Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to me, and to you, too!  May all your wishes come true.  Here’s a little story I’d like to tell… about birthday wishes coming true. 🙂  What a year it has been!  Living the dream, finally! 🙂  Thanks to the stars aligning or wishes on shooting starts or answered prayers or simply showing up, I’m finally going to art school (something I gave up on in about 5th grade).  And this is the best kind of school, lots of learning and no grades! 🙂

Counting my blessings and making bold commitments to living my dreams has felt a bit like walking a tight-rope in some ways, at least, I imagine. 😉  I’ve had to acknowledge a fear that kept me from committing too much for a long while, wondering if there was enough of me and time to follow my dreams while still giving enough attention and nurturing to my kids and family.  I didn’t want to take anything away from them or sacrifice family time and love.  Yet, I want to be an example to my kids of someone feeling the fear and doing it anyway, someone choosing the life I’ve imagined, someone willing to take action, someone following my head, heart, and soul, someone being true to myself.   I want to honor my husband’s hard work to support our family and enable me to homeschool our children by making the most of this opportunity, and hopefully, enabling him to follow his dreams eventually, too!

So, last year for my birthday (which is today 🙂 – so a year ago), I asked my husband to help handle the household so that I could take a class at an awesome craft school near our home, the John Campbell Folk School.  Amazingly, once I made that effort/request and looked online to see what classes were coming up, I was able to get a local scholarship (which means FREE tuition) to a surface design class, called Field Guide to Creativity with Kristin Steiner and Susan Edmonson, later that month!  This was a HUGE blessing!  It was an intense week long (around the clock!) class.  I learned so much, and I was very emotional realizing that I was actually doing this, not just wishing and dreaming!  I am forever grateful for that experience.  Here’s a look at my field guide to creativity that I made in that class:

Until that point, my ‘art school’ was all made up of books, mostly from the library.  A few of those definitely made a huge impact as well and helped encourage me to actually take more action, especially Taking Flight by Kelly Rae Roberts (the first mixed media art book I think I ever encountered in 2011 and had to buy after reading from the library) and Brave, Intuitive Painting by Flora Bowley in December of 2013, which finally inspired me to actually try to use paint to do something other than a collage with recycled images and stamps.

After that first local class at the folk school last February, I discovered a whole new world of online art groups and tutorials.  My teacher recommended the Documented Life Project, which was a free art journaling group.  This enabled me to start meeting fellow artists all over the world, exchange art with one another, and learn from each other.  I was hooked!  I found several other online art groups, too. 🙂  In April, Kelly Rae Roberts had a special sale for her creative business e-book called Flying Lessons.  It felt like it was meant just for me at a time when I was finally saying, “yes” to this dream of becoming an artist like her.  Before the folk school class and Flora’s book, I had started making photography cards, collages, and crafts, such as the bloom mirror that I had listed on etsy and sold a few locally, wooden signs that my friend was selling locally, and hope hats that another friend sold locally (they both have small shops in town).  After the class, I was feeling like it was time to step it up.  Kelly Rae’s e-book sale was right on time! 🙂

The purchase of the Flying Lessons e-book and the supporting private facebook group were major boosts encouraging ACTION and lots of it!  I quickly re-opened and renamed my etsy shop (that had never made a sale with the mirrors or hats before the listings expired), set up a new blog (this one!), set up a new facebook page, and made a new commitment to make art every single day with the Art 101 facebook group.  I also discovered Tamara LaPorte and her free art, heart, and healing class, which inspired me to start drawing… and drawing faces, something I was convinced I could not do since 5th grade!  I also discovered Brene Brown and listened to her audio speech about the power of vulnerability, which helped me to put on my brave girl boots.  Wow, what a wild ride it’s been since then… learning so much about the administrative side of trying to build an arts and crafts business and devoting many, many hours to the blog and facebook page posts and scanning and photography and printing for the etsy shop.  I’ve been working my tail off!  Thankfully, there have been a few sales and happy customers to show for it.  There have been some amazing people, many of them I’ve never met in person, cheering me on and the facebook page is just a few shy of 200 ‘likes’ today.  Of course, being the big dreamer that I am, I’m hoping to see that number grow quickly and significantly because I want to reach lots of people with a healthy, loving, inspirational energy through my art and creative efforts.

After getting all the ‘ground work’ in place to build an online foundation with the blog, facebook page, pinterest page, new instagram page, and shops (etsy, society6, and instaprints), I decided it was time to devote more effort to art education.  Without any income (after lots of art supply expenses and little sales), I decided to use a little bit of money my mom had left me when she died to buy a couple online classes.  I chose Radiant Faces with Effy Wild (because she was having a half price sale so I could get it for less than $50!) and Life Book 2015 with Tamara LaPorte (and several guest teachers) because it has lessons every week for a year (sometimes multiple) and several different teachers, including many of my ‘dream teachers’.  I was hesitant at first due to both the expense and the time commitment!  I wondered if I’d be able to keep up with it.  Then, I saw an announcement that Alena Hennessy was giving away 5 spots in her Year of Painting course.  I figured I should at least enter and give it a try.  There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of entries, since all we had to do was leave a comment on her blog post.  I knew my chances were slim, but I said in my comment, “I’m ready to say YES to this, Universe!” and imagined myself being one of the winners.  I was overwhelmed when I actually got an email saying I was one of the lucky winners!  I could barely believe it.  I kept reading the email over and over to make sure it was real and I was shaking and overjoyed!  It was like Santa came again, thanks to Alena, for the first time since my childhood (she announced it just before Christmas).   I started the year off with these awesome new classes and a promise to myself to make the time since the divine was cooperating to bring blessings my way!  A few weeks later, Flora Bowley announced the opportunity to win a spot in her Bloom True course by submitting a video and sharing it on facebook.  Again, I felt like I had to at least give it a try.  I put many hours and a lot of thought into making a video to enter, getting my hopes up that it could really happen twice in a row.  Flora was extremely generous and gifted a spot in the course to all 18 of us that entered a video!  Holy Wow!  I made more commitment and investment in this area and the divine brought these 2 awesome angels, Alena and Flora, into my life to deliver big blessings!  I will gladly pay it forward with give-aways to my own e-courses (that I’ve just started working on 🙂 – more big happenings!) as well as theirs when I can.  So, here I am, almost 40, in art school as a homeschooling mother of 2 fourth grade boys.  I think I have a full schedule this semester! 😉  And I am so very grateful. <3 <3 <3

Today, on my birthday, I am so thankful for the wishes I’ve been making for the past few years coming true, for the opportunity to live my dream while still being home with my family, for thriving in harmony!  If only my momma were here to celebrate with, my joy would be complete.  I have a healthy respect for the gift of growing older, realizing that it is not a guarantee, my mom was 62 when she died, my brother-in-law was only 26!  I am grateful to be having another birthday and want to make the most of it and each day yet to come.   My gifts to myself today are showing up to live my dreams and this awesome book, Paint Mojo, by Tracy Verdugo.  What a beautiful way she has with words (page 9, which is available in the amazon look inside preview is especially touching!).  She has already made my heart smile many times and I’ve just started it.  She is bringing so much loving, healing energy into this world and I am grateful to be feeling it.

May you choose to live your dreams today and may the divine meet you there! <3  Today is my birthday, but it’s your birthday, too…. every day is a birthday, a chance to re-create ourselves, to live the lives we’ve imagined.  Happy Birthday! 🙂

Click here to see what I’ve been up to in the classes so far (a post that is mostly pictures as opposed to words like this one!).  🙂