I wrote about the chill-inducing coincidence which occurred (and really, are there really any coincidences??) while I was making my “Inspiration Deck” (inspired by Christine Mason Miller’s latest book, Desire to Inspire,) recently. Even now, the details of the story make me shake my head in wonder. I love looking at my little note of inspiration, which I keep on my desk, and I love the quiet moment on Sunday when I flip this week’s card over to the back, and I have a brand new mantra for the week to hone in on and live by for the week. There was a great reaction to the post and it seems like you all need your own Inspiration Decks!

I happen to be participating in a Chunky/Fat Book swap for Artfest and the idea of creating 52 cards which will then be given to strangers around the country, or world, ignites me. Soooo, let’s do the same thing here! Here’s what I propose (details on how to sign-up at the bottom of the post):

First, WE CREATE

~You make one Inspiration Deck, using a normal deck of playing cards. The entire Inspiration Deck tutorial I created can be seen here. 

~ Embellish them, paint on them, sticker them, glitter them, bedazzle them in whichever way you love to do, and in whichever way you can do in two evenings in total (Let’s make this an easy and inspired project!)

~ Add one Inspiring or Motivating phrase to each card. You can glean your phrases from the handy internet, from friends, from book passages you love, from mentors or famous people. Just write something that inspires, encourages or ignites you on each card. *A different saying for each card please The phrase that I am needing to hear most this week is:

~ You decorate AT LEAST 53 cards. You can do the entire set which comes in the pack (including jokers and rule cards) or you can do 53. Again, it sounds daunting but as long as you break it into two movie-watching evenings and don’t get hung up on how they look, it will fly by! Why 53? Because I want to create one extra deck that features your cards to send to Christine Mason Miller herself, for being the real inspiration behind this, via her book, Desire to Inspire. 

~ Put your name and blog (and/or website) address on the back of each card. Here’s my easy way to add this to the back of my cards. I just smeared some gesso across the back, and then when dry, wrote my information across the smear with a permanent sharpie. But you can add your info how ever you want!

Next, YOU MAIL

~ When your deck is DRY, put it into a well-sealed ziplock bag. This is to protect the cards from any inclement weather.

~ Put your ziplock bag, tightly closed, into a regular mailing package.

~ Mail it to me with your $5.00. ** Email me at jessica.brogan(at)gmail.com in order to sign up and I will give you my address in return.

Then, I GO TO WORK

I will hole-punch each card and bind them with a metal ring as seen in this photo. I will divvy up the cards and recreate as many Inspiration Decks as there are participants. And then, I will mail each of you your new Inspiration Deck, made entirely of cards from friends around the country/world! How fun is that??! Just imagine what inspiring messages you are going to find all year. Will you peak and look through it right away, or let yourself be surprised every week? Am I an art/real mail nerd? A little bit!

I promise I’ll have better handwriting in the deck I submit to this swap…yikes.

To participate, Email me at jessica.brogan(at)gmail.com by February 1st. The deadline to send  your Inspiration Deck will be March 1st. The cost is $5.oo which covers the shipping back to you, and your metal ring to bind the deck. 

For your reference, the supplies you will need are:

1 Brand new Card deck

Gesso

Paint Supplies

1 Ziplock bag

2 Great Movies or 2 Episodes of Downtown Abby

Mail Pouch (can be purchased on site at the post office)

Happy Creating Y’all!

On the winter solstice, a fellow Austinite mama and I held a small RAW evening together here at my house. She had participated in RAW in Utah for a long time, before moving to Austin. It was my first RAW gathering, but something that I hope to repeat every other month or so, with a growing gathering of crafty/fun women. That first night, it was just the two of us. The theme, of course, was “Winter Solstice” and we each brought a fresh canvas and paints in order to paint what that meant to us, individually. We also looked up the meaning online, where we found that it often stood for a “rebirthing” and the symbol of fresh life to bloom anew in the new year. With that tucked away in our thoughts, we spent hours painting and gabbing.

I had a blast painting with Hannah, but honestly, I could not make heads or tails of my painting. I mean, I loved it. It seemed so…”me.” But it certainly didn’t seem to embody the idea of rebirth or renewal. And it certainly didn’t look like Winter! There wasn’t a moon, or winter scene. No being in mid-transformation. Just the colors I love and a miscellaneous hodge-podge of paper, and of course, a shawl of Hawaiian thoughts laid out over it, first in thought, then in paint. I did like it, but as I set it on the wall in my studio to hang over me this year, it did irk me that I hadn’t been able to paint something theme-specific when asked to do so.

