play is so good for my soul

so i haven't been the most consistent blogger. some days i'm just too tired/cranky/busy to go near something as hard as a computer. some days i just need that pen in my hand, the book on my knee. and then i am running around crazy working on stuff for work, new classes i'm designing and gifts i've been making and i've actually been trying (a little bit) to have a (small) life outside work and my studio. occasionally. so now i'm blogging. bear with me.

today has been a good day. had an intense and wonderful class experience tonight. i can't even say i taught a really good class, because i don't feel like i taught all that much. but i feel like the other women, the "students" and i were, together, part of something kind of powerful. see, the class, called Your Scrapbook, Your Story, encompasses everything i love about this art form. i think that's why it's so cool- it truly combines every magic bit for me. the writing, the art-supply-play, the history-making, the photography, the utter recognition and validation of the fact that each of us has a story and that each story is worth telling. and that creative play is truly the most wonderful way to tell it. the book we make is eternal (love them open-and-close-able binder rings!) so i can keep making pages for this thing til forever (and i probably will!). and i get to force people to write from their guts, and the results are seriously incredible. this is one of my favorite parts of scrapbooking and one of my favorite things to teach. i cringe when i hear students and customers saying they don't ever journal or see why journaling is necessary. the art aspect of this thing is super-important to me, don't get me wrong. i love to play with paints and inks and fabrics and staplers and all my supplies and tools. but in this project i get to say "put your pencil to the paper and write for ten minutes without stopping or thinking or doing anything else but letting your self write. use these prompts and go," and they do, and i do, and together we write our selves down. it brings me back to the fact that i was brought into this art form as a writer who loved to play with design (decoupage end tables with photos of women and poetry about power- arrange my library in rainbow order- take lots and lots of photographs and make people gifts out of the best among them). that was how i came in. in the beginning i was just a writer. now i feel like i'm more. i make art out the words of myself.

and yet, sometimes, scrapping, i feel outside of my writer self- especially when i scrap really simply or keep the focus completely on the photos. and that is fun, too, but often (though not always) less meaningful. doing this class brings me back to my writer-self in the biggest way. sharing that, seeing these women tap into their deep deep selves and pull out incredible art made of words and colors and emotion made literal- it's just the coolest feeling ever! there are definitely days when i just want to be left alone in my studio for a hundred years with my cats, my supplies and enough food to keep making things. i definitely have a bit of the hermit in me, i can't lie about that. but then something like tonight brings me back to the magic of the social aspect of this thing. it's women-magic, i think. and i think the sharing of our conscious words makes the sharing of the visual art part even more powerful.

i loved the class-to-crop feel of tonight too. i got to force every one to write from their guts for a little while. we talked technique in terms of applying the journaling to the layouts. and then we just played. with stamps and paints and words and papers and acetate and oh it was just so much fun! i got to play too, which was super cool. laid out a page and tried this fun technique with staples and ribbons and ghost flowers (thick clear plastic flowers, a translation for my non-scrappy friends) and it came out quite nice, i think. have to finish it. and i also wrote writh everyone and it felt really good. don't even remember what i wrote about. don't care. the good part was the writing of it, in the company of others with similar goals- the emotional purge, the play, the chat.

and you know what? today i got tickets to go see the dixie chicks in august with my friend laura and i'm so freaking excited! and also i gave someone a gift they really liked and that felt really good too.