Gratitude Junk Journal 2024

30 days of JOY, love, gratitude and mixed media!

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Let's do it again in 2024! We're making gratitude a habit, cultivating love, JOY and creativity. This year promises to be even bigger and better and filled to the rim with JOY, noticing and mixed media fun. As always, we are putting our art and heart into it. We'll take a deep dive into gratitude and creating a gratitude practice, which will bring so much JOY into your every day.

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." Thornton Wilder

Come alive with me along with 12 AMAZING artist instructors as we make gratitude a habit, jump into mixed media art techniques, practice noticing, experience joy and play with a little bit of junk or perhaps a lot!

REGISTRATION OPENS ON OCTOBER 1, 2024.

Learn more about each instructor below.


“When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out and the tide of love rushes in.”

Kristin Armstrong

We'll start our journey together making an altered book journal. We'll use what's on hand to create something wonderfull and fun to hold our thoughts, our junk, our joy, our gratitude!

Here is a peek at a few of our previous junk journals.

Each day you'll be challenged to dig into your own gratitude with a question to answer, something to think about or do and/or something to create. You'll find a little joy in each day. You'll leave this workshop with a warm smile, some extra love and a JOY-filled heart, no doubt.

In this workshop you’ll learn

  • how to create a beautiful, altered book for keeping your thoughts and art.
  • how to make awesome art journal pages that you are sure to love.
  • to practice gratitude daily through art and fun challenges.
  • how to find JOY in your every day life, which can reduce stress.
  • how to use (junk), bits and pieces from your stash and/or around the house to make great art.
  • how to work with yummy layers and textures.
  • techniques for creating wonderful backgrounds.
  • how to find gratitude in a variety of ways/places in your life.
  • techniques that will empower you to make great art again and again

Here’s what you can expect:

  • All NEW Step-by-Step Mixed Media Tutorials
  • Daily gratitude challenges
  • Video Tutorials
  • Downloadable PDFs
  • Work at your own pace
  • Wonderful for beginners to advanced or anyone who wants to practice their creativity and expand their gratitude and experience more JOY in their life.

"I am in! I loved the gratitude journal last year and had thought "I want to do this again"! Just signed up. I want to do this every year. And November is the perfect month for gratitude." Laurie P.

You’ll leave this workshop with:

  • AMAZING art journal pages.
  • 1 gorgeous, altered book journal
  • a great reference you can use again and again
  • many reasons to be grateful, some you may not have thought of
  • mixed media techniques you can use again and again
  • a little less junk, we’ll dip into your stash
  • a sense of JOY
  • tips for practicing gratitude daily
  • all new lessons for 2024

AMAZING BONUSES:

  • ALTERED BOOK JOURNAL. You’ll learn to transform a book into an AMAZING art journal. You’ll not only transform the outside but the inside, as well. It will be ready for holding all of the AMAZING art journal pages and gratitude you will create during this workshop.
  • Deep dive into your own daily gratitude practice.

This workshop is for you if you want to

  • expand your gratitude
  • get started or continue a daily gratitude practice
  • be in community with other creatives while also practicing gratitude
  • be open to seeing how gratitude can positively change your thinking, feelings, emotions, life (this takes daily practice)
  • spend some time creatively practicing gratitude
  • use your art journal to hold your gratitude and use your supplies
  • want to play with mixed media techniques (while we cannot promise they'll all be new to you techniques, we can promise a variety of tools and techniques will be used). So fun!
  • bring your JOY, creativity and gratitude to the table.

Check out our fabulous list of instructors and learn more about them below by clicking on their name.

Your Instructor


Tiare
Tiare

Tiare Smith is a self-taught mixed media artist and instructor.

Born with art in her heart she lost her way from her art for 18 years. It came back to her life in a burst of emotion and anxiety. By practicing techniques of love, positive self talk, and action which have helped her to overcome other areas of struggle, she now enjoys her art in a free and inspiring way.

She inspires creatives to embrace their inner artist while also nurturing their hearts and memories.

She has not only been featured on HGTV but has had numerous works published in a variety of crafting magazines and blogs.

She aims to help women embrace the artist within through lessons infused with love, happiness, confidence and creativity, empowering them to experience and express their art more freely.


PLEASE CLICK NAME TO CONNECT FURTHER WITH EACH OF OUR ARTIST INSTRUCTORS


CASEY TURNER

Casey is a busy stay-at-home-mom turned art journaler/mixed media artist living in Pennsylvania. She has always been a creative person, with a childhood dream of becoming an art teacher. That dream has come true in the last few years with teaching online courses, in person workshops and hosting art journaling retreats.

She loves thrifting, all things vintage and enjoys incorporating prayer and worship into her daily creative practice. Her heart’s desire is to show others that art journaling is an amazing outlet to express yourself and your feeling in a safe and healthy way.

AMANDA TROUGHT

Amanda is a London Born Mixed Media Artist and has been creating and collaborating with a variety of artists around the world in group as well as solo exhibitions in London UK, Barbados, Montserrat, and US Virgin Islands.

