Get Excited.
Get Messy 2023
Peek into your (creative, messy) future


2023 at a Glance
- 12 new creative classes
- 16+ artist teachers (with 30 more in Messy May)
- 4 new seasons
- 2 digital retreats
- 2 Artist’s Way Book Clubs
- 6 ways to bind your own journal
- Open Art Journal Library
- 90 Day Artist Mentorship
- 4 art challenges, including Messy May 2023!
- 6 casual hangouts per week
- 3 casual hangouts per month
- 2 guided hangouts per month
- Artist Tinder, Artist Speed Dating, Show + Tells, Artist Dates, zine exchange
- community events led by Claudette
- 2023 Messy Artist Passport
- IN PERSON MESSY ARTIST MEET-UP IN GERMANY IN MAY!

Download and print a copy
Illustration by Erin Ware
A4 / A5 size
US Letter size
Year in Full

January: Season of Pleasure + Liberation
- Courageous Adventures in Art Journaling with Claudette Hasenjager and Char DeRouin.
- Artist Tinder
- Junk Journal January

February: Season of Pleasure + Liberation
- Body of Art: The Aesthetics of Anatomy with Caylee Grey
- Return to Self Mentorship

March: Season of Pleasure + Liberation
- Documenting Your Days with Abbey Sy
- Art Supply Liberation

April: Season of Whimsy + Curiosity
- Imagined Landscapes: An Adventure in Stitch + Collage with Alyssa Griese

May: Season of Whimsy + Curiosity
- Messy May: Daily-ish Journaling Challenge for Imperfect Creatives with 30 artists
- Artist Speed Dating

June: Season of Whimsy + Curiosity
- Going Wild with Helen Wells
- Artist’s Way Bookclub
- Return to Self Mentorship

July: Season of Ease + Joy
- Puzzling: Putting All the Pieces of Life on the Page with Brandi Kincaid
- Open Art Journal Library
- Junk Journal July

August: Season of Ease + Joy
- Ama-ZINE: Modern One-Page Journals with Carolyn Nehring, Caylee Grey, Debbie Bamberger, Erin Ware, Rory Grimes, Sarah Gardner, Stephanie Touriel, and Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd
- Digital Retreat: Zine-Making
- Zine Exchange

September: Season of Ease + Joy
- Window View of You with LaQuisha Hall
- Artist’s Way Bookclub

October: Season of Release + Return
- Becoming Whole: The Journey Home with Mou Saha
- Show + Tell

November: Season of Release + Return
- Pocket Gratitude with Helen Colebrook
- Digital Retreat: Creative Year Reflections + Intentions

December: Season of Release + Return
- Messy & Bright
How Get Messy nurtures your creative soul
Your Creative Sidekick
Whether you’re looking for spark, growth, cultivation, or connection in your artistic journey, GM has you covered. Here’s how:

New Class every month
The best thing about 2023 is a brand, spanking new class each and every month. A full class will arrive in your Get Messy Dashboard on the first of every month. These are full, premium classes, but are included at your membership at no extra cost to you.
Claudette, our new Community Events cheerleader will be hosting two hangouts each month focused on going through a lesson and helping you make art.

Seasonal-ish Seasons
A season is guided by a theme encouraging self-exploration, self-discovery and self-expression.
This year sees four new seasons, each one covering three months. This gives us enough time to indulge in a theme of our own creation. Each season comes with a companion zine for you to print out and complete on a mini artist retreat or artist date.

casual + guided Hangouts
We chatted about the two guided hangouts per month above.
The casual hangouts inside Get Messy are still going strong. 6 per week, 3 per month, led by a fellow Messian.
It’s an assigned hour (or half hour, or half day) that makes creating easy. Yes, you could just sit back and chat to your friends for that time, but why not also glue down some collage fodder? Why not doodle as you chat? Everyone else is doing it. Everyone else is super excited about the idea that you’re making art too.
There is no pressure to share what you’re working on. No pressure to even finish a page. No pressure to talk. No pressure to have experience with this kind of thing. Definitely no pressure to wear makeup or clean clothing. No pressure to do anything other than show up and make art in real life alongside others doing the same thing.
We show up in the mess. As our imperfect selves. Because it enables others to do the same.

