completely and utterly amazing

this is the movement. of moms showing up… of loving and living fiercely. as caretakers. as leaders. as dreamers and visionaries. for the good our own lives. and for the lives of our children.

we. are. changing. the. world.

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by jamie ridler

what kind of creative adventure could you go on where you had absolutely no travel expenses to pay, no accommodations to book, and you didn’t have to pack your bags and leave your family behind?

where could you go and gather with kindred spirits from near and far, nurture and play with you inner muse, learn from and be inspired by talented artists, and get messy with paint, words, glue, photos, ideas and dreams… all in your pajamas with your favorite mug in hand?

once you register, your registration packet will be sent to you where you will choose your module(s) and get all the info on participating in the artisan trunk show!

by jennifer lee

have you heard about the bright side project? it’s a beautiful place that shares sunshine and daily {fabulous} giveaways! today the wish*full virtual art retreat is being featured and you have another chance to win a $100 wishcertificate good towards any spring 2010 retreat package. head on over for your daily dose of goodness!

and the winners of this month’s giveaways are…

heather, you’ve won the set of brandi’s beautiful postcards! and congratulations to amisha, lisa, and trish. you are the lucky winners of the 3 copies of the spring 2010 artful blogging magazine. please email me with your snail mail address to claim your prizes.

*please note, any prize not claimed within 30 days will be recycled back into the wishstudio treasure chest for another chance to be won.

I have only one resolution for this New Year.

Simplify.

I am going to “take away” from my life in order to have more of what I want. As I write this I am watching my kids through the window — sledding, laughing, dancing in the middle of a snowstorm. The spare, stark white paired with their laughter full of spirit is the perfect metaphor for what I am striving for. I want to clear away the clutter to allow what’s important to me to shine; to shimmer — so I can enjoy what matters most to me.

When we decide what is most important to us and filter our everyday experiences through this lens, we will say yes to what matters most and no to the things that get in the way of yes. Saying no can be key to getting to yes. It really is okay to say no to clear the way for spending your time the way you want to — I’ve found that most people are understanding of this and the ones that aren’t, well, it’s about them and has nothing to do with me.

Family time is a major priority for me. Time slips away so quickly and when I am older I want to be able to look back on the time when my kids were at home and feel like I made the most of it and gave them what they needed. What kinds of memories do I want to have and want them to have? I guess I’m a bit old-fashioned and nostalgic. We love to snuggle in the down comforter and read library books together, play card games and bingo while snacking on popcorn and hot cocoa, watch family movies and go for walks in the woods.

I want my home to feel warm, cozy, uncluttered — simple. It doesn’t always have to be clean, but I do like it organized. Both my husband and I prefer a minimalist style, and that is a good thing, as our home is fairly small. The only collections I have are in my studio, but the rest of the house is somewhat sparse. I am inspired by the home decor found here and here.

I am going to make a conscious effort not to spend much money this year, especially on unnecessary things. Maddie Mulvaney talks about how she plans to save money this year too, only purchasing thrifted items, art supplies and necessaries — sounds like an excellent plan — one I am going to emulate.

We are going to try to make things whenever possible, instead of buying them, recycling things that we already have in our home, or find at our town’s recycling barn. I found three old teacups at the “dump” and repurposed them as votives for our eating table. I wanted a chalkboard for the kitchen, a place where I could write reminders or little bits of poetry, and decided to make one from the top of a fold-up snack table — the same one I used for late night feedings when my kids were babies — lots of sweet memories tied up in that piece of wood. Three great resources for ideas on recycling and repurposing objects for the home are here, here and here.

Making time for art is important. I must always be making something — creating is my lifeblood and without it I feel lost, disconnected, sometimes depressed. I’m a night owl and find that I produce my best work in the wee hours. It is the time I feel most still, open, and mellow — the censor goes away when I feel a little tired, making it easier to get into the flow of creativity. If I can create, I am content and feel whole. I can be my best self — in all aspects of my life.

So there you have it.

Simplify.

Happy New Year!

Susan Tuttle is a mixed-media and digital artist who resides in a small-town community in the state of Maine. Her first book, Exhibition 36: Mixed-Media Demonstrations + Explorations, was released by North Light Books in December 2008, and her second book, Digital Expressions: Creating Digital Art with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements, a technique-based publication on digital art, will be published by North Light Books in May 2010 and is currently available for pre-order on Amazon. Susan is a frequent contributor to Stampington & Company publications and other mixed-media books. You can visit her site at www.ilkasattic.com and her blog at www.ilkasattic.blogspot.com through which she is offering online digital art workshops on the subjects of photomanipulation, digital montage, and a variety of Photoshop techniques.

