Archives

Here is our 3rd edition of our project By The Four Winds. If you want to know more about it, read what it is about right here.

This week, our theme was kind of a hard one, in my opinion: CHILDHOOD MEMORY. I think most of us struggled with it. Chose one childhood memory, and how to make it real again on the paper in our Journal. It was a real challenge for me ! And that’s also why I love Art Journaling/Creative Journaling: it pushes me out of my comfort zone and allows me to live things again.

I thought A LOT about which memory to chose and journal. Luckily, my mum is currently at home with us and she came from France with some pictures of me when I was little (we are doing scrapbook fabric journals for each one of my girls). So I had the opportunity to go through all these goodies and I realized that wow ! I really was a creative child ! I always was singing, playing music, painting, dancing and other creative stuff: my hands were always busy with something…

I remembered that as soon as I was able to keep a spoon in my hand, I was cooking. With my mum, my grandma, my aunt, my mum’s friends etc. That’s why it’s the childhood memory I wanted to journal about: all the wednesdays afternoons I spent baking cakes 🙂

Who never licked the wooden spoon full of cake dough/batter ? And now, when I have my kids flying around me while I cook, looking for the moment I’ll call “who wants some cake batter ????????”, I can’t help myself but smile 🙂 And you know what ? I still eat it too. Yep. I think I’ll always do. No shame.

This page caused me difficulties because I absolutely can’t draw anything realistically. Usually, it’s not a problem because I made it part of my own arty style. But I don’t know why, this time, I wanting my page to look like something “real”, that people do not have to guess what it is about.
My mum LOVES this page and want me to print it to her so she can take it home 😉 Personally, I think it’s not that bad and I loved painting it. It really brought the memory back, my face covered by chocolate 🙂

Here is what the girls created regarding our theme Childhood Memory:

2. Aegiale

1. Sofiah

1. Sofiah
2. Aegiale
3. Paola
4. Camille
5. Bluetansy

From this week, people who wants to join our project “individually” can share what they create by putting a link here, at the end. I’ll do it every week, without any time limit. So don’t be shy, if a theme inspires you to art journal and you then want to share, I’d love to see and know it 🙂

Who says Friday means Gratitude Friday 😉 !

This week, I’m simply thankful to be alive, to be supported, to have friends and family around me, even those who live far far away.

I’m thankful for the girls that are so enthousiastic about sharing their creations in my project “By the 4 Winds” that is just starting and will be in its 3rd week next Tuesday.

I’m thankful for the emails from my Soul-Sister Sophie, for the short message from my other friend Sophie just to say she thinks of me, from the even shorter moments on instant messenging with Paola (we’ll manage to have longer discussion).

I’m thankful for the presence of my mum, much needed as I was going to explode and who shows me different ways to deal with my kids and the time my husband and I can take just together.

I’m thankful I don’t totally give up the work-out I started via Jillian Michaels‘ DVD 30 Day Shred (noticed thanks to Connie). It’s more than hard, as I stopped dance lessons 8 years ago and did not really worked out since then (pfiouu) and I absolutely do not succeed in making the push-ups: I don’t know how to do it, no matter how hard I try, how hard my husband shows and explains it concretely to me, I don’t succeed. I want to do the 30-day program without stopping anytime. I want to achieve it, for once.

Thank you because I know how blessed I am.

[blenza_autolink]

It seems like an eternity since my last participation to Jamie’s Wishcasting Wednesday… booohooo !

But this week prompt speaks to me, so I jump right into it !

I won’t be original but I deeply need and feel like it’s right now the time for me to nurture my Body, as in result it will also nurture my Soul. So I wish to nurture this body I chose before birth, to love it, to honour it.

Because as they say “your body is your temple“. I use to think “bla, it’s what people say because they don’t know how hard it is to be in a body that absolutely do not reflect who you are inside“.

It’s so painful that it nearly breaks me into tears as I write you this stuff because I live a kind of not-so-peaceful war with my body for at least 8 years now. And I’m not even 25 years old.
I try to find keys to unlock why I look like what I do but… it does not change anything in the long term. Food is a problem, but I am certain that not only because even when I eat healthy food, modify what is wrong, I don’t feel better for more than a few days.

BUT I know how lucky I am to have an husband that still loves me, no matter the changes my body knows (after two pregnancies, and a lot of yo-yo-ing in my weight), that still desires me (I don’t understand why) etc. And it makes me feel a little bit better.

So one step at a time, I wish to nurture my body, to feed it really well, to exercise it, to lose weight so I’ll fall in love with it all over again…

Here is the second theme for our project By the 4 Winds. If you want to know more about it, you can read my first blog post here.

First of all, I want to thank you for the enthousiasm regarding this brand new project, it’s really encouraging ! I am happy to see that it inspires you to spend some time with your Journal and that some of you want to join us.

This week, the subject was more vague: PATHWAY.