Community Events
- Two scheduled Digital Retreats – we’ll be making zines in the one, and one for creative reflections + intentions
- Two rounds of a 12 week Artist’s Way Book Club with an enthusiastic guide taking you through the book, and a group to go on the journey with you.
- Art Supply Liberation!
- Artist Tinder – find a collaboration pARTner, your new creative BFF, or someone to join your journey that month
- Artist Speed Dating – jump in the deep end and meet a new artist in your own Zoom breakout room, chat for 5 minutes, and then move onto the next
- Show + Tell – have a cool art journal project and want to show your fellow Messians? there’s space for that this year!
- Zine Exchange – make a zine, send it off in the post, receive one back
- Open Art Journal Library – just like the Brooklyn Art Library, but just for mixed media art journals. There’s a bookshelf outside the Get Messy HQ in Germany that wants to display your journal.

presents
We’re adding to the Resources section this year.
This year comes with a passport – print it out, and add stamps each time you complete a Get Messy season. Bonus points for silly Messy Artist Things.
A guide on 6 types of journals (to bind or buy) will give you endless inspir-action, and so will the supplies guides.
Bonus bits
- MESSY MAY! The Daily-ish Journaling Challenge
- In-person Artist Meetup in Germany in May! Everyone’s invited!
- Return to Self: 90 Day Mentorship with Caylee Grey
- Daily Art Journal Prompts: an email in your inbox every day

Charity
We believe that change doesn’t come by chance, but with a commitment to caring for everyone in our global community – artists and non-artists alike. Which is why we donate 10% of all our GM income before profit to charitable causes.
This year we’re supporting clubkinder, a charity that helps youth, the elderly, and refugees through art and education.
Do we sound like your kinda people? We’d love to celebrate your arrival.
Your creative guides
Guest Artists 2023
This year, we have the following artists encouraging you to make a mess:
Abbey Sy, Alyssa Griese, Brandi Kincaid, Carolyn Nehring, Caylee Grey, Char DeRouin, Claudette Hasenjager, Debbie Bamberger, Erin Ware, Helen Colebrook, Helen Wells, LaQuisha Hall, Mou Saha, Rory Grimes, Sarah Gardner, Stephanie Tourial, Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd

Abbey Sy
@abbeysy
Abbey Sy is an artist and author from Manila, Philippines.
Throughout her creative career, she has worked on freelance projects, has written and illustrated best-selling books such as The ABCs of Hand Lettering, The ABCs of Journaling, and Always Be Creating: A Field Guide To Living a Creative Life. Her first international title, Hand Lettering A to Z, has been translated into nine languages. She has given two TEDx talks, spoken in Graphika Manila, and facilitated workshops on creativity and making things happen.
Currently, she runs Shop Abbey Sy and manages her art club on Patreon. With her Always be Creating mantra, she hopes to inspire others to unlock their creative potential and move forward with their creative journey.

Alyssa Griese
@thistleandthimbles
Living in Canada, with a BA in visual arts, Alyssa is a maker and lover of all things handmade. Art journaling captured her heart only a few short years ago and quickly became a passion and daily source of inspiration and creativity. For Alyssa, embracing imperfections and chasing after “happy accidents” is the true magic of art journaling. Anything goes within the pages of her art journal and it has become an important place for her to process, to experiment and to play.

Brandi Kincaid
@brandi_kincaid
A tiny treasure seeker, an eavesdropper, a paper lover, and a voracious reader, Brandi lives with her very tall husband, and very small dog, in northwest corner of the US. She spends her days making messes and sending Extravagant Hope by mail all over the world, and when she’s not busy with those, you can find her in the thrift stores and used bookshops. Journaling of all kinds is the way she makes sense of the weird, weary, wonderful world.

Carolyn Nehring
@carolyn.sn
Carolyn is a mixed media artist and has been art journaling on and off for years, but now makes it a daily practice since retiring. Carolyn loves to play and experiment with all things color, paint and collage. She hopes her art journals will inspire others to play as well.

Caylee Grey
@cayleegrey
Caylee Grey is the host of Get Messy and a South African perfectionist currently pursuing imperfection.

Char DeRouin
@charderouin
Char DeRouin is an American artist working in acrylics, collage and mixed media. She loves art journaling because there’s something powerful about using imagery to tell a story. Char enjoys an abstract, intuitive approach to art journaling and other maker projects.