She is a 6 times Award Winning Mixed Media Artist, winning the NIFCA Professional Artist Silver and Three Bronze Awards, Barbados, and Two Awards at the Central Bank Crop Over Visual Arts Exhibition in Barbados

She loves creating and uses a variety of materials such as clay, fabric, recycled materials, collage, natural fibres and dyes to create art, art journals and tells a story that impacts the viewer through the use of color and texture.

She believes in the positive impact that art and creativity can have on health and wellbeing, and she curates an Arts in Health Network alongside writing for her Blog – Realityarts-Inspiration.

She runs an Art YouTube Channel sharing her creative process through Art tutorials, Arts and Wellness, art journals and more. She also runs a Gardening Channel – looking at the creative, nutritional, and medicinal benefits of plants and growing a food forest.


JANE BELLANTE

Jane Bellante is an expert at helping people let go of negative thought patterns to create the art and personal brands they have always wanted with joy, confidence and ease. She has been a mixed media artist for 32+ years, is an International Best Selling Author, a 3 time published artist and has a Masters Degree in Adult Education. She is host of the ArtFusion Podcast, founder of the 5 Day Letting Go Workshop, the Creating Confidently (ArtFusion) course, IGNITE mastermind leader, and is a married mother of 2 kids and 2 pets.

JENNIFER PIPE

Jenn Pipe is a passionate, self-taught artist and business owner who shares her soul through her creative practice and the teaching of art-based projects, classes, and workshops. She is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Self Esteem Through Art, a small, studio-based business in New England that brings art-based empowerment to ALL, regardless of perceived artistic ability. She has always believed in the power of creativity as an unparalleled personal and spiritual growth tool. This belief helped her to develop a unique style and niche that effortlessly combines self-discovery and empowerment with her process-based artistic approach. As an artist, entrepreneur, speaker, and mentor, Jenn is on a mission to positively impact the world through the healing combination of community and creativity. She has created a supportive, uplifting environment where her students feel empowered and alive—a place where people lose themselves in artistic platforms while simultaneously finding themselves again.

Jenn’s Self Esteem Through Art studio, currently located in Middletown, Rhode Island, is a safe haven for her varied clientele of adults, children, and teens. People travel from all over the United States for her seaside summer retreats for women.

Jenn lives in Rhode Island with her husband, two daughters, and their beloved rescue dogs from Arkansas, Angus and Harley. If she is not teaching in the studio or looking for sea glass at the beach, you can find her at home writing, gardening, reading a book, or spending time with family.

KAE PEA

Kae Pea is a designer, instructor, illustrator, painter and creative moon beam. It is not uncommon to find her in her studio, experimenting with numerous creative projects, a wide variety of mediums or maybe dabbling with digital art, all on any given day!

She was a self taught mixed-media artist until 2011 at age forty-five, when she went on to receive her B.F.A. in Studio Art from Maryville University in Saint Louis. In 2012 she took over RubberMoon Art Stamps and merged her love of mixed media. In April of 2020 she reopened ArtFoamies.. She brings her enthusiasm and knowledge to like-minded creative souls through live and online workshops all across the USA and abroad and to her patrons in livestreams and zooms in her comMOONity Patreon Group

Kae Pea is a firm believer in the magical powers of art making and loves nothing more than to share her ideas, inspire and empower others to 'get makey' and live their creative dreams.

Originally from the California Bay Area, Kae Pea lives with her best friend and her cat in a little river town in the MidWest.


CINDY GILSTRAP

Cindy Gilstrap, with Cici & Company Studio, is a mixed media artist with a love for bright colors, quirky design, and anything vintage. She believes creative play is such a gift to give yourself and loves inspiring students to just play and enjoy the creative process. She loves combining her bright colors, especially pink and orange, with vintage items to give them new life. You will find combinations of vintage elements, fabric, stitching, and paint in Cindy’s work. She loves spreading joy with her art and her quirky style often extends to her outfits and her decorating style.

Cindy lives in Dallas, Texas with her hubby, 3 dogs, and feels blessed to have her grown kids and extended family close by. She teaches online and in person art journal classes and loves collaborating with other artists.


KATE CRANE

I’m Kate! I am a maker and creator of all things colourful and messy from my rural home in the north of England. I have always been a creative soul but discovered mixed media art in 2008 and my enthusiasm for colourful expressive art continues to this day. I have taught many mixed media and art journaling classes over the years both in person and on line. I am also passionate about drawing, printing and rubber stamping, and now design a range of stamps and stencils for Paper Artsy. My art can be recognised by my love of colour and also a touch of whimsy. I am at my happiest when surrounded by acrylic paints, crayons, pencils and rubber stamps, and you can usually spot me by the paint up my sleeves.

NIAMH BALY

Niamh Baly has been immersed in the world of mixed media art and art journaling for over 30 years. With a wealth of experience, she has taught workshops both nationally and internationally, sharing her passion and expertise with students from around the globe. Niamh is also a prolific author, having written two books on the subject, and her work has been featured in numerous national and international art magazines.