Note: you can enlarge any image by clicking on it…

	Here is the page created by Camille, who finally decided to make a blog for the occasion. But it’s in French only, sorry. So don’t be affraid to paste her link into google translate to read it in English. To know more about her process, it’s right there.
Discover what Sofiah shares about this wonderful art journal page on her blog.
	From this week, Aegiale is officially joining us in the project ! You can read about her journal page here. And if you are interested to know what she done for our first theme, that was Healing, just go there.
I’m really really glad that Paola found some time to create this page in her journal. Here is what she has to say about it (translated in english from French by me): I used a yellow Conté “carré pastel” to build the background. I wanted a radiant colour to illustrate the pathway of Life. Really soon, the idea of the thread came. A sober thread that embodies my path from birth, teenagehood, and then early woman life guided by her father’s hand who shows (or imposes ??) the way. This thread creates loops, the ones of Life. It is never straight, it becomes stronger as I become a mum, the father’s hand is not there anymore (reality or will ?) and then, a biiig loop appears. This one is represented by a rosace and depicts the rebirth. Since then, the thread changed ! It is now richer, by its texture, on purpose, to show a stronger and more intense way of life. The thread goes out of the page to show its length… in order to indicate that the pathway of life is long… I didn’t want to depict it’s finiteness. I chose to use Ganesh because I’m interested in Buddhisme. The small flowers show my well-being in countryside. The big clock symbolizes the time that passes…
	And last but not least, Bluetansy talks about her progression: Regarding the “shape”, the tree tronks and the background were made with ink (it’s not red as it seems, but sepia; in reality the page is less “flashy”), the rest is made with acrylic paint. For the “why”, the light at th end of the road was obvious to me… Then, it was more blurry; I spent a lot of time at drawing and colouring the branches, that look like veins… Even if it’s covered by the foliage. The trees, the forest, are not threatening at all for me, it’s the contrary: theyr are protective and benevolent. I already depicted a pathway for the Healing page, they’re strangely both quite straight despite the fact that my life path is far from being straight; is it a dream ? A will that everything goes straightly eventually ? On the other hand, I started with a sepia pathway to something clearer, I hope it’s a good sign ! lol I didn’t feel like writing anything on this page, only wanted a light pathway going toward the light in the serenity of trees. A need of calm, of simplicity.

My journal page is even simpler than the one I created for the Healing theme, and totally not realistic because of the fact that it’s impossible to have a rainbow during night time…

At the early beginning, when I drew the theme “Pathway”, I had the image of a cloud tunnel in grey tones, the pathway between our Living Word and what comes after we die. But nothing else, no message, nothing !

So it’s with a blank mind that I sat down in front of my double page… Pathway… pathway… pathway. The clouds were still in my mind, so that’s what I painted first: a cloudy night sky.
And then, the idea of the rainbow piercing the clouds. The rainbow is the pathway to my Dreams in the night sky symbolizing the blurry present moment: I don’t know how to get from where I am now to my Dreams, but I know, deeply inside, that it will become clearer as long as I stay on the rainbow.
At last, I simply wrote “There is always a path to drive you were you are meant to be.”

Feeling inspired by this week theme and you journaled about it ? Share it with us: simply enter your Name and URL in the box below: [linkme]

Hello Sweetie Peas !

Here is a new week-end that is coming our way… and so a new week that is ending.

This week, I want to celebrate another of my passion, that came in my life before Art but that is something creative too: cooking.

I remember cooking with the women of my family: my mum of course, but also my grandma, my aunt(s)… Cooking for special occasions like birthdays and Christmas. I wish I had pictures of me younger, cooking, on my computer to show you. Perched on a stool in front of the stove, stirring yummy meals I still love and share with my own daughters.

In 2004,  I even thought of starting a career in the kitchen industry and started in France (where I am from) a year in cooking school. But you don’t always get what you want, and I was forced to stop before graduating… I used to be bitter about it, but everything happens for a reason and I was able to nestle and raise my first daughter as I wanted, without long work hours in the restaurant kitchen, even if it was the best professional months in my life.

But sometimes, I just lose my flame and don’t want to cook, it becomes slowly a chore and I have no pleasure at all to be in my kitchen, even if it’s to feed my family… it was like that for a few weeks. But this week… something shifted, without notice. I don’t know what happened but I started cooking again and LOVED it. Really.

I cooked cinnamon rolls, bagels, flameküeche, tofu stew, maki sushi (because my mum is here and she never tasted japanese cuisine, which is kind of one of my specialities), French style apple tart (the crust, the apple sauce… I made the entire tart) etc. Something new everyday, for each meal and even snacks ! WOW ! And I really enjoyed the process, the “hmmmmmm it’s yummy”.

SO thank you food, thank you the pleasure to transform food into meals. Thank you for the fact that we have the chance to eat something everyday, something different, something we like, something we make. Thank you.