During these past few weeks, I’ve grown quite attached to my journal and it now goes with me everywhere. It’s like having a little creative companion to inspire me throughout my day. I look over and hear my co-conspirator asking me, “Hmmm, what mischief shall we get into today?”
After surviving a shower with my journal, I ventured into taking it for a swim with me last week. This was quite a leap considering I seriously contemplated putting my journal into a ziplock bag before bringing it into the shower!
I swam a little on my own first, scoping out the pool. Being the good rule-follower that I am, I even found myself glancing over to the pool rules sign to make sure there wasn’t any wording about bringing strange, foreign objects into the pool! I felt self conscious as I brought the book into the water with me, concerned about what others might think.
But in the end, I just took a deep breath and plunged right in, journal in hand. It was quite exhilarating! Then we lounged together poolside and worked on our tan.
Here’s a quick video of me checking out the damage .
My journal was sopping wet, so my husband suggested wrecking it further with a hairdryer. I’m amazed at the volumizing effect even without a diffuser or mousse!
Here’s my journal at the beginning of my Intuitive Painting class with Chris Zydel.
And here’s my journal after a good, messy session of painting. What fun!!
Through all this play and destruction, I’m learning some helpful lessons from creative wreckage that apply to my life in general:
Thinking, anticipating, fretting, and plotting about something that stretches me is usually a lot scarier than actually just doing it.
By stretching myself, I discover new edges that challenge me and empower me to grow.
I feel even more invested in my creative endeavors after I’ve taken a risk (whether it turned out the way I wanted it to or not).
I’m capable of way more than I think I am.
What life lessons are you learning from your creative wreckage? I’d love to hear.
For week 3 of the Next Chapter’s Wreck This Journal adventure I played with getting a little more messy. I dabbled in food stains, dragging the journal and other fun stuff.
My partner in crime, Emmett, helped me drag the journal down the street in the video below.
We didn’t get very far before the string snapped, but the cover certainly got scuffed up. I think it ended up for the best that the journal detached from his leash. I didn’t think through the positioning and he ended up peeing on the string which was really gross.
I warmed up to the food mess by putting a few stains on my stain page. Who knew that blueberry soy yogurt has such adhesive properties? The pages were glued together after the yogurt dried.
While savoring a tasty raw food meal from Cafe Gratitude, I figured I’d commemorate the delicious lunch in my journal (even though it says to document your dinner – so rebellious! Haha!). I smeared on some raw pasta puttanesca zucchini noodles and fake meatballs and garnished with a sprig of watercress from the side salad.
I took my journal with me to intuitive painting class. Instead of using a paper towel to dab my brushes, I had fun using my test page. I will continue to use this page for my paintbrushes for the rest of the book club.
My leftover paints made a colorful palatte for my handprints!
And finally after this week’s mess, I cleaned off my journal in the shower! Haha. Really, I had been avoiding this because I hate water-logged pages. Oh well!!
I love Jamie’s vlog post about attachment this week. Great insights, Jamie.
This morning I did a video shoot for BlogHer’s The Juice. The fabulous BlogHer co-founder Jory Des Jardin interviewed me about creativity and writer’s block.
If you haven’t seen these weekly video clips, check them out. They’re quite informative. From fitness tips to healthy meals to work/life balance, it’s about “more of what you want, less of what you don’t!” My clip will be up at the end of August.
The crew was super friendly and I had a blast! I also loved that they had a professional make-up artist on-site and we did a quick photo shoot in the garage afterward. Yes, this Leo felt like a star, at least for a little bit .
What fun it’s been wrecking this week! AND seeing all the other creative destroyers participating in the Next Chapter.
Reflecting on this week, I noticed that I stayed more in the realm of “art” making rather than pure destruction. It was still quite a stretch for me to bend pages, to color with random crayons that I pulled out of a bag without looking/color coordinating (gasp!), and to add three-dimensional objects that make the pages all unwieldy. For goodness sake, my book won’t even stay closed now – which I guess is a good thing… haha!
I also had fun asking friends to play with me, starting off with my friend Amy. Amy and I met for the first time in person at lunch today and she was so sweet that she brought me a little present. I opened it up to find that she gifted me with sparkly gemstone stickers (which was perfect for Wreck This Journal, even though she didn’t even know about it!). I invited her to stick some stickers on the book.
Here’s my friend Amy “wrecking” my journal – isn’t she adorable?
You’ll see that there was food still on the table, but I wasn’t ready to document my meal yet. My excuse? Well it was lunch, not dinner! Haha.
This is one of my favorite pages so far. Once I started putting fruit stickers on, I had the urge to draw the fruit that went with it. The Dole sticker just looked like it could easily turn into a banana! And then I jotted down my random thoughts about the fruit.
Right before going to bed last night, I got inspired to do the office supplies page. So, I rummaged through our stash of post its, staples, paper clips and such. The most satisfying act was making labels with my P-touch. I also forgot how toxic White Out smells. That, mixed with Sharpies might have added to the creative flow!
I decided to sleep with my journal before it got too messy and gross .
And today after lunch with Amy, I stopped by my friend Kate’s house. I handed her the book and asked her to do something destructive to this page. She made me hang out in the bathroom with the water running so I couldn’t hear what mischief she was up to. When she called for me to come out, this rogue seamstress and my Kiss the Paper cohort showed me the cutest sewn awkward heart. I love it!
Given my resistance, it’s obvious that the next place to venture into is the gross land of food, licking pages and perhaps bringing it in the shower with me (I really, really hate it when my books get wet and water logged!). Well, as they say, “What’s in the way is the way!”
As I mentioned in my Juicy Pens and Thirsy Paper post last year, I don’t write in my books. I don’t dog ear. If I do for some odd reason need to markup a book, I’ll do it very lightly… in pencil. It goes without saying that Wreck This Journal poses a challenge for me! Author and artist Keri Smith urges us to roll up our sleeves and get messy with challenges like take the book in the shower with you (are you kidding me?!) or cut through several layers of the book (yikes!) or lick the page (gross). Hmm, I may need to ease myself in with more innocuous activities like writing on the grocery list page or tracing my hand.
I did give myself a head start by buying a used version. It’s still blank inside, but it’s already a little run down and it’s got a black remainder mark on the edge. I needed to have it broken in rather than cracking open a pristine copy. Perhaps that’s cheating a bit, but it’s what worked for me! I even loved how the envelope it came in has seen better days.
Given that during the 12 Secrets Next Chapter adventure, I shared that I could use more fire in my life, I chose to kick off wrecking my journal by doing the “burn this page” page. Here’s a video of my first attempt.
After I got the hang of it and wasn’t worried that the whole book would go up in flame, I got bolder and played around more with the burnt edges. I actually like the effect.
I’m looking forward to meeting other Next Chapter wreckers this summer and playing together! Here’s to wrecking!
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