“Who doesn’t love postcards?! You can mail them, frame them, beautify your office, clothespin them to fishing wire, give them to friends and use them as affirmation cards. Postcards are the new black, ya’ll.

This set of six postcards feature images from Joy Rebel Images, with rich texture and pretty words for extra oomph. Too fun! They will be appearing in the Joy Rebel Images etsy shop along with more fabulous new goodies on 2/1 but you have a chance to receive an advanced set! ” ~ brandi

i couldn’t have said it better myself and can’t wait to see all the newest goodies in brandi’s shop!to win this prize, please leave a comment on this post telling us how you are letting your inner joy rebel shine! one random winner will be chosen and announced on tuesday, jan. 26th. good luck!

by kimberly wilson

some of these little wishes will be in
the retreat goodie bags!

each time you share, you must leave a comment on this post and let me know how you’ve buzzed about the retreat in your world… yes, that is 5 ways you can enter and up to 5 chances for you to win! you will have from today until the end of the month (jan. 2010) to enter. the winner will be chosen by a random drawing from all the comments posted, and will be announced early in february. good luck to all, and thanks for helping me share the wish*full goodness!

***please also know that because of your wonderful support of the wishstudio including your participation in this event, i have decided to make a donation to the haiti relief effort in honor of our entire community of caring and creative women. you are helping me to make a difference in the lives of others… thank you from the bottom of my heart.***

by rachel awes

georgia o’keefe spoke about how she could see more and more in a flower the longer she gazed at it. i have found the same to be true in listening to people. the closer i lean in, the more i find my breath gasping. i think and sometimes say, “did you hear what you just said?!” and “do you hear how beautiful you are?!” for many, their gold has been long forgotten. i have always loved to collect pretty things like marbles and agates and now it seems to be the gold inside. it is there. it is in you and in me.

over the past year plus, i have written and illustrated a book about such things. specifically, it is about my work as a psychologist and how moved i have been by the wisdom and beauty i have heard in my clients. this process of listening and creating has been transformative to me. i feel more centered and joyful and awake and thankful. now i am working on maintaining courage. maya angelou says that courage is our most important virtue because without it, we can’t accomplish anything else. i have been looking into the land of agents and publishers. i hopehopehope it can be launched into the world and spread love and encouragement. i include here a hidden peek at an illustration from it!

i have also recently begun a blog and you can find it at allididwaslisten.blogspot.com/! come visit me, see the latest of what’s happening here, and reflect on how beautiful your very heart beat is! a surprise for me as i was creating my book and deepening a practice of listening to others was how i began to also listen more closely to my insides too and learning how much i wanted to draw and color! here is a 2010 posting from my blog of an art piece i created about what blossoms within…

lastly, i wrote on another blog posting in december, 2009, about the world waiting for the goodness and love we carry within us. i am loving seeing all the beauty that people are creating and being! thank you for being exactly who you are. i send you love.

by mindy tsonas

this was really a joy for me to make because of everything this little charm represents… me as an artist and really where my heart is these days. it’s fun and whimsical and especially full of hope!

i wore it all morning long while i was creating in my studio, and then out to run my errands in the chilly northeast air. as i heard it jingling around my neck, it was an exciting and fun reminder of all that is to unfold with this project as well as my own artistic life. i am really looking forward to seeing how this one necklace will link together a community of inspiring and caring souls, and see what kind of adventures it encounters along the way. there are sure to be many surprises!

inside the tiny jar is a scrap of vintage paper that i trimmed, deckled the edges and then burnished in an antique brown to give it a nice finish. i wrote my little wish (well, very big wish really) and closed my eyes for a moment to send it off to the universe…

i carefully rolled my tiny messege and tucked it into the little jar, added some sparkley wish dust (because we all know sparkley things have magical powers ;) and wrapped it with a teensy dangling crystal. voila! the first charm in the necklace project, imbibed with the spirit of sisterhood, creativity and possibility.

i hope this journey inspires you as much as i know it will inspire me!

by brandi reynolds

Like many, instead of a list of resolution’s every year, I choose a word for the year. I learned of this idea from Christine Kane and I like it so much better than a tedious to do list.

