My pal Mindy Tsonas just unveiled her newly redesigned wishstudio, a gorgeous online space brimming with creative inspiration.

I’m blown away by this beautiful virtual community space that Mindy has created. It’s an inviting place where creative souls can gather and where wishes grow wings. Lovely! In addition to the wishstudio blog (where I’ve been a contributor for the past couple of years), there are now online workshops (I can’t wait for the wishfull*retreat happening at the end of the month), discussion boards, an inspiration lounge, and lots of other yummy goodies. Please stop on by and check it out!

The wishstudio is also featured in the spring 2010 issue of Artful Blogging. It was the perfect thing to snuggle up with while I nursed my cold last week. I loved reading about how the wishstudio got started and Mindy’s dreams for where it’s heading in the future. Here’s to wishes coming true!

The fabulous wishstudio hostess, Mindy Tsonas, has dreamed up a yummy event full of art, connection, and inspiration. The first ever wish*full virtual art retreat takes place April 30th-May 2nd. Join like-minded souls from around the world for a refreshing, creative weekend, all from the comfort of your own home!

Online workshops will be led by fourteen artists/teachers including: Kimberly Wilson, Christine Mason Miller, Leah Piken Kolidas, Susannah Conway, Hope Wallace, and me. Course descriptions are now up and early registration is open. Would love to see you there!

Following a brilliant night of creative visions at the Dream Box workshop, I had another fantastic day in D.C.  I took my second yoga class at Tranquil Space and then strolled around Dupont Circle enjoying the sunshine and soaking up the local neighborhood character.

That afternoon I met up again with creative beauties Ana, Lauren and Chai to check out the Crafty Bastards art fair.  We had a great time admiring all of the amazing handcrafted goodies.  I picked up a cute felt necklace by Jenny Wren for myself (I’m wearing in the photo below).  I also loved seeing these items: a super cool chain necklace laden with little handbound books from The Black Spot Books and Rania Hassan’s unique paintings that incorporated 3-D knitted pieces – so clever!

In the evening I had the chance to meet up with the lovely Ananda, another creative beauty.  We enjoyed a great conversation and yummy dinner at one of Ananada’s favorite local spots, Teaism. I felt so blessed getting to connect with so many of my online blogging friends in-person during this trip!

Then on Sunday I headed to Georgetown for the Creativity in Business Conference to lead my Right-Brain Business Plan breakout session and commune with other creative spirits.  What an awesome trip.  I look forward to returning to the capital city again for more fun, creative adventures.

I had so much fun in Boston this past weekend visiting with Leah Piken Kolidas.  Our Creative Play workshop on Saturday was a blast and it was such a treat to finally meet so many creative souls and online friends in-person.

Carolyn Rubenstein of A Beautiful Ripple Effect and her co-worker Whitney got crafty.  I was so happy to have Carolyn sign my copy of her new book Perseverance.

I met Kerry and Dayna on Facebook through my Right-Brain Business Plan page and was thrilled to hear that they were coming!

Creative goddesses Julie and Margaret collaged up a storm.

Leah’s friend from high school, Judean, joined in the fun, too!

There’s Mindy Tsonas of Wish Studio in the gray next to Janet O’Connor of Dolci.  Mindy shared a bit about Saturday here.

After the workshop, Mindy, Melba McMullin (who braved a hellish commute from Cape Cod), Leah and I did a road trip up to New Hampshire to catch the Squam art fair.  I’ll share more about that exciting adventure later!

Here are the pieces that I put together.  We used small cards to encourage quick collaging.  Since we gave permission to be messy and silly and to make bad art, I found it so much easier to make some wacky things that I probably normally wouldn’t do.  It didn’t need to make sense or look good, but boy did some of my images make me laugh!

I have much more to share about my trip, so stay tuned.

The other weekend Brian and I met up with the fabulous Carla White and her husband Colin while they were visiting the West Coast.  They’re such a fun and adventurous couple.  What a treat to finally meet Carla in person.  Our hubbies had lots of interesting things in common, too!

One of the things I love about the blogging world is connecting with so many cool, creative people online, in person and through snail mail.

In a couple of weeks I’ll get to play with Leah Piken Kolidas in Boston and some of my other blogging friends at our Creative Play workshop.  I’m really looking forward to finally getting to meet everyone in real life!

