During my 2011 Desire to Inspire Online Book Tour, I had the honor of being featured on Traci Bautista’s oh-so inspiring blog, and I’m very excited to be able to return the favor today! She’s in the middle of her own online book tour right now, and is here to share the news about the release of her latest book, Doodles Unleashed: Mixed Media Techniques for Doodling, Mark-Making & Lettering.

Here’s the scoop on Doodles Unleashed ~

Doodle, draw, paint and play! With Doodles Unleashed, you’ll discover wildly new ways to bring doodling center-stage! Traci Bautista teaches you how to use doodling as a meditative exercise, a raw form of expression and a vehicle for telling your personal story. Work with an arsenal of creative tools, from markers, pencils and pens to stamps, stencils, inks and paints, to find unique, intuitive ways to make your mark.

A dear friend gave me a copy of Traci’s Collage Unleashed a while back, and I’m excited to add Doodles Unleashed to my bookshelves. Traci’s creative passion, generosity and kindness are a bright light in the world, and her books provide beautiful, fun encouragement to let your creativity run wild.

For my guest post entry on her site at the end of last year, Traci created a “visual interview” for me, where I provided a series of images from prompts she gave me. We decided to do the same thing for this entry. Here’s a little peek into Traci’s world…

One of Traci’s latest doodles ~

Some of Traci’s favorite collage supplies ~

A texture Traci loves ~

Her favorite pair of shoes ~

A favorite scarf ~

Traci’s bookshelf ~

Traci’s desk ~

An object of comfort ~

An object of beauty ~

An object with a story ~

As if all of this wasn’t fun enough, Traci is also offering a wonderful Give Away today! A Doodles Unleashed Collage Kit, pictured below. To make things easy, we’re going to keep this Give Away going through this Friday, just like yesterday’s Give Away, and our winners will both be announced Monday!

But today’s most important detail is this: To order Traci’s new book Doodles Unleashed, click here. To order a signed copy ~ which includes a few other goodies as well ~ click here!

{Photo taken in Big Sur earlier this month.}

February is shaping up to be the month of acknowledgement, and this week in particular is wonderfully, creatively FULL! Not only have we kicked off Inspired By! The Desire to Inspire Force of Good Awards, but I’m also offering a very special Desire to Inspire Give Away today. Well, that isn’t entirely true. Actually, the lovely Laura Repp is the one offering a very special Desire to Inspire Give Away…

Way back in December, I offered a signed copy of Desire to Inspire along with an interview over at Stephanella Walsh’s inspiring online abode ~ The Creative Identity. The winner of that Give Away was Laura Repp, who, by the time she found out she was the winner, had already purchased two copies. Laura decided that instead of accepting this gift, she wanted to offer it to someone else, so we came up with a fun idea…

We decided to let you enter someone in your life in today’s Give Away. All you need to do is leave a comment telling us who you would like to offer the book to and why ~ just a brief snippet of why you think this person could use or appreciate Desire to Inspire. We’ll keep this running through 5:00pm this Friday, February 24th and we’ll announce the winner next Monday.

After you’ve entered your comment here, be sure to head over to the Inspired By! launch page, where you can nominate someone who has inspired you to DREAM BIG (and you’ll be entered for a Desire to Inspire Give Away for yourself over there, too!)

Eager for more fun?

Register for my FREE webinar right here, which is happening this Thursday, February 23rd at 1:00pm EST.

I had an interview with the lovely and amazing Kimberly Wilson last week, and it is now up on Tranquility du Jour, and…

There’s yet another super fun Give Away coming tomorrow from Traci Bautista!

Five:

1. Opening Our Eyes: Global Stories About the Power of One

2. Things are cranking at Seek Your Course

3. Marianne Elliott’s 30 Days of Courage

4. Matteo Home

5. Inspired By! The Desire to Inspire Force of Good Awards ~ Nominate those who have made a difference in your life

+ One:

Reading now:  A Thousand Names for Joy by Byron Katie. Not finished, but already underlining passages and sentences on almost every page. This one is a winner.

{Photo taken in Big Sur earlier this month.}

Today is the day we kick off Inspired By! The Desire to Inspire Force of Good Awards.

From Create Mixed Media ~

In her book, Desire to Inspire, Christine Mason Miller spotlights a wide range of creative individuals, all with a common desire to make a positive impact. Now it’s your turn. This is your opportunity to acknowledge your mentors, friends, family members, colleagues or acquaintances who have inspired you to dream big, scale an impossible mountain, make a difference or simply become a force of good in the world.

Now through March 8 ~ starting today ~ each Thursday I will share with you details about the chapters in the book that inspired our four awards:

• The DREAM BIG Award (boldly making one’s dream a reality)
• The MOUNTAIN CLIMBER Award (overcoming great challenge with a positive perspective)
• The MAKE-A-DIFFERENCE Award (inspiring us to be of service to others)
• The LIVING IT FULLY Award (offering a beautiful example of being present in every moment)

At the end of each week’s post, you are free to nominate your special someone, by leaving a comment explaining who you wish to nominate and why. We would love it if you included a link to this person’s blog or website if they have one.

Each week, everyone who comments will be entered to win a copy of Desire to Inspire, and then on March 15, the winners of the four awards—who will be selected by a specially appointed panel from CreateMixedMedia—will be announced right here.

So let’s get to it! First up: The DREAM BIG Award. Be sure to stop back by each Thursday for more on the other awards and more inspiration!