I have come to learn, though, that putting an intention out to the universe like that brings me exactly what I need…and usually nothing I expect.

The first year, my word was clarity. I was unsure how I wanted my life to look like, how I wanted to create, what I wanted to do with my life. A few weeks after choosing that word, my world turned upside down. I realized I was still adjusting to being (recently) married, holiday stress was looming and we’d just rescued our dog, Keely, who had been severely neglected and needed constant care.

So, yeah, life really sucked right about then. I was stressed, worried, tired, and feeling lost. And yet in that time, I started to realize what was important to me and what I needed in my life. I found a life coach that helped me get clear on what was important to me and helped me let go of old beliefs that were holding me back from expressing my authentic self.

By the end of the year, I was feeling so much lighter and more centered and ready to focus on something positive and fun.

I choose ‘passion’ for my word with the idea that I wanted to unearth and embrace what I was passionate about. It turned out that my passion was joy-in my own unique way-as the joy rebellion was born. But guess what? I found myself really being challenged to figure out what joy actually meant to me and what it looked like and how I wanted to express it. And I was given the extremely hard challenge to find joy in situations that were hard and painful…like losing a friend to cancer.

My ideas on joy and how I’d like to express that have deepened and grown and yet, gotten more simple.

In both cases, I had ideas about what would show up. When I choose clarity, I kinda thought that I would get these amazing insights, that my path would become more clearly defined and that old beliefs would shed like skin. And they did…but not in some magical, gentle way.

In choosing passion, I didn’t realize that having a passion would be such a challenge at times. I thought when I found my passion; I would always be excited and motivated and focused. What I’ve learned is having a passion requires belief in oneself and dedication-and those don’t come without practice and a few knocks on the head.

And now, another year is upon us. My word of the year is beauty. And I would like to just be open to how that shows up for me.

What’s your word of the year?

It is 1:30 in the afternoon and my son just went down for his nap. I could journal. I could paint. I could scrapbook long outdated photos. I could do a load of laundry and attempt to clean the entire house. Or…I could just take a nap. Lately, the nap has been winning out. The combination of an active 21-month-old son, a second baby on the way, and the chill of winter have brought me to a place of stagnation, hibernation and exhaustion. My creativity has been whittled down to mostly mental daydreams and a heartfelt longing. This is the reality of my “now”.

this spring, wishstudio will be hosting an exciting and unique virtual trunk show alongside the wish*full virtual art retreat. the show will feature artists and their handmade items of all sorts, from lovely confections, to paper goods, to jewelery, art and more. there will be exciting special offers in addition to some brand new items for you to peruse and purchase. it’s going to be a smashing show!

this event has been created to showcase and support all of the creative participants of the wish*full virtual art retreat (teachers, goodie bag sponsors, and of course all of our talented registrants!), and to share with all of you, our beloved readers, some wonderful shopportunities. don’t miss it! mark your calenders for may 1 to may 3 and stop by to shop, shop, shop (just in time for last minute mother’s day gifting). if you would like to be featured in the trunk show, well simply sign up for the retreat… just an added bonus to an already wonderful event.

it’s going to be a fabulous weekend here in the wishstudio! hope you will join us.

by christine mason miller

In the fall of 2008, I gave my website a facelift. Everything was updated and re-designed, from the colors to the navigation headers. I removed textures, added photos and dismantled my online portfolio; when I was finished, my backgrounds were white, my writing was a new feature, and my portfolio was reduced to a single page catalog of work I had created over the previous four years. Visitors were only given a small taste of what each series inspired, all mixed together with no real structure.

These revisions were made soon after Ordinary Sparkling Moments was released, when I decided to spend more time and energy on my writing. It wasn’t as if I was going to stop being an artist, but it seemed like a good idea to downplay my artistic endeavors so greater attention could be given to my writing projects. The smaller, uncategorized portfolio made it look like I was a dabbler – a few pieces here, a few pieces there, all of which would probably not look like a cohesive body of work if lined up side by side.

It was during this time that I also began to wonder what I should say when people asked me what I do for a living. It had been an easy answer for years: “I am an artist.” But now that writing was taking up more of my time, energy, and interest, what was I supposed to say? I didn’t really feel like a bona fide writer – “real writers” had bylines in magazines and literary agents and I had never even taken a writing class. To say I was a writer felt slightly phony. I hadn’t proved myself; I wasn’t there yet.