Recently, Hope Wallace of Paper Relics sent me some delightful goodies in the mail.  I adore the quote that she included and admire how her style permeates all that she does.  Both Hope and Carla participated in Susannah Conway’s Unravelling e-course and loved it.  I’m excited that I made it in to course that starts later on this month (it sold out in record time!) and know I’ll meet more creative souls in the Unravelling community.

Monica of Creative Beast sent me this darling card which was handmade by her late grandmother.  How precious is that?!  I love the color and the intricate detail.  Monica’s note was so sweet, too.

If you’re looking for more creative connection, join Leah, Connie and me on Connie’s Creative Juicy Life podcast tomorrow at 3pm PT where we’ll be chatting it up about Creative Play!

BlogHer’s inspiring Jory Des Jardins interviewed me about curing writer’s block on this week’s The Juice.  In addition to Gretchen Wegner’s fun MuseCubes that I mention in the video, a couple of other great writing resources are SARK’s Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper and Write or Die: Dr. Wicked’s Writing Lab.

I’d love to hear some of your tips of how you keep your writing flowing!

Wreck This Journal – Final Week from Jennifer Lee on Vimeo.

I couldn’t resist one more video to bring the Wreck This Journal Next Chapter Book Club adventure to a close.

Drawing with glitter glue at this week’s intuitive painting class.  I didn’t wait for the glue to completely dry before I shut the book, so the pages got stuck together!  Ah, the unintentional wrecking!

My left-handed doodle from my hammock on my self-care Friday.

Last weekend, I went to SARK’s Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper workshop and did a bit of journal wrecking there.  SARK hand writes all of the nametags with words that she intuitively channels and we randomly get handed them as we walk in the door.  My nametag said “Feisty” and I thought that would make a good sign.  One of the pages I’d been avoiding was the hang the journal in a public place and invite people to draw on it page.  Well, donning my “Feisty” tag, I raised my hand before break and invited my fellow workshop participants to join in the wrecking fun and draw on the page.

People had a lot of fun participating and several were inspired to get Wreck This Journal to kickstart their own creative juices.

Some people even went on to the next page. Of course I had grand visions for what the “trace your hand” page was going to be, but I had to let it go.  Another lesson courtesy of WTJ, some times things don’t go as planned and that’s okay!

The SARK workshop was a blast.  I took my notes in the form of the “document time passing” page.  Every minute was filled with juicy learning!

My internal “dialogue” before going to bed one night this week.  This reminds me of an exercise I did dialoging with my Inside Team.

A couple of weeks ago I did the “other ways to wreck this journal” page.  One of them was to draw a face and put make-up on it, so that’s what I did here.

When I reflect on what I get angry about, it usually has to do with some of my core values not being met.  Here I journaled about two things that have been bugging me.  The process underscored for me that my values of creativity/uniqueness/self-expression and meaningful relationships/friendship and authenticity/integrity/wholeness were not being fully honored in these two situations.

I did my own take on the “write backward” page.  I took Japanese in college and it was difficult to learn because everything is backwards compared to the English language.  You have to write vertically from right to left.  Even the grammar seems backward with the verb coming at the very end of the sentence.  Here was my poor attempt at writing, “Hello my name is Jennifer.  I studied Japanese (or the backwards order of ‘I Japanese studied’). How are you? I’m fine thank you.”  The calligraphy on the lefthand page is from a gocco print I made out of my Grandpa Fukuda’s shodo practice sheets.

I enjoyed connecting with fellow wreckers on the Wrecking Ball call with Jamie on Friday.  Given that I had challenged someone on the call to do a page she’d been avoiding, I challenged myself to do one, too.  My favorite page, the fruit sticker page, is going to Jennifer Moore of Pink Heels.  The cool thing is we’re swapping fruit sticker pages because that was a page she’d been avoiding, too.  So it all works out in the end

I discovered so many gems on the WTJ journal and relearned a few good lessons, too:

• Mistakes, failure and unintended wrecking often lead to wonderful creative surprises beyond what I could’ve planned or imagined.
• Inviting creative cohorts to play not only enlivens me and the creative process, but also gives the other people permission to giggle, wreck and have fun (and they might not have even realized that they were yearning for just that!).
• Having a supportive community makes stepping out of my comfort zone a whole lot easier.
• Responding to a structure or prompt actually spurs my creative process.  I can take the suggestion and run with it or I can say no and make it my own.  Either way, I’m moving forward.
• I like having variety and challenge in my creative process.
• Wreckage can be ugly and uncomfortable AND it can also be cute and beautiful – there’s room for a whole range of experience and expression.

