Happy Monday to everyone and go find yourself inspiration and go CREATE! Whatever it is! Ciao!

Isn’t it just wonderful? They have a goal of getting 100,000 brave girls on their email list and I’m proud to be one of them! You should subscribe to their daily truths emails and take in their gracious support, encouragement and inspirational words. Here’s another email I wanted to share…

I can’t tell you enough how lovely it is to receive such happy emails on a daily basis. Try it out for yourself and I’m sure you’ll agree. Just take the first step and sign up! How timely that today’s email is about being brave and taking the first step…

I wish you all a lovely Friday and enjoyable weekend…ciao ciao!

Above is a little peek of my art journal as I was inspired by the latest prompt over on Michelle Ward’s blog. It was about creating grids and even more interesting, creating non-grid grids! Just last week I created a grid of squares to journal over, but I had never thought to break out of the square shapes. We can follow the grid, but just mix up the shapes a bit…I totally love it! I used some tags and cut out some collage papers…inking up with distress inks to create my grid of various sized boxes. You’ll see how it all ends up tomorrow on my weekly art journal post.

Otherwise, today has been a day of gluing lining paper onto pieces of leather so I can prep for bookmaking. I realized it’s a lot easier to do the gluing part all at once…all the other parts of binding the book aren’t as messy! I can’t seem to stop making journals and books, it’s just so much fun and an enjoyable process to work with leather, papers, needle and thread. BTW, I actually made a quickie journal last week for the color prompts over at Eraserqueen’s blog.  You should check that out as well, to learn more about color and explore. She actually makes a mini printable zine for each of the colors, how cool is that? I hope you can find inspiration in the challenges and prompts offered online. It’s a great way to meet online friends and participate in the all the fun creating!

I really love the kids in the video – happy times, grooving to the beat and doodling with crayons. What could be more fun? But if you listen to the lyrics, it’s also such a sweet love song. Aweee…super cute lovey-dovey, the sentiment she is expressing! I was inspired to play a bit with drawing eyes and coloring them. Fun fun…

Ahh…vacation! I think that taking a break, whether traveling afar or just changing your immediate scene by taking a walk – helps to open up your perspective and shake up your normal routine. We all need that sometimes, so remember to let yourself go free when needed. You should not neglect yourself or your delicate muse! Any kind of break-time will definitely pump you up and refresh your mind for creative thinking. That’s how I feel now! I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing a bit of my travel inspiration and tomorrow I’ll be back with my weekly art journal posts. Until then…ciao ciao!

Download Fortuna Collage Tiles PDF

I’ve posted about these mixed media works before and I actually played around with them digitally… but in the end went straight on with black marker. I’ve had them sitting around for a while and finally scanned them in to print as papers. I’m hoping they will provide inspiration for your own creative endeavors. Let me know if you find creative uses for them! I also wanted to share some views of ongoing projects…

Finally, I just wanted to let Mr. Little Turtle say hello to you all. Hope you have enjoyed the photos with a peek of what’s crowding my desk now. When I get back, I’ll be sure to share the details and hopefully a little tutorial of my process. Until next time…ciao ciao!

photo by harold.lloyd via Flickr

How cool is that?! We weren’t looking at the same plant, but the inspiration and hearts are all there.  You should definitely see what inspiration you can draw from Flickr…any subject at all and you’ve got a whole world of visual to look at Happy Monday all!

How amazing and adorable does this little plant look? I was inspired by the pattern and had to take it home with me and photograph all the views…not to mention the colors are beautiful as well…from greens to yellows to golden reds.

There’s something about the heart shape that just touches me so much. Even though our hearts aren’t exactly shaped like this…which led me to wonder how the shape form was created in the first place. I found an interesting article about the history of the heart shape and coincidentally the last theory comes from nature!

This little “weed” plant certainly inspired a lot in me and led to other heart-related discoveries and experimentations. I hope you enjoyed this little heart-full Monday inspirational post – maybe you might want to step out into nature and see what you can soak in! Thanks for stopping by and now I’m off to create some heart patterns inspired from this plant. Ciao ciao!

Happy Monday and hope you get the inspiration you need to create, create, create! Have fun lovelies!

We headed out to a celebration on Saturday, May 1st – our version of Labor Day – to the town of Luco Mugello where my father-in-law was born. Although we are still mourning, having lost him just last year, this trip was a great opportunity for family to greet old friends and reminisce about old times. There was a local cycling race and the event people also honored my father-in-law at the time…it was a lovely celebration memorial type event. I’m actually starting a heritage project, creating a book and a website about his professional cycling career and ended up taking 596 photos for the event. I had such a great time exploring his hometown and we decided to hike up to the top of the hill to explore a bit more. I was so inspired by the views and nature all around us…btw the picture you see above is the opening of the famous Mugello Moto Gp Circuit racetrack…just around the corner from the town of Luco.

I had such a great time with my family and every single time I see the hills around me, I’m reminded of how happy I am to have took the plunge and followed my heart to Italy. I am so thankful for the life I have and immensely happy…talk about bursting with joy!

I cannot express in words how much Art really has saved me in so many ways…but perhaps the pictures can help illustrate all the little things I notice around me, how much gratitude I have for everything around me and how bright and shiny my view really is on this life we have…

Isn’t it lovely how unique and wonderful those wildflowers are…even if some people might consider them weeds? Hope you have a fabulous week and hope you enjoyed a peek into my nature walk! Thanks for stopping by, as always.