This project hits all the bases. Using recycled and very inexpensive materials? Check! Encouraging kids to create, decorate, and bedazzle to their heart’s content? Check! Motivating kids to write? Check! Strengthening family collaboration and communication? Check! Fun for kids aged 1-111? Check!

Remember when the daily snail-mail occasionally included an actual letter, handwritten, from a loved one? Oh, the satisfaction of real stationery, a personal message, familiar handwriting! Delicious!

Bring back the magic by building your own family post office. The project itself will absorb your family’s attention for an hour or two (perfect for a snow day!), but once you’ve created the post office, you can use it for years.

What you need:

• One empty cereal or cracker box per family member. These will become mailboxes.
• One larger cardboard box, which will become the post office (see image in opening paragraph). If your family is larger than four people, you’ll need a box with enough surface area to hold a cereal or cracker box for each family member.
• Paint, tape in various colors (duct, masking, and electrical tape work especially well!), contact or wrapping paper to cover the cereal/cracker boxes.
• Decorating supplies: permanent markers, magazine clippings, yarn, glue, fabric scraps, beads, glitter, doo-dads — any cool stuff you have lying around.
• Paper, envelopes, markers, pens, rubber stamps, stickers, and other fun items for letter-writing.
• A hot-glue gun (for grownups only!)

Directions:

1. Cut the top flaps off the boxes.
2. Decorate each cereal box. These will become the individual mailboxes. Make sure each family member’s box is labeled with his or her name. Hint: If you’d like to paint each box ahead of time to cover up the printing on the box, then children won’t have to wait through drying time to add their own artistic touches.
3. Hot-glue each mailbox to one side of the larger box. Hint: Decorating the larger box is also fun!
4. Load the inside of the large box with writing supplies. This is now your post office!
5. Write a letter!
6. Address an envelope.
7. Mail your letter, and wait for a reply!

A few more helpful hints:

• Younger children might like a set of cards with familiar words on them, so they can write letters\ on their own. Write words on index cards, punch a hole in the corners, and connect with a binder ring.
• A quick letter can be a great way to let your child (or spouse/partner) know that you appreciate something they’ve done that day. “Dear Mikey, I noticed that you put your pajamas in the laundry basket after you got dressed this morning. Thank you so much! Love, Mom.”
• Sometimes older children deflect direct discussions about feelings. Sending them a letter reminds them that you care — and opens up communication — without putting them on the spot. “Dear Katie, I noticed that you seemed a little sad when Jill couldn’t come over to play today. I’m sure you’ll find something else that’s fun to do, but if you need a hug, come find me in the kitchen. Love you! Mom.”

Enjoy!

Ellen Olson-Brown is a teacher, author of four children’s books, aspiring yogi, Minervan, and enthusiastic consumer of art and office supplies. Positive psychology, mindfulness, and the science of human flourishing are her current fascinations, and she loves supportively daring people to amaze themselves. Ellen lives in Groton, Mass., with her husband and twin sons. 

::: This piece is reprinted from the most recent issue of the Creative Times — subscribe and join the fun!

I love going to school. I love learning, I love the process, and I love intellectual discussion. It’s been 15 years since I got my graduate degree in speech pathology, and I have been itching to go back to school for a long, long time. I don’t want to study speech pathology though, and I don’t want to get a PhD in a health-related field. I want to go back and do what I originally wanted to do before I got sidetracked by “good career potential” and other aspects of my chosen work. Truth is, I love to teach people, and as a therapist, I do get that opportunity every day in one way or another. But my real passion lies in art and history. It’s only taken me, oh, 25 or so years to finally figure that out and own it. One would think that would be a simple matter, right? Go get a degree in history or art and embark on a new career.

History is not a particularly revenue-generating field at the moment. Neither is art.

