I Am Exactly Where I Need To Be

This is a journal page I created after watching one of  Tamara Laporte's free training videos. What I like about Tam's method is that she combines art with the healing aspects of creating. She uses art to help us deal with our fears, insecurities and traumas in the past. Her videos are quite long as she talks you through the creative and healing process in real time. She's very informal and she makes you feel like you visited her in her own home for a private lesson. It fees like she's talking directly to you. A bit like a virtual friend, really!

You can sign up for her free course on her website here. The direct URL to the course is here, but I don't think this link will work until you have signed up and logged in.

You start this lesson by jotting down your negative thoughts and then painting over them. As you build your page, your negative thoughts magically disappear and a positive affirmation emerges. My negative thoughts were centered around my apprehension about the future, fear of change and my lack of self-confidence. I am actually very happy at the moment, but my fear of the future overshadows my present happiness.

The affirmation I came up with is "I am exactly where I need to be". By saying this I give myself permission to enjoy the present believing that I'm on the right track for the future, wherever it might take me.

Here is the page I created with this sentiment in mind. I am still in a copying phase of my art journey, so I followed Tam's tutorial almost to the letter, although I did leave out a few bits and added some of my own. If you watch Tam's video in its entirety you'll learn how to layer colour and texture using Caran D'ache neocolour II wax crayons and apply white acrylics paint with a brayer to distress it. It is a great technique and produces wonderful results. Rubber stamping completes the background and I also added some butterflies cut from napkins. Tam explains so well about drawing and shading whimsical faces, which I'm slowly but surely getting to grips with. I took some close up photos of my page so you can see some of the layers better.

I really enjoyed working on this project, and feel like I got to know myself a bit better. I hope you like it and feel inspired to try Tam's class and start your own journey of healing through art!