Positive Affirmation mixed media tags - Sherry Canino Creative Team Thursday

Hi Creative friends!  Sherry Canino here for the Jessica Sporn Designs Creative Team.  For those who know me you know I just love to create tags.  Tags are a fun way to make a “mini” art piece especially when you don’t have lots of time.  Plus, creating tags gives me an opportunity to have something to “giveaway” (one lucky commenter will win these 3 tags details at the end of the post).

I have chosen to create some positive affirmation tags this week in my video tutorial, because we can all use some positive inspiration in our lives.  So come along with me and let’s create some uplifting tags together.

Stencils used in this project are:
Cascading Leaves
Sacred Words and Marks 

Stamps used:
Whimsy Butterflies

To win the tags:

• Comment on this post  
• Don’t forget to Include your email address and 
• Share this post somewhere on social media - lets spread positive inspiration everywhere together friends!! 

Winner will be drawn at random.  Comments close June 4th, 2017 6pm EST.  Winner will be posted in the comment below on June 5th at 11am EST as well as on my personal blog and Facebook page which you can find in the links below.  Good Luck friends and spread that happiness!!

XO - Sherry

Sherry Canino, a former accountant, is a self taught mixed media artist and owner of Canino’s Artistic Café. She also works as an art therapist for a local organization.  Her style is whimsical, colorful and inspirational and has been featured in Syracuse Women’s Magazine.  She offers local as well as private art classes in her Liverpool Studio, and art journal or art therapy classes on location for businesses and schools.  Find Sherry on Facebook , Instagram, Etsy and on her blog.

THANK YOU SHERRY!  To see all of the Creative Team posts, click here! 

         Visit Stencil Girl Products and RubberMoon Stamps to see all my designs!

If you haven't already - please connect with me here:

InLinkz.com

Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here. I read and treasure every comment and will happily answer any questions as soon as I can.

If you are entering a GIVEAWAY, please add your email address in the event I need to contact you.

To avoid SPAM, please write it like this: jessicasporndesigns (at) gmail (dot) com

Thank You!

A Bit of Bragging

Every once in awhile I need to brag about my girls.

The older one is living in Prague, and writing for several blogs. (Check out her "48 Hours in Prague" guide!) She loves to travel, and often writes about her experiences - the good AND the bad.  Sometimes her posts give me pause as her mom - but she always ends up OK.  Check out her post for Pink Pangea: A Guide to Traveling Safely in Columbia.  I'm so glad I only learned about those adventures after the fact!

Mariel keeps a personal blog here,  and, in addition to writing for Pink Pangea, writes for Envato,  Medium,  The Write Life,  Go Abroad, The European Association for International Education, Sonderers Magazine, Immersion Travelers, and more.



She keeps her own website at ESL Write Away, and will be going to Oxford University in the fall to get her masters in Applied Linguistics.

My younger daughter, Samy, lives to be onstage.   She's been performing for as long as she could walk and talk - and just blossoms under the lights.  Here she is at 9!

Now, she is a sophomore in High School, but would much rather have an agent and be running around NYC to auditions.  While she's waiting for that to happen, she is performing in her High School shows, and was recently chosen to be part of a program run by Vanguard Theater Company called the Broadway Buddy Mentorship Cabaret.  She, and 24 other teens and young adults, were selected out of an audition pool to work with Broadway actors for a few months, and then perform with their mentors in a cabaret.  Here are some glimpses from the cabaret - where you will see a bit of her performance.

The best thing about both my girls is that they have huge hearts.   I love them so much!

I would love to know a bit about your kids' passions.  If you feel comfortable, please share in the comments below!

         Visit Stencil Girl Products and RubberMoon Stamps to see all my designs!

If you haven't already - please connect with me here:

InLinkz.com

Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here. I read and treasure every comment and will happily answer any questions as soon as I can.

If you are entering a GIVEAWAY, please add your email address in the event I need to contact you.

To avoid SPAM, please write it like this: jessicasporndesigns (at) gmail (dot) com

Thank You!

Create Your Own Art Journal Pages Inspired by Love

"Love yourself. It is important to stay positive because beauty comes from the inside out." 

Jenn Proske  

Maybe I'm waxing nostalgic, but I came across one of my older posts and, even after so much time has passed, this post couldn't be more true.  Over the coming weeks, watch for my throwback posts where we'll revisit some of my favorites to inspire us today.

Lately, a particular girl has been popping up in my art journaling....

