The Exuburant Chaos of Art Journaling

Art and Soul has been awesome again this year. My classes have been wonderful. I'll have to write whole other post just to talk about them all! I just have to talk about the journal gathering hosted by the wonderful Diana Trout in this post.

Diana sent an email out several weeks before the retreat and invited anyone who journals to meet her to talk and share ideas about art journals. Maria the owner of collage, another wonderful person, offered the Make and Take space for meeting. I immediately wrote back and said I would be there. Now, I have to say this was not without trepidation. This would mean taking my art journal with me and showing it to other people! Scary!

So I sat down at a table of 12 strangers, with the exception of Takeabreak :), and began to talk and share ideas. Diana demonstrated a bubble blowing technique using ink and bubble liquid. Everyone got to share (except for the straws ;) and try the technique. We shared journals and looked for ideas within each others pages. Everyone was very supportive and complementary of my journal. But I have to say I was blown away by everyones journals! Diana even passed hers around for us to see. Wow, here were the original pages I had only seen pictured in publications! Very exciting!

We shared sources for supplies, ideas for how to journal with time constraints, we each journaled a page using a prompt we picked out of a basket, and talked about making space in our homes for a studio. Diana gave us some quotes to use with our journals. People who were in classes stopped by to visit and share. A gentleman shared with us a site his fiance, Sarah Whitmore, has called Soul Journaling. At one point someone asked if anyone had trades and everyone started pulling out trades and started swapping. It was loud, chaotic and so much fun! It reminded me of a Thanksgiving dinner with family all around the table passing stuff back and forth, everyone talking and having a good time.

Before I knew it everyone was packing up to leave. The table of 12 strangers had become a table of 12 new friends and I hated for the evening to end. I felt energized and full of new ideas for journaling. Once again I had taken a chance to step to the edge of my comfort zone with positive results. I hope that I will be able to stay in touch with these new friends because the connections with other artists are so important to me.

I saw Diana at Vendor Night and thanked her again for a wonderful evening. I asked her to please do another gathering next year! So just 360 some days to go until the next Art and Soul!