A year after making all of these changes to my website as well as my personal job description – I still say “I am an artist”, but can sneak in “I’m also a writer” when someone asks what type of artwork I do – I decided to do another series of updates, and the very first revision I tackled was to bring back my multi-tiered portfolio. Every once in a while I make a wise, prescient decision, and last year was one of those moments, because I saved all of the individual icons and images of the original portfolios. I retrieved all the files and put them back on my site, with new headers and layouts but the same series sections: Mixed Media, Havana, Tokyo, Girl, and Wings. Although I had spent most of the previous year on writing projects – which rewarded me with bylines in magazines and the completion of my first writing class – I realized it wasn’t necessary to downplay my artistic work in order to highlight my writing. I decided there was room for both, especially since this year has taught me that having each gives me a tremendous sense of creative balance. Writing and painting are two disparate types of personal expression that call forth wildly different energies and temperaments, creating a unique creative harmony that pushes me further in both directions. My website now reflects that, and lets visitors know that they are both an integral part of my creative life.

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

by shona cole

This is not a question I am going to answer for you! But I want to open a discussion of what it means to live with the titles of ‘artistic’ and ‘mother’. I want to see how, through 2010 in this column, the relationship between these concepts can be fleshed out, explored and tried on for size.

The title ‘Artistic Mother’ is potentially huge. As big really as the number of moms there are in the world. But sometimes in order to see where it is that you fit into the world, in order to see where you want to be, it is good to break things down into smaller, manageable, parts.

So let me introduce you to the beautiful faces of the artistic mother:

Meet Amy. She has young kids who all crave her body and time. They constantly want to do something with Mom. They need to learn about the world and how it works, they are by her side drinking from her cup of mamma wisdom. She has purchased many ‘crafts to do with kids’ books and saves up to by all the right supplies. She can be found any time of the day sitting with her kids covered in glue or paint, cutting with kid size scissors. As her kids grow the crafts grow too, they make jewelry, collages, record family events with shared cameras, make dresses, dance to music. She is a life giver, a teacher and free spirited nurturer.

Meet Ena. She has kids who are grown or are simply more interested in being outdoors kicking a ball around than engaging in artistic pursuits. She has a little time on her hands now that the physically intense early child rearing days are over, now that the parental issues are more on an intellectual and emotional level. She has time when the kids are at school, soccer practice or gymnastics. She dreams her art visions in this alone time or when browsing online art blog, she pours over art magazines, attends art retreats and creates art* that expresses her soul and gives her identity a place to really ‘be’. In her art studio she is light and she is creativity.

Meet Zoe. She has taken the time to teach and encourage her kids to love to do something arty. In the evenings when she takes out her art supplies or sits down at the computer to process some photos, her kids will follow her lead. Each of them work on something creative and they do so alongside each other. At the weekends she can be found in the garden surrounded by her family working side by side on a family sculpture, cooking lavish meals or writing on her laptop as her son plays the piano and her daughter paints. They are equals on their creative journeys. She is stable, she is skilled, she freely enjoys her maturity and insight.

Each of these women are idealistic portraits, right? They are distinct portraits, but they also overlap, they can be three parts of the same woman, different versions of the Artistic Mother on different days or different times of life.

Do you see yourself in any of these women? Do you, like Amy, make art with your kids? or Zoe, alongside your kids? Do you, like Ena, take the time for yourself to make art? Do you do all of the above on different days?

Or do you feel you are on the outside of this grouping looking in wishing to be one that bears the title ‘The Artistic Mother’?

It is hard to stand quiet and see our own identity while raising our kids, especially when they are still small. They pull at us from the moment they are born and eventually we are called ‘Matthew’s Mom’ and not ‘Shona’.

Take a few minutes right now to reflect on your artistic identity in relationship to your status as a Mother. These three women are there as a guide to help formulate your thoughts, an ice breaker, a conversation starter. Try them on, does one fit? Are you there yet, or are these a dream of what you would like to be?

And wherever you are on the continuum, you are welcome to enter into this discussion of what it means to be an ‘Artistic Mother’. I would love to hear your thoughts. So please leave a comment.

Next month, I will draw the parallels between creativity and motherhood, so check back in. In fact, sign up to be a WishStudio follower, put it on your blog list, that way you will be reminded to check back!

* when I talk about ‘art’ in this column I will often refer to the visual arts, as that is closest to my heart, but it can also mean creating music, theatre, movie making, dance, all forms of writing and so on.

By the way Amy is my grandmother, Ena and Zoe her sisters.