Fast forward about a month to this past week when I am participating in the first week of Hello Soul, Hello Business. I am having a BLAST in this course, learning and thinking so much. There’s so much to say about it, that I will definitely be writing an entire post devoted to singing its praises. So for now, I’ll stay on topic. Last week, during the course, we were asked to draw our ideal business “as if it was a dear friend.” The idea being, that your business has a soul, purpose and culture all its own, and you should want to get to know her in and out, her every detail, BOTH negative and positive. This is what I drew, or doodled rather, below. Immediately, I saw that she embodied the same spirit as my Winter Solstice painting: Tropical, colorful, upbeat, energetic. As I reviewed this doodle, I had a little “Ah haaaa…” moment of my own. I suddenly saw what transformation and rebirth was occurring, and showing up after all, in my Winter Solstice painting.

Consider: Almost a year ago to date, I made the following painting.

A small canvas that was maybe the first, or at least in the first handful, of mixed media collages that I created near the time of my father’s death. I was sad, obviously. I was exhausted, if I’m being conservative in word choice here. I was grieving, of course. And yet, I had this inner spirit, the same spirit showing itself in every painting I’ve done since. The same colorful, upbeat spirit was inside of me, just waiting. It showed itself, but wasn’t yet “there.” And so, I created and painted and healed from this and that trauma over the past year, and through it all, I now see, this spirit has been growing, until – about a year later – the painting that I sit down and made, with absolutely no thought to it (because I was gabbing away with Hannah non-stop) was large, full, bright and cheerful. It “is” cheerful, rather than encouraging or asking me to be in the future. And even though “transformation” is my word of the year, and I know I have a lot to do this year in that theme, I can see the growth between these two paintings. I can see that this year, I am birthed as a healthier spirit who has the energy and means to work on myself in happiness and health, not drawing myself out of sadness. This year is about the happy me. That’s a major, probably my first, renewal of spirit. And that, my friends, is exciting!

This painting is who I am, and who I want to be. And it has me thinking:

If you were to sit down and paint, with complete distraction (invite a girlfriend over for wine), what would show up on your canvas?

I wrote about my new favorite book, Desire to Inspire, the other day here on my blog, and today I want to share with you the results of doing one of the project ideas given in the book.  In the book, Christine Mason Miller talks about having her own Inspiration Cards which she took the time to collage and now keeps in a bowl on her desk. Since I am a time oriented person, and I like to have habits and habitual actions, I took it one step further and created a 52 card Inspiration Deck, bound together, so that I can flip to a new card every single Sunday of the year. This deck will last me the whole year, and I don’t doubt that I will continue to re-use it in years to come, because many of the lessons and ideas that I added to the deck are themes which we artists come back to over and over again in our artistic journeys.

Here is what I used:

1 deck of cards

Gesso

Hole Punch

Metal Ring

Miscellaneous Art Supplies

Glue

Scissors

Here’s what I did: 

1. Purchase/Use a Deck of Cards. Remove the instruction cards and joker cards if you want a 52 card deck, or keep them if you don’t care about the number!

2. Cut out the awesome inspiration cards that Christine includes in the back of the book, and set aside.

3. Gesso one side of each of the Playing Cards. I was not worried about doing a “clean” job at this!

4. The fun creation part! Decorate, embellish, paint, collage, stamp, draw, doodle, glue all over your cards. Make sure to include one passage on each card. **I used the cards that Christine included, but I also used favorite inspirational quotes (from inside of her book, from other books, from my inspiration board, from my mom…). I used one per card and decorated around it. You can make this as simple, messy, clean, quick or as lengthy as you want. I chose to do this in two afternoons and not get too much into labored art but instead let my inner child just decorate messily. It was more fun than I expected!

Truth be told, I decided that not every single inspirational card from the back of Desire to Inspire spoke to me. I felt that they might speak to others more than me. I kept the ones that meant the most to me and the others found new homes shoved between CDs at the Starbucks counter, or on the digital credit card swiping machine at the grocery store. I left them in all kinds of places (just couldn’t get a very good picture of one!). I even got up the courage to leave one in the Drive-Up Bank canister for the next car!

5. I used the hole punch to punch a hole in the corner of each card. Then, I bound them together with a ring binder purchased from Office Max.

Now, in the photo below you’ll notice a deck of cards from “Meet me on the Beach.” I want to take the time to tell you about the most amazing moment I had Christmas Day. I had almost finished my own Inspiration Deck and was just letting all of the cards dry, getting ready to do the whole punching. I put the project on hold for Christmas day celebrations and feasting.

