Welcome to Messy May 2022, you rainbow-infused space unicorn This digital classroom will remain open to all until 1 July, after which it will go into the Get Messy member library. If you'd...
Messy May 2022
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Art Journal Catalysts
Class
Artist Date
Travel journals are one of my favorite ways to create, but there’s no need to wait for a Parisian or Thai overseas escapade. You can have a small adventure in the now—like, tomorrow-kind-of *now*. All you need are a few of your favorite supplies (that—guess what—you...
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Foundations of meditation in artDeep Connection through art
The Inner Heroine
Move past your inner critic and embark on a journey exploring your Inner Hero(ine) through art. In the Inner Heroine, Vanessa Oliver-Llyod will lead you through using the storytelling trope, the Inner Hero(ine), to tell your complicated, messy, true story. With this trope, you can go beyond your inner critic to express yourself uncensored in your art. The class includes 42 lessons with 50 videos. With techniques based in collage, you can complete an entire altered book with this class and return to these techniques again and again when you need them. Come back to yourself, look within yourself, dig deep into your creativity, and reveal your inner hero/ine because your story is worth telling.
Expressive Arts Quest
An adventurous 6 week journey focused on art journaling your personal creativity, expressive arts style.
Messy Recipes
Sometimes, your creativity needs a catalyst, and Messy Recipes includes a bunch of catalysts for creating an endless amount of art journal pages. Get Messy Fairy Artmother Caylee Grey has designed 12 recipes that include a list of “ingredients” (or supplies), a method with step-by-step directions, and pictures for guidance and inspiration. Guests artists have shared their favourite recipes too. Following the recipes exactly or using them as a guide, you can create endless variations. Perfect for beginners and experienced artists alike, Messy Recipes provides the catalysts for creativity that you can return to again and again.
Level Up
What if you were the type of person to get things done? Like big, life-changing things? Level Up is the toolkit you need to start getting your creative work done. Packed with 20 lessons presented in a variety of ways to suit your needs, Level Up provides action steps to get you doing, templates and printables to guide you, and a private community to hold you accountable. Learn to fight comparisonitis (comparing your work to others’ and feeling like it doesn’t measure up) and perfectionism, to work through resistance and distractions, and to get doing and keep doing. Level Up is for the person living a creative life – artists, dabblers, crafters, Etsy shop owners, bloggers, creative entrepreneurs, and those who value creativity in whatever form it manifests.
Creator Incubator – Classes
30 days to creating your first online art class
The Minimalist Art Journal 1
Minimalist art journaling is art journaling that strips away the excess, takes away the non-essentials, and focuses on what’s important. The Minimalist Art Journal is all about finding your calm and putting your emotions on a page. Including 16 lessons and 7 guest artists, you will learn to not fear the blank page and embrace it. Get away from the clutter and overload of normal life and focus on what makes this moment, this hour, this day important. No overload of extras and stuff. Just you, a blank page, and the basics. Take time, do less, and create more art where you are with what you have.
The Minimalist Art Journal 2
Minimalist art journaling is art journaling that strips away the excess, takes away the non-essentials, and focuses on what’s important. Get Messy Fairy Artmother Caylee Grey builds on the first Minimalist Art Journal class and takes you on a deeper dive in this premium class. MAJ2 Includes 20 lessons with 48 videos and a 37 page workbook filled with creative catalysts, as well as a wealth of guest artists who share their insights and methods. MAJ2 is not about “making time for art,” but about fitting art into the life you already have: the one with commitments and responsibilities. MAJ2 is for those who have less time, less room, and less brain-space to devote to art journaling, but whose need to create still burns.
Loving Mama
When you have kids, you can become so absorbed in the daily work of caring for them that you become disconnected from your personal stories. In existing for others, you can lose yourself. This class is designed to help you take the stories of your mother-self, weave them into the self that existed before you became a mother, and move forward with both of them intertwined. You’ll record the process in a creative journal, and when it’s done, it will be a beautiful love letter to yourself that honours all the parts of who you are and tells the story of how you came to be the amazing woman you are right now. This class comes with the Camellia digital kit, extra journal cards, and a printable workbook to get you creating as quickly and easily as possible.
Messy Pages
Perfect for beginning art journalers and experienced art journalers alike, Messy Pages includes 6 lessons with tips for choosing the right journal, how to choose the best supplies and mediums for you, simple explanations of art journaling terms, supplies, and how-to’s, plus examples and ideas for how to approach prompts for creating pages. Beginner art journalers will find instructor Tanylee Kahler’s overview of art journal lingo like mediums and gesso and what in the world a gelli plate is approachable and accessible. Experienced art journalers will find challenging fluid and experimental art techniques like painting galaxies, dreamy clouds, using inks, creating abstract backgrounds, and much more. Make a beautiful mess with Messy Pages.
