what i've been up to this week...

I have been SO inspired this week!!  donna downey has been doing an inspiration week on her blog and the project she’s doing is absolutely beautiful!  If you are a lover of all things creative, I encourage you to go check it out.  She has inspired most of my creativity this week and I am loving every bit of it!  I made a fabric book back in January, I think?  The book itself was inspired by a canvas book that donna did which you can find here.  The subject of my book, which is “FLY,” is very much inspired by where I am at right now.  This healing journey has been amazing for me and I’m very much at a place where I am cutting the ties that bind me to the ground of other people’s beliefs about me so that I can fly.  I want to spread my wings and soar and just be who I am, be who I was created to be, instead of trying to stuff myself into the box of other people’s beliefs about who I “should” be.  I did that for most of my life and it's no longer acceptable to me.  This is the cover, which I did in January.  The binding is latch hooked with denim and pieces of fabric, inspired by traci bautista in her book "Collage Unleashed."  

In February I wrote this poem about flying and trusting the voice of my inner guidance and higher self.  While I was working on the first page of this book, it, the poem flashed in my head, a message that it, too, needed to be part of this creation.  I love the whole process of creativity, it reminds me of life.  I had an idea and tried it but it didn’t quite work out like I expected.  But instead of allowing that to stop me in my tracks, I flowed with it because I wanted to see where it would take me and I absolutely LOVE it!  It makes me smile! 

It brings me joy and brought me joy while I was creating it and really, isn’t that part of what creating is all about?  Create for the sheer joy of it because there’s a passion for it in your soul, because you can’t imagine life without it, because it is such an integral part of who you are that it pains you not to do it.  With each discovery and each new layer it reveals more to you about itself, about who and what the creation is supposed to be.  It’s an awe inspiring process.  I want to stay immersed in it and use it to serve.  I want to inspire people, help people heal, touch their lives and share beauty with the world because I have a passion to use my creativity to do those things.  This week I’ve been reflecting about that.  Using my art to do those things is great but I’m feeling like a need a more focused direction.  How do I want to use my art to do those things?  I’ve put the question out to the Universe and my Creator and I trust it will be shown to me.  At the same time I’m wanting to exercise my creative muscles more and more, to allow my Creator to pull out that which lies deep within me.  I’m not sure I really have a style, a method of creating that says “me.”  And I know that’s okay because it’s all part of the process.  But I also know that the only way to do that is to exercise those creative muscles, to create every day, to show up and allow Divine Inspiration to flow through me.  While everything that I have created carries a piece of me, this fabric book is perhaps the most personal thing I’ve created because it deeply touches where I am at right now.  Aside from my poetry, that is, because my poetry has almost always reflected where I’m at, unless it was written for someone else.  That’s another thing I love about this fabric book is that it incorporates my poetry that I have tried to do with greeting cards as well but it’s just not the same thing.  While there may be some wonder and restlessness about where I’m headed, because I just want to start heading there, I realize that I am heading there right now.  I am exactly where I am supposed to be as a spiritual being and as an artist.  I am growing and so is my art, evolving and changing with each creation I put my heart and soul into.  And honestly, I don’t want to be so caught up in where I’m headed that I miss where I am because this is truly an amazing place to be.  I am so grateful that I have this time, to create, to be inspired, to grow and evolve, to go where ever the Divine winds take me.  And I trust that.  I love the journey, this journey, this breath, this moment because it won’t ever be here again.  And really, it’s all about the journey.  So I’m going to take a deep breath, remember that I trust my Creator and the Universe, and I'm going to show up at my creative workspace and allow the Divine forces to flow through me.  There is beauty in the breath of this moment because I chose to see it and be a part of it.