April Review and May free class inspiration

We are in the throes of Autumn, and I could feel myself becoming less motivated since daylight savings has ended and it is getting colder and the days are getting shorter. In previous years I have had a break from posting, but now I realise creativity is also seasonal, and it is good for me to look back on past projects and to recognise my own patterns of actively creating vs filling my inspiration bucket. It makes me happy when I see other people posting their art, so hopefully I can do the same for someone else. 

If nothing else happens each month, I am still enjoying my weekly challenge of #52cards2024 : to create a card that reflects the past week (ending Sunday). I must include stitch, the colour turquoise and a word. When I posted my March cards, I didn't realise until a couple of days later that we were quarter of the way through the year! So here are the first 13 cards together

These are my April cards : 

I post details about these weekly on my Facebook Artist's page, and thought I would share here that 2 of these were directly inspired by excellent free lessons this month.

Brooke Henry was the inspiration for this weekly art card

And I enjoyed watching Laly Mille's free Flower flow lessons and did this page of messy flower doodles 

one of which appeared on this weekly art card

I've also had the opportunity to share my mixed media love at work. Towards the end of our school term, all staff had to offer a 2 hour session for students to enrol in something they'd never done before. The sessions were called "Be Brave" and I had 20 students in my session. I taught them how to create an arty junk journal using recycled cardboard and various papers with a simple 3 hole pamphlet stitch. We also talked about how art is a great way to have fun, learn new things, and to support yourself when you are anxious or under stress, especially through writing or using good positive quotes to get the self-talk right in their head eg. I am Brave, I can do hard things. I took examples of my work to inspire them to fill their journals and it was an awesome session. This is an example of one of the student junk journals. 

We will repeat this opportunity for a different group of students each term this year.

The last 2 weeks of April have been school holidays where I made less art than I expected, but had many lovely social outings and reconnecting with friends. In the studio I've been doing a lot of watching classes and thinking. I've been reminding myself that creativity doesn't show up unless you're actually spending some time creating every day. If between projects or not motivated, do the thing you know you can do. Flip through some of your own work for inspiration...sort some supplies - I realised I didn't have enough messy black papers so did a bunch.

If you haven't done this before, be inspired by Roben-Marie Smith or Brooke Henry on Youtube.

Take some colouring to do when visiting a friend for a playday - these still need extra marks but that will come when I get them into a journal

Find a sweet face and add coloured pencil and doodles, glue on a pretty paper, enjoy the process

I'm excited that our Fodder School teacher for May is Susanne Randers. I have been waiting for her lessons to drop...There are also plenty of free online opportunities available in May. Even if I just watch, I don't think it's a waste of time since ideas are sparked and you never know when inspiration is going to spark action 💜 

Roben-Marie Smith is offering a Nest Fest. 12 Days. 12 Teachers. 12 Art Mediums. Each video available for 24 hours. Runs May 8-19. Go HERE to enrol. 

You can also join Messy May - a series of free daily-ish inspirations and prompts.

Looks fun! More info and sign up HERE.

And Birgit Koopsen is doing her annual gel printing challenge. She has amazing colour sense as well as mad gelli printing skills - read about and sign up for this challenge here on her instagram.

 Hopefully we can all get inspired to make some art in May. Can't wait to see what happens.