At the present exchange, I gave my brother a book that my father gave to me before he passed away last year. It was a topographical book of Big Bend. I decided that my brother would use and appreciate it much more. I hoped he didn’t think of it as “regifting!”  It was a very rough thing to lose my Dad so suddenly. He was given a terminal diagnosis 2 1/2 months after we discovered his cancer. One day last October his doctor gave him a 1 to 3 month time period left, and he died five days later. Needless to say, anything that belongs to him has a special value to it right now.

So, I gave my brother the book on Christmas and he really appreciated it! And then he said, “Well then you’d better open this one,” and he handed me a gift from himself. Inside, I found this deck of cards to the right of mine in the photo below. First, to see my father’s handwriting took my breath away for a moment. Second, when I began to flip through and realized that this was a deck of cards with inspirational adages written on them, and bound in the exact same way, I got CHILLS. Third, it was such a happy funny coincidence that my brother and I both gave one another something that belonged to our father, that we thought the other would appreciate more. Serendipity at work.

6. All done! I set my Inspiration Deck on my office desk (the one not covered in paint and miscellaneous projects!) and every Sunday I flip to a new adage!

Seriously guys, this is a super easy project. It took me all of two hours and could easily be done in front of a great movie, with your kids’ help, whatever! And, if you haven’t looked into Christine’s book, you need to! You can buy Desire to Inspire on Amazon.com here. 

I was telling my therapist the other day about my first real bout with the internal art/dream critic, the week after the New Year’s. That entire week I was in a funk, and my art had a funk of its own. One day, I sat down to work on a painting and almost immediately I felt that I was pushing it. Forcing it. Trying too hard. But it had been two weeks since I had painted, and I just felt like I had to pick up my brushes (or cups, sponges, bubblewrap as it is) again and get back into it. The result was, grueling. The painting disappointed and confused me from the first stroke. I talked to myself as I continued, willing myself to recall other paintings that had at first given me the shivers, convinced me of their unworth, and then turned out to in fact be favorites. I kept having that little pep talk with myself, but the painting kept looking all wrong.

Then, from nowhere, the first strong lashing from my internal critic began. I know that it’s just fear. Fear of many little things, but those voices can be so convincing. I looked down at my miserable (that’s how it felt) painting and thought “All those paintings from last year were just a fluke.” And I really believed it was possible for a moment.

Fortunately, I recognized what was going on. I’ve  heard this same story from so many artists, writers and creative souls. I’m not different, and that means, I’m not completely void of talent. My art is not a fluke. I do have fears. I am normal. But pushing this painting was making me miserable. So, I did more of that redirection practice. I did what you’re supposed to in these situations. 1. Step Away and 2. Return

I got out of the house for an errand. I came home and found an adorable lost puppy on my doorstep. I met a neighbor returning him. I lost myself in Pinterest for awhile, then laundry and dishes. Then, I did the most important of the two steps, I returned to the canvas. Just not the same canvas, at least not immediately. When I sat back down on the dropcloth – yes, I paint sitting down, with my materials in a circle around me, I only wish I could sit on a Lazy Susan – I first had to concentrate. I asked myself, “Why does this frustrate you so much?” Answer: “Because I am trying to make it go a certain place.” Then, “What brought you so much joy when you painted in the beginnings last summer? What was the first rule you made again??” I already knew the answer to that question was the answer to my painting funk: “Not caring about the end result.” I started painting last summer by making that pact with myself and here, breaking it, I was feeling the consequences! So, I made a deal with myself. I’d get back to the painting causing me so much frustration, but not before getting out some real creativity without end result in mind. I plucked a fresh canvas from my stash, as well as a big square piece of wood that I’d snagged from a dumpster, to do who knows what with. And this is what came out, when I painted without plan.  When I loosened my body, opened my head and just put hand to paint to canvas.

The former is a phrase that I’ve had running through my head for weeks now, and I secretly want to paint it on every canvas that I finish. The latter, just a note. And I think I’ll leave it on a bench somewhere in a park someday, just to make someone’s day.

When I’d finished up those two, carefree & happy paintings, I pulled the original beast back out and said, OK, have a little fun. And I was able to turn it into something that pleased me, at least somewhat. I told my therapist, later, “It’s not my best painting by any means, but it’s not my worst either.” And he said the sweetest thing in reply. “It IS your best painting. It’s the best painting you’ve ever done because you heard that fear and you painted anyway. You thwarted it. If only for a day. Congratulations.”