But as the saying goes, ‘Life is short’, and I might actually be in a position to do something with the passions that have been peripheral for the past 20 years. I make jewelry. I adore working with my hands, and producing works of art that people want to own and wear. But whenever people stop by my booth at an art show or a market, I find myself teaching about the origins of lampworking and how techniques haven’t changed in hundreds of years — only the equipment has. I talk about my design inspiration and how lower-class Romans used glass to imitate the precious jewels worn by the ruling classes. I talk about Viking women and their strands of glass beads, of hoards of jewelry found in England, and about the development of glassblowing and production-line work in the first few centuries of recorded history. I teach people that Murano is not the only source of glass or glassworking in the history of the world.

THAT just stokes my fires. (Ha!)

It has gotten to the point that just chatting people up at an art show isn’t enough. I do participate in a medieval living history group, but even that isn’t enough to satisfy the desire to educate people about these aspects of the world’s rich cultural history. I have spent a decent amount of time perusing the Master’s degree offerings at Virginia Commonwealth University. For a while, I thought I wanted to train to be an art teacher. It’s my deep love for museums, though, that keeps bringing me back to the Art History pages, where there is a concentration in Museum Education. But how can I get there, lacking an initial degree in Art History? Especially with my husband working on his bachelor’s, and me with three kids, one of whom is not yet school-age, returning to a rigorous graduate program is not feasible right now.

I patronize our state museum frequently, and I knew they used tour guides, so when the application process opened earlier this year, I eagerly applied. After one LONG written application and an in-person interview, I was accepted to train for the next year to become a VMFA docent. While I have been creative all my life, and have done many things that were outside my career field, this is probably the first “job” I have applied for and gotten (aside from being a Girl Scout leader) that has nothing to do with my being a speech therapist. It’s beyond thrilling!

So, tonight I start out on a journey in which I am not sure of the destination. Will the yearlong training program satisfy my yearning to go back to school? Will conducting tours of the museum’s fantastic exhibits satisfy my desire to teach and excite people about our cultural history? Will I end up at the local community college next summer, taking prerequisite classes and studying for the GRE? I don’t know. I’m going to find out, though, and I am so excited.

• Use the outdoors to your advantage. If your creative work is portable, take it outside. Paint outside, play music outside, work on your laptop outside. Allow yourself to soak up the intensity of summer and invite the season to permeate your creative work. For those in northern climates, summer is gone in the blink of an eye — so get out there and enjoy it, while being creative to boot. Click here for more on making the most of the outdoors.
• Chose a creative goal to complete before autumn. Consider the framework of your summer and decide on a reasonable objective. Your goal might be “finish five chapters in my novel,” “complete three canvases,” or simply “be creative every day.” Share your goal with others, as accountability will help you stay on track. You might also consider an external endpoint, such as a contest deadline, to add focus.
• Set a minimum daily requirement. Summer seems to require an extra dose of flexibility — and the last thing you want is more “shoulds” in your life. That said, it’s helpful to set a “bare minimum” daily requirement as a target. Being creative every day keeps the pump primed and will make it much easier for you to resume your regular creative practice when the time comes. So decide that no matter what, every day you will write 100 words, sketch for 10 minutes, sing for half an hour — whatever makes sense.
• Take a creative staycation. If budget and/or logistics prohibit going on a creative retreat, make your own. Pick a long weekend, design your own program, and send the kids to grandma’s. Your retreat can include a trip to a museum, a long solitary walk, browsing art magazines or an inspiring book, and of course, plenty of creative practice.

This article originally appeared in the June 2011 newsletter of the Creativity Coaching Association. Reprinted by permission.

Growing up, my family moved around a lot (I popped in and out of 5 elementary schools) and then later, as an adult, I kept on moving around in Scotland, Italy, Montreal, Toronto, and lastly, Vancouver. So, I was a practised mover/drifter, through schools, cities, jobs, and relationships.

I used to draw and paint a lot, though mostly with the right side of the brain, and I sort of think it was a compensation for my itinerant behaviour, but who knows? I have a lot to be grateful for that side of my brain, but in art-making, it was just a bit too domineering.

