Author: Jamie

Building a Bridge of Light for the Winter

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As we enter the final weeks of fall, it’s time to prepare for winter. In our neighbourhood, holiday decorations are early and abundant this year as people try to light the way through what continues to be a challenging time. I’ve been thinking about how to do that here in the studio, how to create a bridge of light to bring us through winter. This will be the intention for all of our winter offerings, all the things we choose to share a do. Here is a look ahead. I hope there is much in this that brings some light to you.

The Planning Day Retreat. At the beginning of any great adventure, you don’t really know what lies ahead. In response, we often create our plans out of a desire to allay our fears of that unknown and control the outcome. This often leaves us feeling constrained, diminished and, when we inevitably find ourselves unable to control life, like a failure. What if instead, we made plans that are more like star charts? What if we tune our inner compass so we always know when we are pointed in the right direction? What if we plot a confident course but leave room for side trips and wonder? What if we became adventurers? (Registration is open now.)

Devotion. In this new program, an intimate group of creative hearts will join me in a 13-week journey of artistic devotion. This is an intensive program designed to lift you into an unshakeable relationship with your creative work. No pushing or proving. No selling or justifying. Instead, a winter immersed in your art, a chance for you to fall in love with one another all over again. Devotion is a season committed to exploring and embracing your own voice, your own style and the artist you are truly meant to be. (Registration is currently open only to the waitlist. Open registration starts next week.)

Journal Club. In the dark days of winter, nothing is better than grabbing a cuppa and your journal, lighting a candle and cozying up for an hour with the welcoming community of Journal Club. Whether you are new to journaling or a seasoned pro, you’ll discover fresh avenues into the workings of your creative heart. Unlike when you journal on you’re own, you’ll have the opportunity to share your discoveries with others who will bear loving witness to your truth. Journal Club holds our joys, our tears, our foibles, our fears, our dreams and our sorrows – just like our journals do. (Registration will open next week. This season several scholarships will be available.)

Mindful Mondays. Mondays take on a whole new tenor when they begin in a circle of celebration, intention and support. In this gentle and powerful gathering, we begin with a practice of journaling and meditation. We then use a unique combination of imagination and focus to develop our plans for the week. As we move through the season, this process draws each of our lives deeper and deeper into alignment with what matters most. We do this in a circle of support and shared wisdom. Each Monday, as I plug in my twinkie lights and step into this circle, I feel a sense of hope and joy. There is magic in knowing that we are each stepping into our week with awareness and intention. (Registration will open next week.)

The Studio Yearbook. Remember when you were young and you believed that books could hold magic? (Maybe, like me, you still believe.) There is magic in the yearbook, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE]. There really is. This seasonal fill-in-the-blank journal is like a studio for your life and your creativity. As you move through winter, it will guide you to open your awareness, to seek inspiration and express gratitude. It will remind you of the wisdom you are gaining and prompt you to dream. As you fill your Studio Yearbook with your words and imaginings, your doodles and papers, your colours and quotes, it will shine a light on the unique beauty of your artistic heart. Then, as in all good magical books, you will discover what you had hoped for all along: the magic is in you. (The Studio Yearbook is available now.)

And More…

As we set the winter season in motion, I also intend to bring you more Quiet Studio videos and maybe even some live events. I intend to spend the season continuing to build a bridge of light.

How to Supercharge Your Learning (a secret you might not want to know)

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I know there are a lot of avid learners in this studio and you’re probably one of them, Jamie. Your creative life is no doubt richly nourished by inspiring books, creative classes and YouTube videos. Me too – both as a student and as an instructor!

Today I want to share with you a well-kept secret that will supercharge your learning. It’s a secret that we often keep even from ourselves. It’s called… doing.

Let me tell you about a brilliant client I worked with. He was fascinated by Buddhism, particularly the power of meditation. When I encouraged him to give meditation a try, he said, “Nah, I think I’m happy reading about it.”

Sound familiar? So many of us do this, especially if we are highly sensitive creatives. It’s so much safer and cozier to tuck into a book or to watch another tutorial than it is to clear off the table and paint or to sit down and write a first draft or to figure out how to use that dang sewing machine.

But here’s the thing…

All of these fascinating creative pursuits come alive and into focus when you dare to do them!

For example, imagine you want to learn to draw faces. You watch tutorials. You buy classes. You read books. All of that gives you a great foundation but you still don’t know how to draw faces. The only way you’re really going to learn is to…. draw faces.

You make a first attempt and it sucks. You try again and it sucks too. But if you can stick with it, if you draw another face and another and another, each one becomes incrementally, maybe imperceptibly, better than the last. You develop a sense of proportion. You start to find your way of drawing a nose, a chin, an upper lip. You remember what you’ve read and understand it in a new way. You try what you learned in class and maybe it clicks. You start to discover things that no one can teach you, like how you love pink and yellow side by side or that blending makes you sigh with joy so you use pastels and abandon markers.

You find your way.

It’s the same with any medium. Only when you start creating in the kitchen, do you begin to recognize how dough feels when it’s ready or that you scoff at recipes that ask for only one clove of garlic. Only when you work on knitting projects do you realize what the right tension feels like in your hands or that certain types of yarn glide through your fingers and others have you cursing like a sailor.