Messy Marks
Mark making can be an instinctive and natural way to add more layers and interest to your art. In Messy Marks, you’ll learn how to create interesting and vibrant marks in your art journal with a variety of tools and techniques. Instructor Torrie Lynn will show you how to expand your idea of mark making and rely on your intuition to create them. She will overview different types of marks, how to embrace your intuition, and how to layer marks in a cohesive way. You will create beautiful layers of details with various supplies such as paint, markers, pens, and unconventional supplies. Elevate your art journaling to the next level with details, layers, and marks with your intuition as a guide in Messy Marks.
Sketching Faces
Dive into the world of portraiture with Sketching Faces. Experienced illustrator, Katie Smith, will teach you her method for drawing beautiful faces no matter your skill level. This class starts at the very beginning with supplies, then walks you through, step-by-step, in easy-to-follow videos, drawing a variety of facial features, different profile views, and hairstyles. You will also learn Katie’s secrets for coloring in sketched faces with watercolor paint. The class includes multiple printable templates to help you practice and grow your skills, as well as guides, video tutorials, and ideas and challenges for using your new artwork in your art journal. Take your artwork to the next level with the ability to draw lifelike faces with Sketching Faces.
Totems
Find and integrate your personal symbols into your art journal with Totems. Instructor and archeologist Vanessa Oliver-Llyod will introduce you to four different sources of symbolism: spirit animals, archetypes, elementals, and claiming the feminine. You do not need any prior knowledge of personal symbols to take this class as Vanessa will walk you through each step of understanding, researching, seeking, identifying, and incorporating unique symbols in your work and life. She will then teach you interactive and intuitive art techniques that will allow you to incorporate each symbol into your artwork. With this class, you will go on a deeply personal journey to identify the symbols that represent your personality and life to return to again and again.
Transference
In Transference, Tiffany Julia will show you how to create image transfers using acrylic mediums and combine them with other mediums like paints, inks, and different types of papers to create beautifully intricate pages and spreads in your art journals. Image transfers are a simple art technique that create soft layers and the dreamy appearance of hand painted art. Following the lessons in this class, you will learn how to create art journal pages that pull viewers in to take a closer look at the layers and details that lie just beneath the surface. This class is perfect for anyone looking to expand their creative toolkit and work slowly and methodically in their art
How to Start Art Journaling
What’s the secret to art journaling? Okay, here it is: it’s the starting, the making, and the keeping on making. In this free class, Fairy Artmother and Get Messy founder, Caylee Grey, archeologist and founder of Art Witch Academy, Vanessa Oliver-Llyod, and art therapist and mentor at Mindful Art Studio, Amy Maricle share their perspective on the starting and making part of art journaling. First, they share a peek inside their art journals to answer the question: what in the Frida Kahlo is art journaling? and gush over their favorite supplies. Then, they show you how art journal recipes and prompts can take the overthinking and overwhelm out of starting as they each tackle the same recipe and share their differing results. Finally, learn tips for translating inspiration into action and how to hold yourself accountable by making and connecting with art friends. If you are ready to kickstart your creative practice, then dive in with this class.
Orientation
Get started becoming a Get Messian with Messy Orientation! Messy Orientation will show you how to get the most out of the Get Messy website, connect with your art tribe, and build and maintain your creative practice. Learn all the ways Get Messy can get you making right away with Get Messy Seasons and website resources such as the Choose Your Own Adventure Library. Then see how the Get Messy forums can help you connect and collaborate with other members and make new art friends. Finally, learn about setting art goals and creating art making habits that get you making daily or as often as you need. Messy Orientation is your resource for all things Get Messy.
Basic Bookbinding
With this class, you will fulfil all your creative needs and desires to create the perfect custom books and journals to hold all your beautiful art and precious thoughts in. Led by Vanessa Oliver-Llyod, Basic Bookbinding includes four tutorials and one bonus tutorial. With step-by-step photos and written instructions, Vanessa explains what tools you need to get started, plus options for using what you likely already have on hand. The lessons in this class are suitable for beginners and experienced art journalers who want to stop buying run-of-the-mill journals and start creating one-of-a-kind books. The books you will create with these techniques are perfect for art journaling, writing, list-making, idea-catching, collaging, cutting, pasting, and anything else you can imagine doing in a journal.