I finally did stop; when my son was born — I stopped working and I even stopped painting and I didn’t know how to carve out time for art-making. But that’s okay; I needed a hiatus from my right-brain drawing and painting, and then, when my son was four, he helped me discover another creative outlet. I began making soft toys based on children’s drawings. And Child’s Own Studio was born.

The thing about children’s art is that there are no rules, about proportion, colors, number of eyes… anything goes and so I come across lots of fun ideas. These days, I work at home on soft toys and other creative projects, and blog about them. From what I’ve learned from children, including my son, and since I stopped moving, I’ve been letting the left side of the brain start calling the shots, and that’s where I am right now, and where I like to be!

My girl set this display on her art table and asked, “Mom can I have some paint?”

And she began to paint…

The results…

This also gave Mama a chance to work on some new things…

What’s inspiring you (lately)…?

I made two projects for the theme. Actually, “re-made” would be more accurate, since both of these were originally created in my last house, but fell apart when we moved to our new house two years ago. The piece “Birdhouse” was entirely destroyed. So, now that I’m settled in my new nest, as it were, I was happy to come back to both of these projects. I put a different spin on “Birdhouse” this time around.

Birdhouse

I extrapolated “nest” into birdhouse, seeing as a nest is, in most literal terms, a bird’s house. Like any nest you would find in nature, my birdhouse was constructed with things that I found around me. The nest itself is real, salvaged from a bush outside my office window after it was no longer needed. The base of the piece was cut from a section of the wood that used to belong to my childhood piano — a behemoth old painted upright that I had to ditch when the soundboard cracked. (Before it was hauled away, I removed a piece of the case and popped off all of the beleaguered ivory veneers.) So for me, this birdhouse, and the timing of its reconstruction, has many layers of meaning.

Seaglass Nest

This one speaks for itself. Well, maybe there’s room for a subtitle along the lines of “People in glass houses…..”



Thanks to Leah for the prompt. I wouldn’t have resuscitated these projects without it.

I am afraid.

In the past couple of weeks, two lovely women have asked to interview me about my music and art. And of course I said yes, I would love to be interviewed about my art! And then the first set of interview questions arrived. And I thought, who would want to hear about me? I’m no Kelly Rae Roberts or Kim Klassen. I still don’t know what my “style” is. I don’t have an Etsy shop. I don’t even have my own website. As if that is what being an artist is about. And yet…

I have been putting off a magazine submission to Digital Studio for two weeks. I am afraid. Like a turtle retreating into its shell, I want to go back to what is comfortable and known.

I recently did a Pecha Kucha presentation. In the weeks leading up to that night, I was terrified. What could I say? And then the moment arrived. Remembering some performance advice, I took a deep breath and walked slowly up to the mic. And then I was talking, and singing, and the fear was gone. And I talked about my art, and what it meant to me. And it was not about Etsy sites or book deals. It is about my soul. It is about my heart. And this is why I am afraid. Because every time I create, I am pouring out a little bit of my heart. And this heart has been broken so very many times. So many, that sometimes it feels like nothing but cracks, fissures and scar tissue.

And still, I keep creating. As if it was a choice. I create because I would rather spend money on art supplies than therapy. Because I would rather record a song than sit on a couch talking about my feelings. I create because I believe that my purpose here is to take all that pain and transform it through the alchemical power of art into something beautiful, something to be shared. I want to shine a light for others to connect with their divine selves. I want to shine that light into all the dark places, the places where you feel alone, unloved, misunderstood. I want you to look at what I have created and know that you are not alone.

I am still afraid. But I am taking little baby steps, being gentle with myself. Taking deep breaths and reminding myself that I will be ok. Yes, my heart might be broken again. But I have survived it before, and I will survive it again. And then there will just be more fuel for the fire.

Canadian painter Robert Genn has a twice-weekly newsletter that I always enjoy reading. While Genn writes about painting, his thoughts usually apply to any creative pursuit, including writing — and we’ve reposted his letters here before. Recently, Robert wrote a letter entitled. “The Feminine Mystique.” I found the letter quite timely, as I’d just dusted off my copy of Friedan’s classic and reminded myself that I needed to finish it (read all but the last 100 pages several years ago before getting pulled into something else). Genn’s newsletter is reprinted here by permission.