She was seen "Longing for Love" in this post:  

http://jessicasporn.blogspot.com/2014/03/art-journal-page-longing-for-love.html

"Making a Wish:"

http://jessicasporn.blogspot.com/2014/03/make-wish.html

and Finding Calm:

http://jessicasporn.blogspot.com/2014/03/one-little-word-calm-and-dream-tutorial.html

She's definitely been searching, doing a lot of thinking and exploring both her inner and outer worlds.   She took quite a journey in my most recent art journal page.  It started out with gesso over Terri Stegmiller's Curvy Stems stencil in my altered book journal.  For a while I thought this page would be about this goose, which was the photo over which I gessoed!

Even after I wiped green and yellow fluid acrylics over it, I still though it might be about the goose.  But then, I came home from a wonderful yoga class and post yoga tea and chat with Marcie Wallace, feeling so open to receiving the love in the universe, and so able to radiate that love right back out.  (Yoga can do that to you!)

So I quickly sketched this:

Then stencils came into play.  I used Six Point Starry Night to add stars to the sky, and Judy's Trees to add foliage to the earth.  I painted in a big yellow moon.

 

I used Michelle Ward's Circle Rays stencil to show the energy coming out of her heart.  (I mixed Zinc White fluid acrylic and aztec gold mica powder to make the rays very sheer.)  I wanted hearts coming to, and going from, her heart, and I had left on my table some motifs from my Flowers, Pomegranates and Leaves  project from Stencil Girl's newest release, which I posted about here.   (No scrap left behind!)

Some journaling..."I will open my arms wide and collect all the love the universe has to offer me and hug it into my heart and then offer it right back."

I hope you have a beautiful week and that this inspires you to love YOU and see yourself the way your loved ones see you.

Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here. I read and treasure every comment and will happily answer any questions as soon as I can.

         Visit Stencil Girl Products and RubberMoon Stamps to see all my designs!

If you haven't already - please connect with me here:

InLinkz.com

Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here. I read and treasure every comment and will happily answer any questions as soon as I can.

Unlock and Burst Through

I've been creating these stars as I manifest prayers and blessings for a very dear friend of mine who went into the hospital over the holidays.   So I apologize for not having new content to kick off 2017...

It was a rough weekend.  Emotions ran high; it was stressful.  It's almost like I could have written the following blog today, but this a throwback to 2012.  My daughter is grown up now, my mom older, I'm older... but the same self-talk rears its ugly head from time to time.  Funny how we continue to have the same struggles pop up over the years.  I hope this will encourage you to unlock and burst through moments like these.

"Today, I finished this art journal page, which is very inspired by the amazing e-class I am taking, Bloom True.  It says, "I will unlock, burst through or shatter the containers I have made with my mind."  I don't know if it's a little depression from closing the lake house or the transition into the school year and all the "to dos" that are cropping up, but I have had a very negative soundtrack running in my head.  It goes something like this:

• I'm a bad mother - I am often irritable and critical of Samy (my 11 year old).   I don't bake, do crafts with her, and so much of the time I just "vant to be alone," to quote Greta Garbo.   Is it horrible that what I really want to do is spend time alone painting?
• I'm a bad daughter - I am so often short-tempered with my mom.  I don't cut her any slack at all.  I feel bad about that, because really -- we're so much alike (which is probably why...)
• I'm a bad friend - I forget birthdays.  I don't stay in touch or reach out enough.  Is it horrible that what I really want to do is spend time alone painting?
• I'm not a "real" artist.  So much of my work is commercial - I don't trust my process, my intuition, my materials.  I'm not original...

Wow - just writing and re-reading this makes me gag a little!  When do I feel best?  When I am actively engaged in helping others -- like in our volunteer work in Guatemala, or when I am lost in my artwork.  Clearly, to be indulging in all this self-criticism, I have too much time on my hands.   ENOUGH!  As my friend Marcie would say, get out and walk the dog!  Burst through this container of self doubt and judgment and find some joy in nature!

Two good quotes for today:

"Life does not accommodate you.  It shatters you.  It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better.  Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition." (from ThinkExist.com -- no attribution)

"When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure."  Peter Marshall

Question:  Do you have a negative soundtrack?  How do you turn it off once it starts playing?

Thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.

         Visit Stencil Girl Products and RubberMoon Stamps to see all my designs!

If you haven't already - please connect with me here:

InLinkz.com

Your comments make me so happy and let me know you were here. I read and treasure every comment and will happily answer any questions as soon as I can.

If you are entering a GIVEAWAY, please add your email address in the event I need to contact you.

To avoid SPAM, please write it like this: jessicasporndesigns (at) gmail (dot) com

Thank You!