Botanicals
Infuse your art with nature’s most lovely masterpieces. Flowers and plants provide an endless amount of inspiration for creatives all around the world. Through this floral focused art journaling class, Alicia Schultz will guide you through a multitude of different ways to use botanical beauty and inspiration in your art journal. You will learn six new ways to incorporate flowers and plants in your art journaling with various techniques like drawing, collage, painting, and more. Through these lessons, you will create art journal spreads that are blooming with beauty. If you love blooms and are awed by their beauty, then this is the perfect class for you.
Fifty Two Portraits
Fifty Two Portraits is a photography class in self-discovery; a way to document your life right now and uncover your creative self using self-portraiture and reflection. Inspired by a year-long creative project she embarked upon when she turned 40, Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd leads you on a path of self-discovery towards better knowledge of yourself as a person and as an artist. The class includes 52 prompts, 1 for each week of the year, centered on 1 of 7 themes: you, places, family, style, work, life, and friends, plus Vanessa’s photos for reference and inspiration. With Vanessa as your guide, embark on a journey in using photography and words to reflect inward and capture who you are at this phase in your life.
Heart Journal
The Heart Journal will get you connecting with your emotional self and exploring her in your art journal. Essie Ruth will lead you through exploring joy and happiness, sadness and grief, anger and rage, wonder and surprise, and peace. Alongside Essie, you will look at how great artists have conveyed emotion in their own work and draw inspiration from them. You’ll consider how artistic media can best communicate certain feelings. You’ll contemplate your relationships with different emotions and what you think about them. And most importantly, you’ll take everything you’ve learned and use it to create expressive, satisfying, and rewarding works of art. If you’d like to start putting your heart into your art journal, then this class will help you find ways to do just that.
Painting Galaxies
Wouldn’t you love the ability to create beautiful, vast starry night skies in your art journal? Resident galaxy painting expert, Katie Smith, shows you how in this guide to painting the cosmos. In this technique based class, you will learn how to create stunning starry scenes using watercolours and acrylic paints. If you’re new to working with these mediums, Katie will guide you through learning and mastering these tools, including turning household items like a toothbrush into a star wand! Following Katie’s simple teaching style will have your pages shining like the Milky Way in no time. This class is designed for anyone who has looked up into the night sky in awe and longs to translate that beauty into their artwork.
Pen + Ink
Make grown up art with your favorite childhood supplies. Pen & Ink is a class that is about 3 simple tools: water, pens, and inks. The class teaches you over 40 techniques using these tools, but these techniques are not for the perfectionist. They are for the child and the wild artist inside of you who longs to splatter, pour, and fling paint into this world. If you are ready to let that child out, follow your teacher Julia Cusworth as she shows you how to use these simple products to build background pages, simply play, or finish pages in your art journal. This class is perfect for anyone who is ready to let their inner artist child take the reins and Get Messy.
Pieces
Learn how to think like a junk journaler – becoming more mindful and creative with what is available around you and enjoying and embracing imperfection. In Pieces, Johanna Clough will show you how to repurpose bits and pieces you have collected and put them to use in your art journal. You will start by creating a simple no-sew art journal in a junk journal style. In each lesson, you will experiment with creating pages with items that you have collected and repurposed from your life and use symbolism and interaction to give your pages depth. This class is perfect for anyone who enjoys creating pages based on found elements or anyone who struggles with allowing themselves to let go of perfection.
Rituals
Rituals is about more intention, thoughtfulness, and awareness in your year and in your art. With Rituals, you can finally take action to focus on your art, be intentional about it, and ground yourself in time. Each month, Vanessa Oliver-Llyod leads you through a different art technique and/or medium that will help you meditate on the month’s themes and immerse yourself in time and place. When you enroll, you will receive immediate access to the 12 months of content. You can start at the beginning, start in the current month, or work at your own pace. With Rituals, you can create an art practice filled with depth and intention that only you can create.
Scrap Collage
All many of us need to do to create art journal pages is sweep up our art spaces and put those tiny discarded papers to serious work. In this class, instructor Zinia Redo starts simple and progresses through intermediate to advanced techniques that will help you use tiny pieces of leftover papers (or purposefully selected beauties!) for intricate and beautiful backgrounds. All you need for this class is scissors, your scrap paper stash, and glue to get your fingers snipping, arranging, and glueing. You can use this class to create art journal backgrounds, base pages, scrapbook pages, collages, mosaics, summer crafts with the kids, frame-worthy art, and more. If you follow all of the class techniques, you will have 92 art journal base pages ready and waiting for when inspiration strikes.