Many readers of my letters may not be old enough to remember Betty Friedan’s 1963 bombshell book, The Feminine Mystique. In those days, 78% of college faculty were men, as were 95% of physicians and 97% of lawyers. Only 30% of college graduates were women. Now, women outnumber men in higher education and are apparently nearing par in job placement and life achievement.

One of Friedan’s main points was that post-war, middle class women had to figure out what they were going to do after their little ones had flown the coop. With longer life expectancies, smaller families, relative economic freedom and a shopping cart full of labour-saving devices, millions of women apparently grabbed the brass ring of creativity. They found they were well suited to it. Based on this subscriber list, workshop attendance and popular statistics, 78% percent of living painters are women. And to the disgruntlement of some of the boys, we know that women in general tend to have better art-brains. Long-time readers may remember I’ve frequently identified women artists as the next big thing.

Going by my inbox, it’s possible to get the idea that women are in a bit of a bad patch. Many tell me they are “not motivated,” “lack passion,” and are “too distracted to be anything other than mediocre.” Perhaps an indication of our anxious times, in my darker moments I also wonder if these concerns are mainly from those who are reading too much self-help stuff. Like the sort of thing I put out.

But in my vast and virtual part-time mentoring practice, which I generally do for free, I also see highly optimistic, ambitious women who value education and are willing to put in time and treasure (when they have it) to achieve their goals. These women cut to the chase and, in my experience, get good. Here’s what they bring to their easels:

* The capability and the desire to work alone.
* A degree of independence from outside opinion.
* Steady, well-regulated, workmanlike habits.
* The understanding that passion comes from process.
* The curiosity to explore sets and series.
* An intuitive sense of quality and reasonable taste.
* A philosophical but nevertheless combative attitude to the miserably dying vestiges of the boy’s club.

Betty Friedan would have been particularly enthused by these ladies.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: “Who knows what women can become when they are finally free to become themselves.” (Betty Friedan)

I’ve been neglecting my scrapbooks lately. I have.

I’ve been playing so much with color and different mediums, that I’ve neglected adding to my scrapbook albums on a regular basis.

And time is going by.

I used to be such a faithful scrapbooker. So faithful.

Not doing pages in chronological order — because that’s just too impossible for me! — but I used to be a lot more into creating pages than I am now.

Now I’m more into evolving as an artist.

Playing with textures, different mediums, and exploring the color wheel. I am evolving.

So last week, when my girls were here with us, my daughter Bethany made the comment that I haven’t created any pages in a while, and you know, she was right. Dead right. I haven’t.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel guilty about that at all. I am evolving. And there are days when I journal, days when I play with color, days when I write, days when I meditate, days when I learn, days when I read, days when I play with canvas, days when I play in my sketchbooks and art journals, and there are days when I don’t create much. I just get inspired.

I am always filling up
my creative tank somehow.

So this morning, I decided to create a new page for my daughter’s album. Something I hope she will look back on and realize how often her mom thinks of her.

It’s all about
looking closely as you travel life’s journey.

Supplies used:
gingham 12×12 scrapbook page
dictionary paper
acrylic paints
white acrylic gesso
glimmer mist
flourish stencil
Japanese washi tapes
jillibean soup journaling sprouts
Black pitt pen used for journaling
rubber stamp from CatsLife Press
black alphabet stickers

I hope she loves it.

XOXO

[Cross-posted from A Life Unrehearsed]

My name is Joyelle Brandt, and I am an artist/blogger/songwriter/mommy

I had an opportunity to clarify this for myself last August, when one of the neighbourhood kids was over for a playdate with my son. She’s 8 years old, and seemed fascinated with exploring our house. In particular, my microphone and Digi 003 were quite interesting to her.

“What is this?” she asked.

