These pages are helping me to slow down and settle in. I’m creating, I’m here from my heart space. My heart is so full right now. I want this feeling to continue as I’m so grateful for what we created.
CREATIVE FUGITIVITY.
We created this safe space TOGETHER. We brought it. we all brought it.
…
WE WERE FREE
I completed my gifted journal from Dal Kular within the week.
It was an honour and pleasure to hang out within the stained and constructed with love pages.
I’ll share each spread here over the coming days. Giving each spread its own space to breath and weave it’s magic.
I tried to keep my changes to a minimum. I wanted the eco-stains to still show through, appreciating the palimpsestic effects.
Enjoy x
After a really successful visual journaling retreat in Sheffield, which I’ll share about soon, I was gifted this handmade journal.
Made from wallpaper, eco-dyed papers and love, Dal Kular, a wonderful friend and fellow mischief maker gifted me this journal. Off shots from a bigger, much bigger journal she created in connection with her creative in residence in Peak District National Park, Dal wanted me to have this beauty.
I know Dal was proud of it and knew that I would put it to good use. I dived into using it start away. I needed the clarity of a new journal, while on the road with Kiwi and this journal is fulfilling that need and want, remarkably well.
I’ll be back later this week to share the completed journal spreads.
So I said I would be back to share with you my current visual journal. Coming into the mix at the end of May after a weeks of zero colour, my soul and creativity were craving colour and space. A large space.
So I went back to Flying Tiger and purchased the A3 sketchbook I failed to purchase a couple of weeks before. The paper inside is creamy and reminds me of sugar paper from primary school. It’s a rough and ready kind of texture, rustic and low maintenance. Not too high quality to raise the fear levels of making mistakes or not being quite so perfect.
I’m been enjoying preparing the pages with colour. Throughout my day, I have the journal laid out on the table in the corner of my bedroom and when I walk past, I choose 2, 3 or 4 colours from my collection of little bottles of acrylic paint and make generous dollops on the page.
Then I bring out my trusted old faithful, the disused bank card and smear that paint around. This calms my nerves, stills the worries and brings me joy. I love how the different combinations of paint play out together on the page. It’s a true collaboration.
I know this journal is far too big to be carrying around with me as I go about my business outside: sea swims, coffee meets, trip to London at the moment. But still I carry it with me, enjoying tucking it under my arm or carrying it pressed against my chest.
Sometimes, as happened today, stray streams of paint, still wet and sticky, collect within the seams and edges of the pages, transferring to my fingers, smearing on my coat and t-shirt. Today, it was bright turquoise and sandy brown that ended up on my hands and clothes by the time I reached the metro station to get to Newcastle Central Station. I really couldn’t be annoyed as it goes with the territory. You play with paint and you’re bound to make a mess.
But I don’t care because I feel and know in my heart and gut that I’m making a whole heap of mess within my visual journal because that’s how I make sense, make joy, make a way for me to navigate through this world on my own terms.
I showed you this handmade journal in May. It was supposed to be on sale in an Etsy store. Well the best laid plans and all.
I started using it on my return from Iceland and completed using it, that is my energy was called elsewhere before the end of May.
Can’t wait to show you what I’m working in now. But until then here’s the completed journal.
A while ago, I got the idea into my head to make junk journals to sell on Etsy. I got a variety of papers and cardboards and ephemera together to make them and enjoyed the process.
While decluttering last month, I found my stash of handmade junk journals. I’d sold none. I’m not even sure if I’d put them up for sell. Sometimes as a creative, you can have these ideas and instigate them only to fall short of the finish line. Something else might take your attention away, something more shiny or you could allow fear and doubt to step in and paralysis the process from moving any further.
I’m not sure what happened with these junk journals but I felt the urge to just use them on my return from Iceland.
I need something that’s self contained and discreet as I put myself back together after the time away. I felt free and unhurried and playful while away. Now back I have to slip back into responsibilities and worries and demands from others, and to be honest it’s a rough textured blanket against my skin at the moment.
I’m still remembering and wanting to be with the smooth soft caresses of Iceland. And dream into the landscape.
So maybe keeping the bar low. Just making sure I turn up to the page daily and working out the feelings and kinks is enough right now.
Almost like beginning again. Each new day is day one. No pressure and no comparisons just be. I feel attempting this in a clean journal, a clean slate is doable at the moment.
Hence cracking open my homemade junk journal and just allowing whatever needs to turn up, turn up.
I thought about it when I wrote the date in my visual journal and then proceeded to forget about it. I never gave it another thought, until now when thinking what I was going to share today, here on this blog.
10 years is a long time. 10 years I didn’t think I’d have, survive never mind thrive. 10 years and I’m here, living my life on my own terms. Fugitively.
I walked right smack into lushness today. If not with the trees, in Iceland, the place that was once devoid of trees. Then it was visiting Perlan and experiencing the wonders of Iceland; volcanoes, ice caves, geyser and northern lights.
It brought immense joy to walk around Perlan and feed my inner child. There were many times when I was close to tears because of the feelings of pleasure and joy I experienced through learning new things and being wowed by nature.
It was a good day. I’m grateful for being here, 10 years on, when really I was never meant to survive the attempt to ruin me. But here I am, and still I rise.
Living Wild Studios 