Remember the cosmic journal I shared in my last Studio Check-In? And remember how I said it was part of a bigger project that I was going to share soon? Well, I can now explain to you what the heck I was hinting about, because it’s finally here!
I’m part of a group called Her Creative Collective (a future post about that soon) which, pre-COVID, intended to host in-person creative and wellness workshops. As meeting IRL for group activities became less and less of a possibility, we started looking at ways to host events virtually. Over the last few weeks, members of the collective have put together a series of weekly self-care webinars (the first of which is this evening!) and the Collective founder, Dana, and I have put together a creative writing and journaling series called Writing with the Moon. It starts in January and will use the symbolic phases of the moon to guide participants through journaling, free-writing, and creative writing exercises related to intention- and goal-setting and self-care practices — basically, a sort of “reset” for 2021. I got to draw on my creative writing background for the exercises in this one, and everyone who signs up gets a kit that includes one of the hand-made journals I’ve been working on (which look even better than the prototype, if I may say so myself).
I’ve been a journal-keeper for most of my life (more about that soon, too) and I think it’s a really useful way to reflect and gain perspective on life and all that (plus there are so many different ways to do it besides the stereotypical “Dear Diary” bit). It’s definitely a little daunting to face down a blank page (or a whole blank book) but having something pretty to write in makes the process more fun. So yeah, I’ve been spending a lot of time folding and cutting and gluing, and will be sewing page signatures and filling envelope pockets with goodies to send out to anyone who registers.
I also got to paint some images of the moon, which was new for me. I’ve tried some galaxies and night skies, but the moon itself hadn’t yet made an appearance in my artwork (which is actually kind of surprising to me when I think about it now). This is one of my images, in our marketing piece:
It’s kind of weird to think that there are only six weeks left of 2020, isn’t it? What things are you looking forward to in 2021?
Fairy Tree Studios 