“My recording equipment.” I responded.

“Why do you have it? What’s your job?”

“Well, mostly my job is being Gabe’s Mom, but I am also recording a CD.”

“So you’re famous?”

This one caught me off-guard. Unsure how to respond I stammered… “Well no, but I’d like to be… Um, I mean not really famous, like those people who are stalked by Papparazzi or anything, but…” How does one explain the concept of an independent musician who creates music for love, and has long since realized that she is not cut out for a touring musician’s lifestyle?

We moved upstairs, where she turned her attention to a multimedia art piece I was working on. Again, the questions: “Did you make this?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re a famous artist?”

Wow. The fame thing again. And I wondered, is this just a natural response for someone who has grown up in our fame-obsessed culture? Is it assumed by today’s youth that to pursue an artistic calling is really a pursuit of fame? Because I’m pretty sure that the majority of creative people have absolutely no interest in fame whatsoever, and in fact many creative people are quite introverted. Finally I found a response: “No, I’m just someone who likes to make things, it makes me happy.”

And that’s really what it’s all about for me. I still have dreams of achieving a level of success that would allow me to make a living through my creative pursuits, but when it comes down to it, I make things, whether they are recordings, art, or otherwise, because it is what I do, because it makes me feel truly alive. When I am creating I feel that flow, the hours slide by me unnoticed and the worries of the day disappear from my consciousness. And I want to have that feeling as much as I can, in every aspect of my life.

My goal is to live my life artfully. Charles De Lint summed it up best when he said “All endeavor is art when rendered with conviction.” Creativity is not limited to artistic expression, although it is often manifested that way. It is a way of thinking, a way of being in the world.

I want to make art out of everything I do, from the way I parent my son, to how I decorate my house, to how I throw a party, to how I paint a canvas. It’s all the same thing. Because at the end of my life, it is not the level of fame or not-fame that will define my life. It’s whether I lived true to myself, whether I made of my life a work of art. So here is to the artful endeavor, and to all the creative people out there. May you live your days beautifully, and find joy in every creation.

Joyelle can be found blogging through the days here. You can listen to her songs here. Some time this year, you can visit her brand-new Etsy shop. She hopes.

I hope you will join me!

Color Your World — The e-courseis designed to help you change the way you see yourself and your world, using art, color, photography, and journaling to access your hidden thoughts and dreams and encourage your own personal realizations, all in the safe space of a like-minded community.

Your own safe place.

• eight weeks of DAILY creative jumpstarts, ideas, inspiration, prompts, and writings to help inspire you to live a more peaceful, happy, colorful life. I want to help you color your world with joy. With love. With truth. With bravery. With hope. And yes, with bright, bold COLOR!
• oodles of INSPIRATION, special posts full of photos, links, art, interviews and more, only available to class participants (not posted on my personal blog).
• personal FEEDBACK from me.
• feedback and critique on artwork.
• accessibility to me via my e-mail, Flickr, and facebook.
• accessibility to a private COLOR YOUR WORLD Blogger Blog with daily posts for you to read, to get inspired, and to comment on! This blog will be available ONLY to paid participants.
• our very own private Flickr group to build our own strong sense of COMMUNITY! A place online where we can all share each other’s art, lives, and photos. A place for all participants to post photos, participate in discussions, and grow more into the strong women we already know we are. A place to discuss the course content. A place to ask questions. A place to grow and build strong and loving friendships and lifelong connections. A place to share all the color in our lives!

More info and the registration page is here!

I hope you will join me!

Bonnie Rose

I have a unique story. I believe in being completely transparent, in the hopes of helping other women out there with similar struggles and stories. Click here to read more of my story in detail. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

No one lives a perfect life.

I live a different life than most of you, I believe. My children live apart from me, about three hours away. They are now teenagers, and honestly, our relationship together and our friendship has grown stronger over the years. I see them about every three weeks throughout the school year, and my ex-husband and I share holidays and school breaks. Negotiating my time with my children has gotten much easier with time. I am thankful for that.