Keeping a journal is one of the strongest tools to improve and transform your life.

One day, more than 10 years ago, I met with one of my colleagues and she showed me this artistic journal… inside I saw amazing simple collage work.

I was hooked and I ran home and started my own collage journal.

In the beginning, I mostly worked with images from magazines and old scraps but after a while, I started to collect my own collages materials, images that spoke to my heart.

Let me share with you one practice that if you do daily-you will start feeling great changes in your life.

• Create a background from one or more of the primary colors
• Glue 3-5 images on different parts of the page
• connect the images with lines
• Add more colors to connect the images
• Look at what you created and give it a “name”, a text that summarizes what you created.
• Additional idea: ask the picture you created as if it was your inner guide: what is the message that I need to know today?

Working with collage images can help you connect with inner parts or inner archetypes that are hidden from your daily conscious. These parts can be positive important powers that you can activate within yourself.

As you know I’m a certified art therapist with an MA from Lesley College in Boston.

I started to develop my art journaling method -SoulPages , when I was in my practicum year.

I created with one of my clients, a young mother, an art therapy journal where she could examine her own life and her experiences as a child.

We worked with different materials and we used also meditation techniques to help her relax and dive deep into her memories.

The art that she made can be called- meditation art because it’s an art that results from a meditative state of mind where our subconscious is open and ready to explore different ways of healing.

One of the most exciting moments was when she meditate and I asked her to imagine that she is hugging her child ( she had difficulties touching her children because of her difficult life experience) She started to smile when she meditate on this mental image of her hugging her younger child.

After that, she took a picture of a small girl and she created two big arms that hug her.. she told me- “this is the big hug that I never got from my parents! I feel that when I created this hug, I can start to hug my children..”

In our next session, she told me she started to sit next to her boy before he goes to sleep and hug him.

This is the true power of creating in a visual journal!!

SoulPages is an amazing art journaling method that involves self-help techniques and mindful art processes.

SoulPages method can help you heal and transform your life with only seven simple elements:

Intention

Magical coincidence

Background

Image

Line

color and text

When you learn how to use the seven elements you can create beautiful combinations of Soul Pages… journal pages that touches your soul.

Intention and magical coincidence are the most important elements. They are like the father and mother of the other five visual elements.

In this short article I will explain in short about all the elements:

Intention-Every spread of the journal starts with Intention or desire to express something. Sometimes, the intention is clear to us right at the start, and sometimes we start creating intuitively and discover the intention deep into the process.

Magical Coincidence- is probably the most loved element. To feel a sense of freedom and inner passion as you create in your journal, you have to love and accept the surprise that magical coincidence offers. Looking at the world through the eyes of a child lets us discover wondrous ways of creating, ways that we wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

Background- every art journaling spread start from the background. This is the first step we make. It can be a scribble, a writing exercise, a blot of color…everything we want to start with and express ourselves.

Image- In SoulPages we use the language of inner parts or inner images. to explore ourselves..Images are symbols that allow us to go deeper into our inner world, we use images from magazines, books, etc to represent inner parts.

Line- the line element connects the different parts of the artwork into one coherent story. there are lots of line exercises that we can learn, we use doodling, mark making, and simple drawing exercises.

Color- color is so important! it creates a mental atmosphere, it adds emotions to the story that we are creating.

Text- the element of text give us context and combine all the elements into one insightful process!

If you want to learn more you can check up this blogpost

https://soul-pages.com/soulpages-journaling-and-the-seven-elements/

Art journaling is a well-known self-help practice, but recently we hear a lot about the term- meditation art, what does it mean?

Meditation art is an art activity that slows up the mind and creates quietness. When we are creating without thinking about the visual result, we are not bothered about the outcome, we just let our hands do what they want to do- then we are meditating through art.

 SoulPages is an art journaling method that incorporates special meditating techniques.

We use the seven elements to create meditative peaceful states that are very healing.

For example, the technique of “painting with paper” is an artistic way to paint an inner image with small colorful pieces that we tear and glue. The process starts to be very meditative and healing and also metaphorically we tear something and then we glue it to create something new..

In this work, you can see how I created a tree out of small paper tears, this tree became a symbol of transformation and healing.

If you invest only 15 minutes a day in a meditative art practice I promise you that you will feel an immediate improvement in your life. You will feel more vibrant and creative!

Art journaling has lots of forms and names: visual journal, collage journal, altered book,  junk journal, and more.

One of the practices that I love the most is altered children’s books.

Creating inside a loved children’s book with the seven elements of visual journaling is the most satisfying activity.

I begin by picking up the right book that touches my heart and calls me to engage with it.

I look at the images in the book and I read the story and then I ask myself a few questions:

• Do I love the colors and images in this book?
• Can I see myself covering up some of the images and “inserting” new images from other sources to create a new story?
• Do I connect with the text of this book?
• Can I invent another “hero” that will change the story?

Altering a children’s book is a work of healing inner parts that need our attention.

We create a new hero that symbolizes some of our past challenges and we give our hero special powers that will help her overcome any problems.

In this picture, you can see how I altered a children’s encyclopedia and change the name of the story to be a name “tells” a new powerful story.

“Lila and the world of ideas” is the new name of my altered book and I’m going to connect the ideas of the book with my new hero – Lila, a child that has special powers of time traveling and learning about herself through philosophical ideas.

I’m really looking forward to continuing this journey in my book and sharing it with you!!

“Color archetypes” is a spiritual-artistic method to identify and understand the source of energies available to us from the day we were born – core energy, connection energy, and spiritual energy.

These three energies, inherent parts of us, navigate and shape our lives. Understanding them will help us live better, happier, and more fulfilling lives.

When we know and recognize these energies, we can learn to balance them and achieve an energetic state of tranquility, creativity, and happiness. This state touches our higher spirit or self-archetype.

In this course we will learn to map the energies inside us through our personal color map, working with archetypes, shamanic meditations, and creating with art journaling techniques.

We will learn about the childhood color energy map, a fascinating process that we can use over and over to heal childhood wounds and transition toward the life that we want to create for ourselves.

The Course is recorded and is yours forever!

What will you get

• 9 Full recorded Lessons that you could keep forever!!
• (Each containing 4-5 videos)
• live zoom meeting on Saturday at 10 Am Pacific time,  April 16th.
• In every lesson, we will expand on one color and one archetype in-depth and you could balance your energy system.
• You will learn a new way to reflect on your art
• 8 Full spreads in your visual journal
• You will get a process that you could do again and again to balance yourself.
• You will get a tool for insights and reflection on all the art that you create.
• Bonus!!- Stunning Color Archetype journal binding tutorial
• Visualizations and meditations
• Great mix media techniques
• Inner healing

The link to the course is here

https://soul-pages.com/courses/color-archetypes/