Beadlust: Life, Creativity and Beadwork

I'd like to share here a blog that i stumbled onto recently. Robin Atkins is a bead artist who, in 1985, rediscovered a childhood fascination with beads, and very soon, "developed an incurable case of bead lust." Robin teaches, among other things, improvisational bead embroidery classes, and features her own improvisational beadwork in her blog, "Beadlust."

Stumbling onto her blog was a real revelation for me, because i had never before seen improvisational beadwork. One beautiful example of her honest and heart-ful sharing is her post on this work (see above), which she entitled "Love in Delicate Balance." In the post, she describes the difficult, "character-building" heart-work of love and marriage in times of pain and difficulty.

This post touched me and so many! (more than 33!) others, sparking such an outpouring of appreciation, validation, expressions of support and empathy, leading me to remember again a Carl Rogers phrase that my teacher, Dr. Honey Carandang, repeats to us often: "That which is most personal, is most universal."

Robin and her fellow bead artists contribute to a monthly "Bead Journal Project" (BJP), an online journal where each member contributes a personal beadwork "journal page" each month. The goal of each journal page is "to give an impression about each month, to journal our experiences and record our feelings in a visual way. Another important goal is to stretch our creative and technical limits."

A stroll through some of the journal members' personal pages has left me breathless! Such beauty is life, and life in art!

In another blog post (Bead Journal Project... If At First You Don't Succeed....), Robin displayed how she had turned several of her BJP pieces into "soul cards," of her beadwork, featuring the beadwork on one side, and a painted/stamped paper on the other side, with some personal notes. So wonderfully creative and soul-touching. Here are just two of her pieces:

Just so beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Thank you Robin, for such a beautiful sharing of life in art.

Perhaps one day we can get together our own online Creative Journal Pieces!

Let me know what you think!

The Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione

When i was in graduate school, one of our schoolmates luckily shared this wonderful book with us. A classic in Creative Journaling, it was born out of the author's own painful, beautiful, and magical process of healing and growth.

I have treasured it always, and was truly so sad! when, after leaving grad school, i couldn't find it in any other library. One fine day, a friend of ours walked into our house, said, "I thought you might like this," and handed me this book! He had found it at a second hand bookshop and had no idea how long i'd been looking for it!

The exercises in here are classic and always highly useful. I recommend it for use with children, teens, adults, and for yourself.

It's now on a reprint, and can be found at Amazon.com (see the Amazon widget, "Great Books to Check Out!" on my sidebar). Dr. Capacchione also now has "The Creative Journal for Teens", "The Creative Journal for Children", and "The Creative Journal for Parents."

Some of the exercises from the book are on an online version of the Journal! Check it out at http://www.healthy.net/CreativeJournal/ .

You can also catch Dr. Capacchione at her own website: http://www.luciac.com/index.html

Here is a very helpful website on Creative Journaling, by artist and creativity coach Amanda Joy, who was a student of Dr. Capacchione: http://www.joycreativejournal.com/

Enjoy!