Artful Musings

Hooray, it’s National Poetry Month! Well every month is poetry month in my home.  You may not care about poetry as much as I do and that’s okay. I’m not here to change your mind.  Well, maybe I might change your mind a little bit. Especially when there are such magical poems and brilliant poets…

I’m cleaning up my studio and getting ready to change out my big wall calendar to the 2022 version. And I need to choose a new word of the year for 2022. The dream catcher featured above with the word Enchanted has been hanging on the corner of the calendar since last January. My word…

I taught my last biz planning retreat last week. It was a bittersweet and affirming moment. One of the reoccurring themes of the women on the call was the desire to “follow your bliss.” I’ve been thinking more along similar lines of following your heart’s desire. Using Mind maps in your Visual Journal In fact,…

In our slow meandering through the ABCs of visual journaling, we have arrived at the letter L. Love was the first thing that popped into my mind, followed closely by lettering. I might do a second post on types of lettering you can use in your visual journal but today I want to share why…

In today’s post on the ABCs of visual journaling, I talk about one of my most favorite elements, making marks. Mark making with lines, dots, dashes in colors, black and white or with different shapes and sizes of brushes is such a fun and unique way to personalize your visual journal pages. Rather than talking…

Wondering what to do when you don’t like your art or you feel like you’ve made a mistake? Have fun with the mantra “Oops, Now what?” This mantra covers the o and the n in the ABCs of visual journaling. I was traveling home from Colorado yesterday and am a day behind in my posts…

Q is for questions in our ABCs of visual journaling. Questions help us to get over the dreaded lack of ideas when we look at a blank page. Perhaps this is why I love writing on my pages first before approaching the page. If you do a Google search for visual journaling prompts you will…

Do you have those moments when you look at Instagram or Pinterest and see someone’s visual journal page and think, wow, that is incredible. How did they convey so much passion and meaning on the page? The visual journal page is the perfect space to explore your passion, your dreams and desires. Today we are…

Coloring and creating mandalas was the one thing that brought me back to my art over a decade ago. I remember sitting on the couch with my two young kids, a mandala coloring book and a box of colored pencils. We would watch Emeril on the food network and color together. Over the years my…

Three of my favorite techniques to use in my visual journals are stitching, stamps and stencils. As you can guess, today is letter S of the ABCs of visual journaling. Part of the fun of visual journaling is trying out new techniques and practicing them on the pages of a personal journal. This playful experimentation…

T is for Text in your visual journal. This might be one of my favorite letters on our journey through the ABCs of visual journaling. I love incorporating text into my pages and want to show you a few of the ways you can incorporate text into your visual journal. The art I’m sharing today…

Welcome back to my series on the Visual Journaling ABCs. I am wandering my way from Z to A through the things I love about about visual journaling and how it has helped me on my creative and healing journeys. Yesterday’s post was Y for memories. Today is the letter W for white and black.…

One of my favorite ways to create visual journal pages is to capture memories of my past. Childhood experiences of my own, travel adventures with my hubby or other favorite moments are perfect for visual journaling. That is why Y is for Yesterday. If you missed my first post on the ABCs of visual journaling…

Zip Zap Zop is an improve game that’s fun, focusing and energizing. Use this playful game to overcome your fear of approaching the blank visual journal page. For the next 26 days I will be sharing the ABCs of Visual Journaling and thanks to my friend Nancy Shobe, I’m starting at Z and working backwards.…

Have you been wondering how to get started with visual journaling? Here are 7 quick tips for creating an visual journal page that is meaningful and pleasing to you. Are you seeing all those pretty pages on social media and wondering if you could do that too? The answer is yes! You absolutely can start visual…

Art journaling means many different things to artists and creatives. If you search the hashtag art journaling on Instagram or Pinterest, you will find a scrumptious assortment of exquisite pages that leave you wondering, how did they do that? For me art journaling is a very special aspect of my creative process that is quite…