Connections...

Ooops ! So some of you saw my earlier published vague and incomplete edition of this post - it has been a bit of a challenging morning for me and Blogger...

anyway...

This morning, as I often do, I woke up with crazy brain.

That isn't unusual but what is was how quickly some great tools and inspiration came into play to get me out of it !

A whole bunch of things worked together to get me out of that icky place and into a place where I want to BE today.

Present and connected to my life and this world.

Here's how it happened ...

The first tool that came to mind was my art journal. It has been neglected for a bit and I knew I had to get back into that magical practice TODAY !

I also wanted to rejoin the Green Pepper Press Street Team Crusades hosted by the incredible Michelle Ward.

I have missed the wonderful connections and community that comes with participating there !

This month's theme is "Strip Ease" where Michelle encourages us to rip up some stuff and add the strips and elements on our journal pages.

That was in mind as I started this process this morning, as was my desire to join Maegan at Madeline Bea who is hosting Sunday Creative, where she gives a one word prompt every Sunday and links up all kinds of artists who are participating. I had such a great time with Maegan's Creativity Boot Camp that I definitely want to keep playing a long with her !

This week's work was "Connect"....how juicy, right ?

So with all this inspiration in my artist mind, I got the old journal out and faced the blank page with stencils, acrylic paints, brushes, make-up sponges all close at hand and went for it...

I created a background with a stencil and some turquoise paint...

I washed some light turquoise over the center of the page...

I found a photocopy of a journal page from my previous journal and tore that up to make my Strip Ease strips.

I then added an image transfer using a ink jet transparency image of a chickadee and some gel medium.

The transfer actually worked clearly which is a rarity for me !!!

This blurry shot shows how the page looked with my transfer, the strips of my old journal page and some black and white flowers I cut out from another photocopy using my flower punch.

Here is where another bit of inspiration came into play. I follow Sarah Whitmire's daily journal prompt tweets on Twitter. I use them periodically when I need a jumping off point in my journal process.

Today's prompt was to use your favorite poem in a page.

I don't really have a favorite poem. Poetry seems to come to me when I need it to emphasize something that is happening in my life.

I felt that my page had the perfect spot to include a poem though so I headed to the computer and decided to Google the perfect poem.

I googled "poems about connection"...

and ended up on this Springfield New Sun page talking about the poetry of Julie L. Moore and how poetry readers would connect to her recent work called "Slipping into Bloom."

And there, on that page...

The perfect poem...

It brought me back full circle to my crazy brain challenge this morning, and how my "gnawing spirit" was "cooing ultimate questions".

But through this whole thing, I found the perfect answer for my spirit today.

The answer is to stop "gnawing" and to BE Present in this very Moment !

Immersing myself in the creative process and getting inspired by so many wonderful sources in this precious life is the BEST way I know of BEING.

Plus you get a pretty cool piece of art work to admire in the end too.

I hope your Sunday is full of Lovely Being, Beautiful Ones.

Big Love !