Tonight’s Journal Page and Self-Care

It’s midnight, but I knew if I didn’t post this now, I wouldn’t have time tomorrow to do it. Since I posted about giving my blog a make-over, I did some more tweaking. I moved some things around, added a horizontal navigation bar near the top with some links, and I also made it so that regardless of the monitor you have, you shouldn’t have to scroll sideways! And, I fixed some things that were broken before, so now you can subscribe to my blog in several different ways. Yay!

I haven’t had much time to work in my journal because I’ve been working so much. So it was really nice to work in it tonight, and I made the above journal spread. It has been feeling like things are bubbling up in my life, some things feel like they are at a breaking point. The Universe is trying to tell me something, but other than it telling me that change is necessary, I’m not sure what that change is. The struggle is getting really old. Quite a few of my other artist friends are feeling the same way. Are we all having a mid-life crisis of sorts?

And I found out this past weekend that a friend, Carol Parks, died. She was a mentor, a generous person, and she touched so many lives, and helped so many artists, including myself. CP, you will be missed. Finding out about her death was obviously upsetting, but it also reminded me that I need to make art.

I keep telling myself this, but haven’t figured out how to set aside time to do it, or am not making it a priority, along with other self-care things, like yoga. So working in my journal tonight was the beginning of getting back to myself. It has been too long since I have done yoga, and I really need to do it to help take care of my neck. And the same with working in my journal or other art-making. Other than the artwork I did for my book, or for teaching, I haven’t done any. I don’t really know why. These are questions I keep asking myself. If I know these things are necessary in my life, for my physical and emotional well-being, why am I not doing them? I’m not sure why I’m not. But even if it’s only 10 minutes of yoga and 10 minutes of doing some kind of art every day, I need to do it.

For this journal page, I had started the background while I was teaching a workshop. So with the background painted with some collage laid down, the spread was ready for me to start journaling. The overlapping circle stencil is the Eternity stencil from TheCraftersWorkshop.com. They were kind enough to send me a bunch of their stencils to use in my workshops, and my students (and I) loved them. If you haven’t tried them out, do! They have a great variety, and they come in 2 sizes. The rest of the materials are kind of the standards that I use: pens, markers, stamps, collage, Portfolio watersoluble oil pastels & regular crayons. For the pens & markers,I used Glaze & Soufflé Pens by Sakura, Latté Sweets by Pilot, Copic Markers, PITT Pens. The different skeleton stamps I made using moldable foam (learn how in my book Print & Stamp Lab). The alphabet stamps I used to stamp “Time for a change” is called Cheapskate, and the other alphabet stamps for the main part are personal ones I had made, but might start selling if there is enough interest. The stamped writing lines are from my Journaling stamp sheet. I’m not sure if you can see it in the picture, but there are 2 different cute little tiny Japanese stamps that I bought at Kinokuniya in Portland. The background is made up of layers of acrylic paint, and after I finished journaling, I added watersoluble oil pastels, and regular crayons to add a little more color.

Since this is something that’s been on my mind, I’m interested in hearing why you think you don’t make time for self-care: the things that are important to your well-being, whether it’s making art or other things. And also, if you have good ideas on how to make time for them, or how to really make them happen instead of just knowing that they need to happen (which is what I’ve been doing). The knowing and the doing are two separate things, and I need to figure out how to make them one.

Peace to you all. Be Light and be happy.