And I listed some other lessons in an earlier post here.

What have you learned through the wreckage?  I’d love to hear!  See you at the next Next Chapter book club for The Joy Diet by Martha Beck.  It sounds yummy!

I can’t believe there’s only one more week of the Wreck This Journal journey.  This week’s wrecking revolved mostly around the theme of yoga.  The fabulous Connie, who is also a yogini and artist, inspired me to dabble in producing my own little video this week.  I call it “Wreck This Journal-asana.”

The yogic spiritual guidelines of the yamas and the niyamas showed up, too.   I practiced the yamas Aparigraha (greedlessness) by giving away some of my pages to friends.  I gave my “scrub this page” to Kate to include in her heartfelt brush + scrub adventures with her honey.  I practiced Ahimsa (nonviolence) by being kinder and gentler to my book this week. And I practiced the niyama of Swadhyaya (self-study) by doing the inner critic and good thoughts pages.

The inner critic thoughts remind me of vrittis (which in Sanskrit means vortex or circular activity with no beginning and no end).  In my yoga teacher training we learned about how these “mental modifications” color our perceptions.

I decorated my good thoughts page with lovely comments from my recent Creative Life interview on the amazing Susannah Conway’s Ink on my fingers blog.  The collage was my answer to Susannah’s juicy question, “What does happiness look like to you?”  A perfect image to place on my good thoughts page.

I randomly picked a word from a page in the magazine for my “write one word over and over again page.”

Here are typical grocery lists from two of my favorite places to shop.

And finally, in the yogic practice of non-attachment, I dropped my journal into the mail today and left it in the hands of the postal service.  Now that’s an exercise in letting go!

Namaste.

While I’ve enjoyed the past several weeks of wrecking, this was the first week that I felt a little stuck around it. Not as inspired to crack my book open. Wanting a bit of a break from all the creation/demolition. During the creative process this can be thought of as the dip or a lull. I’ve noticed that in this pause, I’ve been renenergized around some other projects. I’m thinking that now might be a good time to mail the journal out to myself (one of the activities I’ve been avoiding since I’ve been so attached to it). We could probably use a break from each other for a few days!

I’ve been avoiding the “sticky” page, because well, it’s sticky/yucky. I’m also afraid that ants are going to invade my journal when they smell the honey and maple syrup!

Last week when I visited the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, I picked up an old UC Berkeley newspaper from 1974.  I clipped an article for my “random newspaper”page from it. I used to work at the UCLA Daily Bruin and that’s where Brian and I met, so I had a bit of nostalgia using a college paper.

I had fun practicing some handwritten type with the “four-letter word” page.

Perhaps having more ideas of how to wreck this journal will inspire me next week!

I have to say that the most excitement for me around Wreck This Journal this week came from my hilarious friend Connie. She conducted her own brilliant awards ceremony video – you must check it out. I’m super honored to be the winner of the “Cute as a Cupcake Wreck This Journal Dirty Footprints Studio award” and can’t wait to get my page from this creative chica!  Thanks, Connie!

The wrecking continues on week 6 of the Next Chapter Wreck This Journal adventure.  When I was at Trader Joe’s this morning, a woman came up to me and asked me if I was a life coach.  She had seen my coaching website the other night and also enjoyed looking at all the wreckage of the Next Chapter bloggers.  Very cool!

Here’s my chewed up page.  It did not taste good.  Yuck.

During the 4th of July holiday weekend, Brian and I took a lovely walk around Lake Temescal in Oakland.  I’m glad I brought my journal with me as the beautiful natural setting inspired some more wreckage.

I spotted a muddy patch on the path around the lake and recklessly rubbed my page with dirt.

Also on our walk, I noticed blackberries starting to spring up along the bank.  I almost fell into the lake trying to pick berries.  Not only did I mess this page, but I also messed up my leg with several pricks from the blackberry thorns!

I don’t drink coffee, so Brian graciously share the last few drops of his Blue Bottle coffee on our walk.

I had a lot of fun with the “sew this page.”  I even created a pocket that contains a secret message – shhhh!

And finally, here’s my “test supplies” page on week four of being my blotting paper at painting class.