Choose a topic, event, person, or place and use your journal to "spill" all your thoughts, ideas, feelings, experiences related to what you have named. This example is "journal spilling" on the specific activities I did with my husband on our 48-hour date weekend to Cabo San Lucas. We had two days (Saturday & Sunday) to cram the R&R that we have previously leisurely had over two weeks; not two days. The exposed words on the altered book page "Acknowledgments" and "Staying in Touch" were the catalyst for the reflection and "journal spilling" about our date weekend which brought a favorite expression of mine to mind: DATES ARE GOOD. We often list our "top 10" best and least favorite memories when we take a significant plane or road trip. That tradition helped me to begin by naming the blessings of this short trip in the middle of the page. The brick pattern emulates the patio outside our hotel room, and the flower sandwiched between thin pieces of art paper and glued as an embellishment is the Esperanza (hope) flower my husband brought me from one of his his early morning hikes on the bill behind the hotel. Collectively, after spending time spilling and artsying up the pages, I was struck with the significance of time together--even much shorter than our usual/what we would have preferred--was SACRED SPACE. Journaling reminded me of the important of time together, and also has become a visual memory of that beautiful time.
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| Exposed words in an altered book. |
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| Esperanza flowers sandwiched/glued between art paper. |
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| "Brick" shapes carved out of wine corks and used to imprint acrylic in a brick pattern. |
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| The overall theme: SACRED SPACE painted with watercolor & a stencil. |
