I love school visits!

Yay for author school visits! I recently got to share my love of writing and creativity with the second graders at Geneva Elementary here in Bellingham, AND I guided them in making their very own journals. We had SO MUCH FUN!

I love doing school visits!

These are kinda what the kids journals ended up looking like (they are the examples). Next to a gnome in the Library.

Some of my favorite comments from kids from the day:

“I think your name (kj) could stand for Kitty of Justice. That could be your superhero!”

“This journal I made is potentially very dangerous. I mean, think of all the paper cuts that it could give someone.”

When invited to share what a journal is or could be, one kid said: “My happy place.”

Other delights: I hung out eith lots of gnomes between sessions (the Geneva mascot) and I did a silly walk next to the silly walk sign. A happy happy day! Thank you to my friend Mrs. Ritchie for inviting me!

Creative Practices that keep on giving

At the beginning of November I drove to California for a beloved cousin’s wedding—he got married surrounded by friends, family, and beautiful big redwood trees—and I took the wedding as an excuse to fill up with awe in the wilds of Northern CA and Southern OR.

We got to be hobbits one night

Besides seeing redwood trees and the ocean, I stayed in a Hobbit House Air B&B, A treehouse, A caboose, a log cabin, and an airstream trailer. What a fun adventure!

This treehouse is called the “Majestree”

My younger son (who was with me for the whole trip) and I made a journal as we went, we painted and drew everyday, and we even printed out pics for our book using a Selphy portable printer every night.

Pages from our journal

Journaling is my longest standing and most consistently active creative practice—I love how playful I can be in my journals, how they help me remember things, how the very act of journaling makes me somehow seek out doing things that are interesting and worth writing down, and how they often make me feel like I experience the joy of adventure twice (once while living it, and once while recording it). I realized lately the obvious—that journals are kind of the glue that holds all my other creative work together. And my travel journals are about my favorite.

While we made the pages as we went, I finished the cover of this book over Thanksgiving weekend. In my family, we call the day after Thanksgiving Craft Friday—we spend the day (and then the entire weekend) making crafts and laughing and eating lots of good food.

Our finished travel journal

So this past weekend I not only finished the travel journal I’d started earlier in the month, I actually made several handmade books including a happy fat new regular journal with colorful pages.

My new journal, ready to start filling!

And so here I am. With one journal just finished (actually several because this was just a travel journal, my regular journal is just about finished too), and a new one sitting, with lots of big empty pages waiting to be filled.

And I suppose here is where I hopefully can be helpful to anyone else who journals who stumbles across this. When I’ve talked journaling with people, I notice a lot of people are intimidated—what if they mess up a nice journal, what if they don’t have anything interesting to say, what if they draw something and it’s ugly.

And I guess my response is who cares? I mean, yes, what if? What if I do any or all of those things? Who cares? What if I do any or all of those things but in the meanwhile I have jumped in and started playing with my creativity. What a delight!

A journal is one of the easiest places to lower the stakes with my creative work. Because it’s just for me. A journal is a place where I can set aside any worries that anything is perfect and instead just play. Like a kid just having fun and not worrying about the outcome. It’s a yes space. Where anything goes. And because anything goes, in my journal I learn to open up and unlock blank pages. Through practice. Because when you practice something you get better at it. So by practicing my creative work with low stakes, I get better at my creative work. And Ironically then it becomes more interesting to actually share.

Anyway, those are my random thoughts that I thought I’d share in my public journal as I dive into my new private journal. If you stumble upon this and have a journaling practice or regularly keep travel journals, drop me a line or leave a comment. I’d love to hear about your time with journaling too.

Delicious Spring

I love journaling.

Often I think the act of keeping a journal helps me look out for things worthy of journaling about.

Blogging is no different.

Increasingly though, I find that this often takes a non-written form. I look for color or light that's just so. And that's somehow what I feel like recording.

 And so sometimes my camera is my journal.

And so I share some snippets here on my blog of moments I've spent recently, relishing spring.

This is my nephew, Richard.

I'll catch up with posting some drawings or process pieces for recent illustrations and current illustrations I'm working on soon.

 

But, as hopefully most out there know, sometimes life is too rich to spend too much time plugged in or online.

But it is nice to stop in now and then and share/record the richness.

:) 

She's Nurturing A Dream

I made this collage using some of the paper-cutting techniques I've been experimenting with since attending the Nikki McClure workshop a few weeks ago.

She's Nurturing a Dream

I made it as a celebration as well. Big news: I'm expecting another baby! I'm due in July. If you look closely at the picture of me in the last post (the one at the end where I'm standing next to Nikki and holding up the picture I've made) you'll (maybe) see my blossoming bump.

I've had it in my mind for awhile to start making collages that are a bit more journal-like. Or a bit more like my own journals, which are full of torn bits and discarded (and then reclaimed) evidence of regular life.

I should note that this is just a lousy snapshot picture of the collage. I still need to scan the image for best quality. But I wanted to share now.

More in the works! Fun stuff!

Handmade Book of the week Nov 8 - 14, 2008

Cheers!
This week's handmade book of the week is a dos-a-dos wine journal, meaning it’s two books in one. A dos-a-dos book includes two books that both share the same back cover – so they are sewn together into one. One side for red wine notes, one side for white wine notes. This is the perfect journal for a wine lover or someone who loves to go wine tasting.

Click here to see more photos or to buy the book.