It's New Moon, which means a new lesson in Moonshine, and I gotta tell you - I am totally in love with what I painted.

Gorgeous, right?

This piece of loveliness was arrived at via a method I teach in Moonshine called "Trance Journaling". I started doing it way back when I taught Elements in 2010 (an art journaling class that is now retired) and it became a regular part of my practice.

Essentially, you put on some music that doesn't get your emotions all riled up (like ambient tunes or straight drumming) and you OBEY EVERY IMPULSE. Every. Single. One.

Sometimes, you end up with really strange, maybe even ugly paintings - messes of mud and unintegrated symbols, but sometimes, you get something like this vision of swoon-worthiness.

Whether you end up with something that makes you look at it cockeyed wondering WTF or you get something that makes perfect sense in both a visually pleasing and meaningful sort of way, the point is the process.

I love process painting.

Love. It. Madly.

One of these days, I'm going to dedicate an entire e-course to process painting. You just watch.

In the meantime, Moonshine affords me the opportunity to demonstrate trance journaling at least once a moon cycle, since our New Moons are dedicated to loose-y goose-y, non-composed, non-preconceived intuitive flow. It just makes me happy.

Swoooooon!

In Other News

Three lucky ladies won a seat in Book Of Days Premium today, and that ALSO makes me extremely happy. I love being in the position to send out happy news via e-mail. If you entered my April Art Journal Challenge, and you're not sure whether or not you won, you should definitely POSITIVELY check, because you might have! Click here to get the news. A new challenge will be going up on May 1st.

In Book Of Days News

I'm already seeing new art being posted based on the first week's lesson in BOD2014 v2. I don't know of anything that makes me happier than seeing people dive right into a new class and get 'er done. It's so affirming to know that my lessons resonate with people and that they enjoy them enough to really tackle them.

The first spread was a 'manifesto' around my chosen theme for the 12 week session - self-love. I used a meme I found on Facebook (nothing is too hokey for my art journal!) and created this spread to house the text:

It's always really fun to include selfies in my spreads. It really personalizes a journal spread AND it gives me a place to use all those Instagram shots I tend to take and then do nothing with.

Using your own photos is something I highly recommend. Journal spreads that are made up of other people's components (scrapbook paper, stamps, etc.) can be super beautiful AND meaningful, but there is nothing like getting a little bit of you in there in the form of a photo or your own handwriting that really takes a spread to the next level.

Up & Coming

I'm starting a 30 day painting challenge on May 1st, and that will coincide with my Mulligan Blog Along. I had to pause a few days before the end because my Internet had me so frustrated. We finally figured out what the problem was AND we got it fixed, so I am a happy denizen of the web once more!

I'm going to simplify the Blog Along, though. Instead of adding a 'linky' type code thingy in every post, I'm just going to invite you to post your link in the comments. The linky thing doesn't work when I'm on the road and posting with my phone, which complicates matters, AND putting the code in is sometimes more time consuming than composing the actual post. So not cool. I'd rather spend my energy actually writing rather than fussing around with javascript, know what I mean? So yes. I'll be back here on May 1st with another 30 days of bloggy goodness plus hopefully many, many paintings.

There's no Wildly Inspired this week, but there will be one next week.

And that's all she wrote for now.

xo

Effy