With every step, with every action, not only are you learning but you are also becoming.

You are becoming the artist that you want to be.

All of the wisdom that people share is a blessing and a gift. Each resource you draw on is like a precious map for your creative journey but the adventure truly begins when you do.

Create with Me: Sorting Collage (Quiet Studio Time. No Music. No Instruction.)

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I’ve been feeling the need for some Studio Time and thought maybe you have been too. Choose something you’d like to work on for 30 minutes and join me.  Gather your supplies and let’s spend some Studio Time creating together.

I’ll be working on gathering collage materials for a future piece. I am sorting strictly by colour combinations, paying no attention to the subject matter at all. I started looking through pages until a colour story started to catch my eye and then that’s what I started to look for. Today it was blues and yellows, like the pale sun in the sky.  I also had a pile of sort of acidy greens for a piece I haven’t completed and a pile for some pinks that looked like they might be my next piece.

What did you work on in your studio?

Things you might be interested in:

  • You can listen to the same playlist as I did, Dance Hits on Spotify
  • The fantastic green boxes I use for collage materials are the Kuggis series from IKEA. They come in various colours and sizes and they stack beautifully.
  • My extravagant cordless Bose headphones are one of my favourite things ever. I wear them around the house and listen to audiobooks while doing chores! You can find them here.
  • You might also want to check out my Journal with Me video. We can journal together at dawn while listening to the rain.

An Invitation for Your Creative Spirit to Come Back Home (and Stay)

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At the heart of my work in the studio is a mission to restore and strengthen the relationship creative souls have with their art so that they can be whole, fulfilled and radiant. When our creativity comes home, when we recognize it as an irrevocable part of who we are, we can finally fully be ourselves and create the life and the work we long to create.

What I want for you is an unwavering relationship with your art.

One pathway to developing this relationship is the Studio Yearbook. This simple black-and-white fill-in-the-blank seasonal journal is a daily invitation to your creative soul. Each page offers an opportunity to partake in practices that have been a part of my own creative toolkit for years. Day by day, as you embrace these practices, you will feel your creativity come to life and you will see your artistic heart reflected on the page.

Each one of us begins with the same black-and-white journal and, in no time at all, each of us has a Studio Yearbook that is unmistakable our own. Our yearbook comes to reflect our unique spirit, our singular voice. In these pages, we discover our colours, our words, our priorities and our point of view. We express our passions, our preferences, our personality and our desires. In these pages, we are free to be fully and completely ourselves – free to tell the truth, free to make a mess, free to make magic and free to dream.

And dreaming is one of our creative practices. In the Studio Yearbook, we dream along with the blessing and guidance of each full moon. This magical act involves not only the creation of a dreamboard but also a process of inquiry and reflection. When you follow these steps, your dreamboard becomes a visual road map, revealing the inner workings of your creative heart and guiding the way.

In addition to dreamboards, the Studio Yearbook provides many unintimidating ways to make images a part of your creative life. On our daily pages, there is a spot to add an image of any kind. You can glue in a picture from a magazine, use a stamp or put in a sticker or print a photo from your day. I love to encourage people to create a little drawing. On Halloween, I doodled our two Halloween zombie dolls (as you do). Though not great works of art, they delight me and bring me back to the day. In your Studio Yearbook, your drawings don’t have to be skilled (though they might be). They simply have to be yours. Every season the gentle creative act of doodling opens up intrepid yearbookers to a whole new world of possibility .

As well having fun with images, much of the Studio Yearbook practice is writing. For example, in our dailies we document our day, gathering memories and moments of everyday life. We also make note of what has inspired us, what we have created and what we are grateful for. We collect our insights and, in so doing, we reinforce what we have learned. These learnings can range from the personal to the practical. I’ve personally made note of everything from identifying limiting beliefs to listing which colour combinations make ‘mud.’

On our artistic journey, when we acknowledge our growing wisdom, we deepen our creative roots and grow our confidence.

There is so much more to explore in the Studio Yearbook – identifying your true priorities, setting new moon intentions and, of course, just plain having fun. I can’t tell you how much joy and solace I get from simply cutting and pasting, drawing borders and embellishing pages with washi tape!

I hope you are inspired to dive in and get a Studio Yearbook for the season ahead. The winter edition has the added bonus of including a Crossing the Threshold section to move you powerfully into the new year. I have a video here that gives you a peek inside an actual yearbook and if you want to hear a yearbooker’s experience, please check out this video from Sundeep, who reconnected to her creativity through this practice. If you have any questions at all about whether the Studio Yearbook is for you, hit reply and ask. I’m happy to help.

This has been a heck of a year and we continue to move forward with so many unknowns. Our creative practices can be a powerful lifeline on the road, keeping us connected to ourselves and to the art that is always within us. I hope the Studio Yearbook will be a part of your journey this winter.

Studio Yearbook Winter Edition

TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY FOR THE PRINT EDITION!


Order your Studio Yearbook today!

Remember, print copies are only available until tomorrow, Monday, November 9 at 10:00 am.