So I just want to tell you, that if you are hearing similar voices in your head, to remember that that is normal. That we all hear them. And that you can hear them, acknowledge them, have a little ceremony to write them out on paper and give them a place to live other than your head. But you can keep going. You can paint, write, create, all the while, and show those fears a thing or two.

Towards the end of last week I grew weary and irritated with the funk I’d been in all week.  Though I’d put “paint” on my to-do list everyday, I didn’t get it into it. I got it crossed off my list, that’s all. Merely fit it in. My creative spirit apparently didn’t appreciate being teased because come Thursday,  I couldn’t stand the sight of my studio when I came down the stairs first thing in the morning. Honestly, I didn’t even have my eyes open yet, I was just getting acquainted with consciousness, when a sharp voice in my head, recognizing that it was a new day of this disagreeable week, blurted out: “I hate painting!”

WHOA.

Let me tell you, I scared myself. I hate painting? Pardon? I love painting! I tried to rationalize with myself, but my inner voice insisted, “I love painting but today I hate painting.” And I knew then that I’d forced it too much this week. Clearly, forcing the work wasn’t going to happen a single day more. I mean, come on…this was the first time I have heard a voice in my head so clearly and it had just told me that I hate the thing that I’m trying to rebuild a healthier, happier life around!

I did the only thing that I felt called to do that moment, and that was to go walking. It’s such simple advice, and I’ve heard it/read it many a time: when you’re in a rut, get outdoors. I think it was even in the first chapter of The Artist’s Way. Something along the lines of “you’ll be surprised how much 20 minutes outdoors will change your mood.” Really? I was skeptical but I was ready to try anything. So, I took myself down to Austin’s Town Lake trail – a dirt path loop that goes almost 10 miles around the river, with many bridges for crossing, though I (and most) use only the busy four mile loop just south of downtown. The four mile loop takes me one hour to walk and in the time that I did, I focused on emptying my brain, and my body, of tension and residual grime. I concentrated on not concentrating. I looked up through the sparsely adorned branches, and down at the bobbing ducks and the white heron in the small pond. Crossing over my favorite bridge, I grinned to see that the water was as busy as the path above. Many people had had the same idea, to enjoy a beautiful January morning in Austin, where it was warm enough that I wore a tank top and the kayakers filled up my view all the way down to the impressive mansions precariously perched on the steep cliff-side over the river. I caught glimpses of things that pleased me and captured them with my phone. I was not the only one. I soaked up the energy of every runner that passed me.

On the way, I called my mom to chat. To tell her how tired I’d felt that week. Almost depressed. Defeated, in a way. She pointed out that I’d just spelled out on my own blog just how hard the last year (heck, three years) had been. How stressful Christmas break had been, instead of the rest I had planned. “What is your body telling you to do today?” she asked, pointedly. “Nothing!” I sighed, with much guilt. “Nothing. Just lay under the covers all day and maybe, maybe read a magazine or eat some cereal. Just rest.” “Well duh Jess, so why aren’t you doing just that? Your body is saying, okay, the year is over…I need a break!”

But I couldn’t do it. I can’t just rest and do absolutely nothing. But I did the next best thing. I skipped jiu jitsu. I made myself a yummy lunch, set it on the floor, and let myself paint until the next time I looked up and out the studio window, car headlights reflected against the blinds. Then I fiddled around on photoshop. Fiddling around on photoshop does wonders for me. I plucked a few photos from my archives and spent an hour or two just playing with them. I’d forgotten how much fun that is to me. Then, finally, I made myself a quick dinner and watched more hours of reality television than I care to admit.

And you know what? I’ve felt better ever since, and so has my inner creative child. She’s been singing and skipping and letting a little more loose everyday since.

I’ve learned a bit of a lesson this week, and so remember this: When your creative energy gets funky, and you hear yourself wanting to give up something you know to be a passion, it’s time to shake things up. First, examine whether or not you’ve been forcing yourself to do a particular thing too much, or under too much pressure. If it’s a self-inflicted pressure, let up. Imagine that you are standing over your inner child with a whip, while she is crouched miserably over this piece of art. You wouldn’t do that to her, would you? But in some ways, we do. So let up. Let her stretch and play.  Get thee outside. Give your creative inner child a breath of fresh air, a change of scenery and a little time off. Come back to the drawing board, no pun intended, with a commitment to practice this art in the method that gives you, and your creative spirit, the most joy, at least for that day! And then see where that takes you! If your deadlines are external, and the pressure is unavoidable, you can still take a break to breathe in some different air. Perhaps a twenty minute walk, as Mrs. Cameron suggests, just to get the blood flowing and the head clear again. And for goodness sake, listen to your mother.