The balancing act continued...

The filling up of my hand made journal continues.

My friend Fonda gave it to me and I find its size and variety of paper pages very inspiring! Thanks, lovely one!

Today's two page spread is split by another inserted page. 

This being is on the first page. 

Something about a balancing act is playing out...

And it continues on the second page. 

Kind of reflects my quest for balance these days. 

Hormones are a huge challenge, as this perimenopause/menopause transition takes place. I keep taking deep breaths, trying different remedies, telling myself I'm not really crazy, and getting lots of support from my women friends who have been through it before me. 

This too shall pass. 😉

And on the other side of the coin, life is pretty good right now. Soaking up the sweet moments of joy wherever I can.

Hope you're finding plenty of joyful moments too, Beautiful Ones!

Love and light! 

Haiku My Heart–Life Stacks

(Art journal page – “Life Stacks” – October 25, 2013)

Balance mixed with faith

Will keep the life stack erect.

Let’s choose our tools well.

 

************

My life stack is feeling a little wobbly right now.

Not enough balance coming into play, I think.

Hoping to fix some of that this weekend.

I hope your stack is standing tall, Beautiful Ones.

Happy Friday !

 

For more Haiku My Heart, visit rebecca at recuerda mi corazon

Share the Joy Thursday–Balancing the Shiny

This week has been filled with opportunities to connect, to create, to branch out…

many of which have brought me joy in shining my light.

Art journal page – Balance the Light, September 29, 2011

But in this world, with so many of us looking for light,

it can be hard when you open yourself up, shine that light brightly,

and really share yourself with the world.

Sometimes, people try and take your light away, like a magpie who has noticed something sparkly in its line of vision and wants to take it home to its nest.

Sometimes, those old fear demons that live inside us, rise up and try and squelch the light from within.

And sometimes, the validation of our shiny-ness from outside, which feels so wonderful in many ways, tempts us to stretch ourselves too far,

and to wander away from the true light we are trying to bring to the world.

One of the best joys of  this week has been when I have done something to protect myself and my shiny.

Like saying no when an opportunity comes along but that doesn’t fit with what my heart’s work really is. (This is hard !)

Like making my fear my friend in a way, and acknowledging it but choosing to risk anyway. (Those fears are ugly but they really only want to keep me safe.)

Like taking time to be present and enjoy life exactly where I am ! (The only shiny I know for sure is the one in this moment !)

So this week, I am giving myself a blue 1st place ribbon for the care I have given to my shiny !

My friend Colleen and I with our blue ribbons, yesterday at the Deerfield Fair school building where we served as judges for the student artwork competition.

There is a lot of joy in presenting that kind of prize to your Self.

 

For more joy, make sure and visit the Lovely Meri at Meri’s Musings.

Happy Thursday, Beautiful, Shiny Ones !

A Tale of Royal Joy–Share the Joy Thursday

Our joy story begins with a happy Queen of Arts with the full day in front of her to create !

In the morning of her special day, the Queen played with spray inks, Golden fluid acrylics, plain old craft paint, stencils, sponges and paintbrushes.

And lo and behold :

Two square 6X6 canvases with awesome backgrounds appeared before her !

The Queen was thrilled beyond belief that her playtime had been so fruitful after a dry spell of well over a month!

After the morning arty play time, the Queen returned to her duties of fulfilling the needs of her Royally Cute Subject as well as her own heart,

and took a walk…

After a lunch of an exotic, rare Montreal bagel that the Queen received recently as a gift, with light cream cheese, tomato and turkey breast,

the Joyous Queen returned to the studio to continue her artistic pursuits.

“This square shall be the one.” she declared.

And with some well-loved Royal tunes filling the space and with the castle windows opened wide for fresh air,

the Queen set about creating her piece for this special day.

She drew a figure on to a page of an old dictionary,

painted it with Twinkling H2Os and Inktense watercolor pencils.

She outlined in India Ink Faber Castell artist pens and white Gel pens from Sakura.

The figure turned out to be an angel with her hand outstretched.

It was cut out, glued onto the perfect canvas background and coated with a light coat of semi-gloss gel medium.

This all but ruined the entire thing as the details of the figure smeared with the gel medium !

The Queen lost it momentarily as she had worked on the figure for two hours !!!!

But then she gave into the process, let the gel medium dry and added some details on top to “fix” the angel figure.

Then came the decision about what the angel would be holding.

“A heart ?” thought the Queen.

“No, too cliché and simple here.”

Out of nowhere, like many brilliant Artist thoughts, the perfect idea came to the Queen.

“A stack of rocks, just like my Father used to carefully pile here and there on his journey through life !” rejoiced the Queen, “And I am a Rock Fairy after all !”

The Queen cut her rocks from the old dictionary pages, looking for just the right spots to feature on their surface.

“This looks awesome.” thought her Rocking Majesty,

“but it needs a word somewhere…”

The word “Balance.” came to the Queen’s Libra mind.

Could it be possible that the word would be at the top of the page in her dictionary, and therefore be just the font and boldness that she needed ?

The dictionary was French. The French word for balance is “equilibre”. But alas, the word did not appear on the top of the page.

The Queen looked to her old, 1920’s English dictionary for help.

Instead of balance, she looked up “equilibrium” – a richer word somehow, in the Queen’s Artist mind.

And there at the top of the page, in the perfect font and bold type was the word the Queen needed !

“A gift from the Arty Gods !” thought the happy Artist Queen, “The piece is complete !”

She glued the word in place, signed her Royal signature to it,

and happily headed out to get Chinese food for supper, as the best place in the realm does not deliver.

The next morning, puffy from the salt and MSG in the Chinese food,

our Queen decided to tell her story and even add a final step to her creation.

She added the balanced piece to a bedhead Royal self-portrait, where she is really very happy

though she looks a little vacant and grumpy (and definitely puffy !) in the shot.

Balancing “Equilibrium” on her hand was a pretty cool idea though, don’t ya think ?

And this brings us to the end of our long-winded tale.

The Queen went on to drink lots of water to get rid of the puffiness, to avoid Chinese food again for a good long while,

and to live joyously every after in this very moment !

The End

for more share the joy stories, head over to visit Meri and the joy-filled gang.

Big Love !