 

When Life is Stressful

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On Tuesdays I invite you Behind the Scenes at my studio.

Today:   When life is stressful, we don’t need to leave behind our art. We can lean into it and additional practices to support and nourish us every day. Thank you to the Mindful Mondays Wisdom Circle for sharing thoughts on how to stay present and well during anxious times.

Mentioned in Today’s Video:

Journal With Me: Rainy Day Dawn
(Quiet. No Instruction.)

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Every morning I wake up and head to the studio to journal. I noticed recently that while I am spending time at the page, the sun is coming up and I wanted to share that with you.

There’s no instruction or speaking in this video. This is a simple invitation to spend some quiet time journaling with me. I hope you’ll join in and enjoy journaling, the rain and the sunrise!

If you want to listen to the same playlist I am listening to click here.

Some other things you might be interested in. My candles are from Wick Witch. The ‘good witch’ candle has become a staple for me. I light it every day while I write.

A student at the studio gifted me with a rechargeable candle lighter and I have never looked back! It’s particularly awesome when you are trying to reach deep into a holder to get to the wick! Thank you, Laura! Here’s the one I am currently using this one.

My extravagant cordless Bose headphones are one of my favourite things ever. I wear them around the house and listen to audiobooks while doing chores! You can find them here.

For what I call “journaling-journaling” i.e. free writing, morning pages, stream of consciousness writing, I use a Moleskine classic large notebook, lined, black (or white, or sometimes a kraft cahier if I am going out).

I’m also using my much loved pen is a Lamy Safari Fountain Pen. 

Do You Miss Coffee Shops?

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Jamie Ridler sitting in a coffee shop looking out the window
photo credit: Suzie Ridler

As we stay close to home due to COVID-19 restrictions, one of the things I have truly been missing is spending time in coffee shops. What a joy to pack up my pencil case, a journal (or three) and a good book (or two) and take a few hours to fill my well.

This weekend I decided that if I couldn’t go to the coffee shop, then I would bring the coffee shop home. With about 10 minues of care and creativity, Justin and I were able to relish hours of café time, reading, writing and relaxing.

How to Create a Coffee Shop Experience at Home

First let me say this isn’t about ordering a bistro set or investing in a cappuccino maker. If you can and want to, by all means, go ahead! I just want you to know that nothing extravagant is required to create this experience.

Space: Choose a small and manageable location to serve as your “coffee shop”. You just need a spot to sit comfortably, somewhere to set your coffee and, of course, a book or a journal! Maybe your kitchen table would be perfect or a corner of your couch or your bed and nightstand. The important part is deciding, “Here is where I am setting up my coffee shop.” And remember, this isn’t meant to be a massive undertaking. It’s a simple and magical way to shift the energy, have some respite and enjoy a bit of a change!

Once you’ve decided on your ‘where’, it’s time to work some energetic magic and welcome in all that you love about coffee shops. You can do that by focusing on the senses.

Sight: How can you quickly and easily make adjustments to bring a café vibe into your space? A quick tidy-up is a good place to start. Maybe even a spot-clean. It does wonders for an energy shift! Tuck away some of the ‘stuff’ you associate with the space’s regular identity and make a bit of room. Add a touch of beauty. Bring over that plant from the windowsill. Add a pretty little tealight beside it. Do you have a mug or teacup you adore? How about a lovely plate for a cookie?

Taste: Speaking of cookies, I learned from my Dutch father-in-law that in Holland, whenever you order a coffee, you always get a little treat on the saucer, perhaps a small cookie or chocolate. This will definitely be a constant for our coffee-shop-at-home experiences! Justin and I have also ordered ground coffee from a coffee shop we love. Not only does that “Bards Blend” evoke sensory memories but our order supports a local business at a difficult time. What flavours will you bring into your café?

Scent: The smell of coffee is the obvious choice here. Maybe now is a good time to amp it up by grinding your own beans. And remember, coffee shops aren’t just for coffee!! You can also savour the scent of your peppermint tea or chai. If you’re someone who relishes café patios for the fresh air, open your windows. If it’s a little chilly, all the better! You’ll remember exactly what it feels like to be out and about at this time of year.

Touch/Feel: At a café, do you always pick a chair and a table so that you can write or do you gravitate to the cozy armchair in the corner? The kinesthetics of your body posture are a part of how an experience feels. What clothing would you wear to a café in autumn? Is it time for a chunky sweater? If you want to don your beret, go for it! For me, the best at-home addition to the coffee shop was a cozy throw! And of course, consider the feel of your mugy, your book, your journal, your pen.

Sound: One of the joys of coffee shops is the music.* Whether it is welcoming and familiar, full of new discoveries or even a bit corny, the music always creates a unique moment in time. Both Spotify and YouTube have playlists that will provide an appropriate soundtrack for hours. You can even listen to soundscapes that create the feeling of a coffee shop – even a coffee shop in the rain! Here’s what Justin and I listened to for our coffee shop date.

With a bit of ingenuity and intention, we can call in a familiar experience in a brand new way. I know that I’ll be relaxing at Chez J&J today. I hope you have a wonderful time Chez Vous.