Claudette Hasenjager
@claudette_hasenjager
Claudette is a mixed media artist who believes that art heals the soul. It is this deep calling from within that has fueled her passion for exploring various forms of creative expression. Her work reflects the many facets of her inner landscape and gives expression to her multi-passionate personality. Claudette strives to inspire others to heed the call of their own unique creative turning.

Debbie Bamberger
@debbiebamberger
Dr. Debbie Bamberger is a nurse practitioner in Berkeley, California, providing sexual and reproductive health care for almost 30 years. She began art journaling 6 years ago with no prior art practice, and it changed her life. She lives with her family, works part-time, and art journals every single day.

Erin Ware
@erin_ware_art
Erin Ware is an artist, illustrator, and surface designer who finds all her best ideas tucked within the pages of her journals. She lives in Savannah, Georgia, with her husband, Nathan, and their kiddos, Felix and Evangeline. Teaching things like zine-making is actually her dream job.

Helen Colebrook
@journalwithpurpose
Helen is an author, online teacher and blogger. She loves sharing her passion for creative journaling and aims to help inspire others on their journaling journey too. Helen uses a wide range of techniques, but purpose, gratitude and self-expression are always at the heart of her work.

Helen Wells
@helenwellsart
Helen is the author of the book ‘Expressive sketchbooks: developing creative skills, courage and confidence’ published by Quarry Books and the creator of an online class about developing your own Expressive Sketchbook.
She is passionate about sketchbooks and art journals as a powerful tool for creative discovery and development. Her own sketchbook use is the cornerstone of her artistic career and practice. She became a professional artist later in life and credits using sketchbooks for this career pivot.

LaQuisha Hall
@confidentcanvas
LaQuisha loves all things creative and has been an artist since childhood. She is a bible art journaler, planner, mixed media and hand lettering artist. Through her social media she creates and shares her own work as well as hosts workshops to fuel the creative abilities of those she inspires.

Mou Saha
@mou.saha.studio
Mou Saha is an artist, author, teacher and speaker. She has been published over 800 times in print media, appeared on PBS TV shows and taught workshops around the States, in Europe and online for Creativebug under JoAnn, Etc., Big Picture Classes, Michael’s, Get Messy and more. Mou’s academic background in clinical psychology fuels her ongoing quest for wellness through daily creative and spiritual practices. She has represented brands like Faber-Castell, Anna Griffin, Sizzix Ellison USA, etc. and been a freelance writer since 2005. Mou is a mom of three humans and one canine and lives in Mendham, New Jersey, USA.

Rory Grimes
@spiritgrind
Rory is a mixed media artist, art journaler, mom, dancer, and more living in Oklahoma. She created her first zine in the mid-nineties and, despite a lifetime of dabbling in different creative pursuits, has always returned to zine making as a prized form of written and visual self expression. Since discovering art journaling in 2020 she has sought to combine these art forms without sacrificing the grungy photocopy aesthetic and shareable nature of 1990s zines.

Sarah Gardner
@juicy.s.art
This is Sarah Gardner, aka, Juicy*S. Juicy*S is her DJ name. She’s not a DJ. She would love to be a DJ. It’s one of her fantasy dream jobs, really. She got this name when she was slinging paint and working in her art journal with a couple girlfriends,, drinking wine and keeping track of the funny things they were saying on a “sign-in” sheet…just craziness. They all ended up with a DJ name that day. She started her first blog with this name, and she’s had it ever since.
She’s the girl (yes, even though she’s fifty-something, she’s still a girl!) who has a Tutu Dance Party and makes every one of her guests their own tutu! She’s the kind of person who thinks a lot (maybe too much) about things. Art journaling is a creative practice that is her self-care. She loves to take what she’s learned and infuse her art journal pages with meaning as well. She’s a life-long learner, and learning is really what life is all about for her. She’s also a lawyer, a wife, and a mom of two. She lives with her family in Southern California, in a small surf community called Cardiff by the Sea.

Stephanie Tourial
@stephspaper
Steph loves art, travel, and journaling. Born and raised in California. Living life as full as can be, one day at a time.

Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd
@dansmoncrane
Vanessa (she/her) is a Canadian archaeologist and artist who lives abroad. Currently in Beijing, China, Vanessa firmly believes in the magic of art. Her work is centered around the idea that ritual and a mindful art practice can bring so much to one’s life.
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