Keepsake Book-Box Workshop

If there's one thing I've grown into and truly love, it's teaching workshops.  While I enjoyed my years teaching young kids, watching their eyes light up and their projects come to fruition, it's the adults that go forth with the same emotions in the classes I teach these days that really get me excited.

The book box class is one I've taught a couple times and am still getting requests for.  It's seemingly simple, but a construction that is detailed and, for many, collaging is actually a new process.  

I really love hunting for the perfect old books and gathering the ephemera for students' kits.  It's exciting to start in and have each person gather their materials, big smile on their faces, in a entirely new way, totally unique to the way they see colors, textures, words and images.  

I'm thrilled to announce I'll be leading a workshop on this keepsake book-box at my sister's shop, French General, next month and sign ups are happening HERE now.

worrying for worryings sake

I used to think that worrying kept the bad things at bay.  

I believed that if I worried about things that were currently happening, it would make them stop.  

And if I worried about things that might happen, they would never start.  i thought worrying was your safest bet.  For as long as possible.  It kept ALL your energy on one thing, focused on the myriad of 'what ifs' that could could harness the power of stopping that 'what' from ever happening.  If I stopped concentrating, with hand-wringing stress, on the thing that I was so afraid of, it would absolutely happen.

What took me all these years to realize (and i still fall short of somedays) is that worrying about something is spending energy making the some-thing inevitable.  Worrying is also an absolute soul-sucking waste of energy.    

My mom once said, 'I spend all this time worrying I won't enjoy the party, we get there, I'm the one that doesn't want to leave."  I am my mother's daughter.

As RK says, 'will it happen? won't it? exactly.  it will or it won't.'

i've worried about my future, i've worried about my past.  i've worried about the right now, the minute before it and the minute after.
Always with the
What if?
What if?
What if?

and one day, one of my brother's said to me, 'what would happen if you didn't worry?'

I ask myself that every day.
What if?

these days, i love that question.