Dreaming into Reality

As a single mama I have been putting my needs and dreams on hold for years, but as my darling boys have grown up so much and are becoming more and more capable and mature I am really grabbing every opportunity I can to realise my long held dreams. 

With the help of my best friend and partner Kathy,  the boys and I are living in town in our beautiful new home and things are moving towards  creating a magical art studio downstairs. The boys have taken to town like ducks to water and love living here and they are taking full advantage of their independence to stretch their wings and do more and more all of which is fabulous for them and is opening up more and more time for me to follow my dreams. 

This year will be huge for me on a personal level as I am undertaking 2 courses of study and hope to be opening my studio by July.  I am very excited about everything  falling into place, especially my courses, they are both online and I am very grateful for the fabulous opportunities we can access on the internet, what an amazing difference it has made to the world.

I am training as an art therapist with Rob Gray at the Center for Educational and Clinical Art Therapy CECAT   and loving this course.   Rob is passionate about art therapy and his course is very engaging and inspiring.  I am looking forward to the personal growth this course will bring me as well as preparing to bring this wonderful form of therapy to my community.

The other course I am doing is Color of Woman teacher training with Shiloh Sophia and I am so happy about this course. I have been drawn to Shiloh ever since I noticed her powerful divine feminine art works and I love all that she brings into the world. I also feel this will bring great healing and personal growth to my community and cant wait to be offering this in northern NWS.

2016 will be huge for me, filled with healing, personal growth, incredible learning, reaching out to those opportunities and  realising my dreams.

The Australian Art Swap Group

Wow so much is happening over in our facebook group The Australian Art Swap Group . We are a very friendly, safe supportive growing group who are sharing art and inspiration is so many ways.  We have regular ATC swaps and DAJ (Deconstructed Art Journal page) swaps and so many other fabulous community building activities. Journal prompts, digital post cards, index card swaps, photo prompts and general fun chat. We also facilitate a regular ATC swap for our kids - its open for adults to join in as well as long as they appreciate the delightful cards our younger members create. Like the 2 gorgeous Funky Feathers ATCs created by Ellie (5) and Jake 

We have also just launched our 3rd round of The Australian Art Journal Swap, its very exciting to see everyone deciding on their there and creating their journals and blogging about it. So many wonderful women are stretching themselves to try something new, joining in the art journal swap is quite a big commitment and learning to blog in the process. I am so grateful to these brace creative women for joining us. You can hop over to our swap blog on the link above and follow along with these journeys and who knows you might want to join us in our group- We have 2 rules- You have to reside within Australia, this is to minimise our postage expenses andYou have to want to be in our space to be supported, inspired or involved and you need to be a little bit active in group. 

Boiled Books

It all began with a beautiful day at the beach,
we met at Brooms Head for a home school day looking at marine life and exploring the rock pools, it was such a fabulous day, and we saw the whales . I was so excited.

I came home with a bucket full of sea weeds and plants from beach combing.

and used them to create a boiled book.

 This was my first attempt after watching this fabulous series of videos

My pages are beautiful but I think I was too chunky with my plant matter  and quite a few of my pages ended up torn and ripped.

The patterns and details are so beautiful, delicate and I got quite a range of colours.

It is jacaranda time here and my town of Grafton in northern NSW is a purple haze this time every year and on my morning walk today I started thinking about doing another book so I collected some leaves and flowers and hurried home.

I was much quicker putting this one together for the dye pot.

I also made sure I used a thin layer of leaves and flowers 

and kept my pages in a neat stack within the edges of my tiles.

I added some dark green dye to the pot this time as well 

The pages are very different 

and I love them 

I cant wait for them to dry

 so I can bind them together into a new book.

They almost look like xrays 

and when held up to the light you can see colours inside the pages.

Art Box - Felt making in the park

We had such a lovely workshop out at Copmanhurst last week, our local council The Clarence Valley Council has a fabulous program tied into our skate parks where they have 3 converted shipping crates that travel around the valley offering different activities and workshops to locals and visitors for free.

I am one of the local artists working out of the Art Box 

and I have just started offering felt making workshops.

We had a great turn out with

 lots of boys and girls and mums joining in on the fun 

and getting some  exercise in the fresh air. 

We kept it quite simple making balls, beads and ropes that will be sliced when they dry into a different type of bead.

Everyone chose lovely bright colours and the beads all turned out so different from each other.

River Flow

Big things are happening in this river girls life right now.
 I have bought a house in town, with my girlfriend Kathy, and the boys and I have moved in. The new house is fabulous and still on my beloved river and offers so many opportunities to us all.  Moving was epic and overwhelming and we are almost finished bringing our things to the new house now we just need to sort everything out and settle in. 

The animals have all been moved and have settled in well, the parrots were the easiest and the poodle, Indi is very mobile and adaptable. The 2 cats Minx and Domino have settled in mostly but they still dont like each other and they dont like going from bush cats free to roam out at our old place to town cats confined to the house. They will soon be getting a catio built for them to have access out into an enclosed area out the back. The chooks have also made the move and they didn't miss a beat and kept on laying eggs right through.

The really exciting thing about moving into town
 and buying this house in particular is I am opening an art studio downstairs where I will be running lots of different classes and workshops. There is still a lot of work to do before the studio opens but we are here and taking it one step at a time. I am studying a certificate 4 in small business starting next week and starting the renovations downstairs as soon as I can. 

The bad thing about all of this is I have been so busy I have not been able to get any art done really and most of my art materials are packed away. So I am not very active at all over in our fabulous Australian Art Swap Group on facebook  and I have opted out of the next round of the Australian Art Journal Swap but if you pop over to the blog you will see the beautiful journals developing.

Fay Boyds Fine Art School

I am off for a week of study at Fay Boyds Fine Art School  
I am taking a drawing class with Linda Weil  and we are drawing animals wild and tame. 

Both of those adjectives sum up Miss Cobalt,

I wonder if she would like to come too.

Pop over to Linda's site and have a look at her stunning works.

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Turns out both Cobalt and Azure are indeed coming on Tuesday :)

Day 1-

White on Black

The months are rapidly creeping by we are already into our April ATC swap over at the Australian Art Swap Group and what a great theme we have this month-

~White on Black~

I played with simple zentangling with my tried and trusted signo white pens and I am ready for the swap- if you would like to join us pop over and send me a message on our Facebook Group

The Australian Art Swap Group.