekly shop and by the time we made it to the shops she was patting herself down saying she couldn't feel her body and it felt like she wasn't in her body.

It doesn't freak her out like it used to when she was younger. There are potentially a lot of causes, the most commonly thought cause is migraine aura but really, no one knows what causes it, why it happens, and there is no known treatment for it. The studies don't seem to think it's damaging unless it's being caused by a brain tumour. It never seems to last long, though longer than the literature seems to think. Perhaps with my daughter, it lasts longer. The literature also says that it may be under-diagnosed because it is a brief phenomenon usually felt in children and so they don't think to mention it. I've offered to take her to a doctor for it but she isn't interested. I'm totally fascinated though. I would love to see more research done on the phenomenon. 

Perhaps that is why my daughter loves Alice in Wonderland so much. She can totally relate to Alice's experiences! Doing my lit review left me feeling a bit like Alice sometimes too though, mostly the whole falling down the rabbit hole aspect though, which is why I drew this during my research period:

This one was done with black posca and Inktense watercolour pencils, for anyone interested.

In Joy!

MacGyvering my favourite bracelet.

 My favourite wrap-around bracelet died :(

It's happened slowly over the past few weeks. First the hoop parts that you slot the button into to secure it fell apart, so I MacGyver'd it with a zip tie no less and kind of wrapped the zip tie around the broken end and then wrapped that around the button but then today, the button fell off. I'm so sad. I love this bracelet. It hasn't even lasted a whole year. Mind you, I rarely take it off, just when it might get wet, so I have worn it almost non-stop since it arrived. 

It's just one long strand that you wrap around your wrist to look all pretty like:

The leather wore and deteriorated far quicker than I ever would have anticipated. I loved the leather-ness of it but I'm not a leatherworker. I'm a wire wrapper at best, though I'm not supremely good at it. Nonetheless, I love this bracelet enough that I figure I'd try to recreate it using wire instead of leather.

It won't be anywhere near as good and it is going to take me forever but at least I can still have some semblance of the original product, only in silver instead of leather. I'm a silver kind of person, always have been. At least the metal will last a lot longer than the leather, though it probably won't be as comfy to wear all the time as the leather.

It took me just over two hours just to get this far:

So one half done, the other half to go. I actually some garnet and tiger eye beads as well to make it just a bit longer so the button does up at the back of my wrist now instead of the front like it used to. It looks better than I expected actually. It'll do I guess. At least I can still wear it. It does actually make me wonder about making some more bracelets actually with my own choice of crystal beads and other bead. I have SO many beads that just sit around waiting, maybe this is the style of bracelet it's waiting for, though at the moment I'm not sure how I'm going to make the wire attach the button. If I were to make more, I think I'd just use a clasp for it instead.

We'll see I guess. My thumb and pointer finger are quite sore now from all the wrapping and I do have more uni assessments to see to, so this certainly won't be high on my list of priorities. Just for this bracelet though, cause I've become so attached to it.

Until next time, Dear Reader. In Joy!