During the day, Niamh is a dedicated high school teacher, but her creative pursuits extend well beyond the classroom. By night, she runs a thriving YouTube channel, where she publishes two videos a week, offering an abundance of mixed media art journaling techniques and ideas to a growing audience of enthusiasts. Her channel has become a go-to resource for those looking to explore and expand their creative horizons. Through her dynamic teaching style and innovative approach to art, Niamh continues to inspire and empower artists of all levels to express themselves through mixed media art journaling.


IDANIA SALCIDO/DANITA ART

Idania Salcido, the artist behind Danita Art is a self taught, multidisciplinary artist who uses the techniques she learned through her career materializing her ideas. Her work is inspired by nature, fairy tales, antiques, folk art, folklore, books, women, magic, the seasons, the grand theater and marionettes. She uses art as an alternative from reality, trying to create inhabitants of a world that exists in her imagination.

Keen collector of discarded things and flora specimens, she loves reading, and the way others have with words. She finds it hard to express with words like her favorite authors do, so she chooses a visual narrative to tell her story instead. She’s a daydreamer, a beauty seeker, an old soul and a coffee lover.

She admires the craftsmanship of the past, when even simple things were made with care and attention to detail. She loves adding a vintage patina to most of the pieces she makes, but sometimes she channels her Mexican heritage into colorful creations.

One of her favorite things to create are 3D objects that look like the drawing on the paper has come alive. She has explored doll making and sculpting and it’s now focusing on ceramics as part of her artistic exploration that involves both the visual appeal and the tactile experience.

Her work has been published in several magazines and books and her work is collected internationally.

When she’s not creating, you can find her at the library with her kids, playing with her cats, browsing through antique’s shops, working on her small potted garden or going on field trips to her nearest forest.

DENA ANN ADAMS

Hello Artists! I'm Dena Ann Adams and I'm a painter, illustrator and instructor based in Minneapolis, MN.
I've created many kinds of art over the last decades. It's both my passion and my profession to paint, but the work that excites and sustains me most is often the art that we "show" the least - sketchbooks, studies, and journals!
Sketchbooks and visual journals are the wild creative seas that carry us from place to place.

They are the place to "do you." They are anything they need to be. Put in the time without letting your mind get in the way - gluing, writing, note-taking, list making, daydreaming, dripping, swatching, sketching, printing, pressing, scribbling, studying, testing and testing some more - and you will see. You will meet unmet aspects of yourself and you will learn what lights you up.
I love to teach because each time I create an art lesson I feel that it’s an act of “paying forward” what creating art has given to me, and there’s nothing as wonderful as seeing the spark catch fire in the heart of another creative, whatever their stage in the journey.

EULALIA MEJIA

Hello, I’m Eulalia. I’m a graphic designer, illustrator, artist, teacher and maker of stuff. I live in Colombia, South America, in a little rural town up in the mountains, with my dog, two cats and human boyfriend. I spend my days in my studio illustrating and splashing paint on handmade journals while discussing worldly matters with my cat.

“My dream is to bring a little cheer to daily life by designing playful illustrations for fun-loving people. I truly believe that we are never too old to be amazed by everyday life; surrounding ourselves with beauty is a great way to remind us there can be magic in the world.”


BIRGIT KOOPSEN

Birgit is married to Erik and a mom of 3. She lives in a little village called Winsum in the north of the Netherlands.

Birgit started scrapbooking in 2003 but then fell in love with mixed media and art journaling. Her favorite things to do right now are art journaling, mono printing and layered collage art. She loves to get her hands dirty and experiment with paints and inks and all kinds of mediums.

Birgit’s art is mostly bright and colorful, with a lot of layers and details. She loves to combine colours that are very contrasting and works a lot with stamps, stencils, inks, acrylic paints and markers.

Birgit teaches and demonstrates in her own studio at home as well as in craft stores and at (international) mixed media events (pre-Covid) and taught a number of (collaborate) online classes. Teaching brought Birgit all over the world. She had the privilege to teach in the US, Canada, India, Australia and Israel but also closer to home in France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria and the UK.

She loves to travel, see new places, meet people and explore different cultures. She considers it a huge bonus that she is able to combine that with her love of teaching and inspiring people to create art.

Since 2014 Birgit has her own product line with Carabelle Studio for whom she designs stamps, stencils and art printing plates. Birgit is a Lead Brand Ambassador for Gelli Arts® and creates monthly video tutorials for the Gelli Arts® You Tube channel and conducts regular live classes for Gelli Arts® and Michaels Stores.


Course Curriculum



Frequently Asked Questions


When does the course start and finish?
The course starts November 1, 2024. We'll create together (in November) and then it is a completely self-paced online course - you decide when you start and when you finish.
How long do I have access to the course?
How does lifetime access sound? After enrolling, you have unlimited access to this course for as long as we are in business - across any and all devices you own.
What if I am unhappy with the course?
We do not issue refunds for this course because once you pay for the class, you have instant access to the available content. We ask that you read all the details on this page and purchase mindfully. Thank you for understanding and for making your decision with care. Please reach out to me via email if you have questions before purchasing.

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