PLEASE NOTE:  All of this is happening over at Create Mixed Media…that is where you will nominate your peeps and be entered for a copy of Desire to Inspire. So bookmark this page for the next four weeks and join in the fun!

P.S. Pass it along!

{Photo taken in Big Sur earlier this month.}

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”

~ Graham Greene

{Photo taken at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur earlier this month.}

Bit by bit I have been crossing items off of my ongoing To Do list. I shipped a package last week to Italy that had been tucked in a cozy, hidden spot in our home since, um, last October. You never saw a more triumphant human being walk out of the post office that day. My studio is uber-tidy and organized, ready for a new desk that will be delivered next week, and I even managed to clear out a long list of bookmarked websites from my web browser. Were those lists really interfering with my daily life? Of course not. But knowing that tiny area of virtual space has been emptied still feels gratifying.

There are some exciting treats in the weeks ahead. Here’s the scoop on all the fun & frolic ~

* This Thursday, February 16th a project I am very excited about kicks off over at Create Mixed Media. We’re launching Inspired By! The Desire to Inspire Force of Good Awards, which is a four-week series of awards that we’ve created from chapters in Desire to Inspire. This event is an opportunity for you to recognize, acknowledge and celebrate those who have inspired, supported, and encouraged you. Click here for all the details.

* I’m being interviewed by the uber-inspiring Kimberly Wilson this week, and our conversation will air on Tranquility du Jour this Sunday, February 19th.

* Next Monday, February 20th is the last day to sign up for the Desire to Inspire Inspiration Deck Card Swap. The lovely Jessica Brogan is organizing everything, and all the details about this project are right here.

* Next Thursday, February 23rd I’ll be leading a FREE webinar over at Create Mixed Media. I’ve created an exercise called Character Study, which will give everyone an opportunity to learn more about their most important values and dreams through the exploration and examination of their favorite characters in fiction, whether books or films. This is going to be fun! Register here.

* In the meantime, my latest interview for Global Inspirations is up. Reporting from Haiti, the lovely Sharon Virtue shares the story of her involvement with an amazing art therapy project organized by Save the Children.

* I am thrilled to announce that the winner of last week’s 21 Secrets Give Away is Cristi Clothier. Many thanks to everyone who participated. If you would like to sign up for 21 Secrets, all the juicy details are right here.

{Photo taken in Big Sur a while ago.}

Dream interpretation is a big topic around here. Not a daily one, but one with enough presence that if anyone in our house shares a strange or especially vivid dream with us, we always try to figure out what it means. Most of the time it is just for kicks, but every once in a while I feel like I’m actually onto something. I once gave my interpretation of a dream a friend of mine had and his jaw dropped. And there have been a few occasions when I’ve felt compelled to ask for interpretations of my dreams from a couple of gifted friends and been rewarded with an important insight. I’ve had one dream that I absolutely believe was a message from God, one dream when I was visited by a friend who had recently passed away (he came to tell me he was OK), and there have been a few dreams I’ve had that literally came to fruition within a few days.

My simple philosophy of dream interpretation is that everything is a symbol for something, and that dreams can be portals for wisdom if we’re willing to pay attention. At times my dreams have been the only place I could work through certain issues and really see the truth of those situations. Many of my dreams have simply been reflections of something I am dealing with, but presented in such a vivid or unusual way that I can’t help but explore it further. And some dreams have enabled me to pull back a curtain to see something about myself or the world that I didn’t expect. Those dreams tend to stay with me the longest; some I remember like yesterday.

There is a lot of big activity going on in our family right now ~ all good and positive and expansive, but in certain moments, for me, disconcerting and uncomfortable and unsettling. This is for my own reasons, because of my own little pile o’ baggage that I bring to the table, and the good news is that it doesn’t look to be interfering with the forward movement that is going on. Thanks to the work I have been doing for years as part of this family, I have a well-honed ability to be mindful of and manage my own stuff so that my ultimate offering in any given situation can be grace and joy and acceptance.

In other words, it isn’t so much that my life with my family is picture perfect and easy peasy, it is more that I have worked very hard to be able to choose joy in spite of the fears and anxieties that continue to pop up in any number of situations. Which is why I’ve been thinking a lot about a dream I recently had.

I was in a tall glass building in some kind of city. I was inside with another more distant family member, and she had a bunch of sisters who were all there. In the dream I kept looking at all of them, wanting to see their resemblance to each other (this has long been a fascination of mine in real life ~ as an only child with no extended family, I didn’t grow up sharing physical traits with anyone but my parents.) Other people were around, but I was sitting at a table with all of the sisters wanting to see how they looked alike.

All of a sudden something started happening, and in the next snippet of the dream the entire building was underwater. I could see outside the windows and all the other buildings that were also underwater, and while everyone understood we were suddenly underwater, no one was freaking out. In the dream I could feel my sense of panic start to rise, but kept telling myself, “Don’t panic, don’t panic,” even as the building we were in was creaking and groaning and making strange sounds. I talked myself out of becoming terrified by paying attention to certain details ~ that water wasn’t leaking in anywhere, that everyone around me was handling it well, that the building seemed to be holding up. And while I can’t say I ever fully relaxed in this part of the dream, I did get a grip on my fears enough that I started to feel strangely fascinated by the entire situation. We were in a building that was underwater, and even though it was swaying ever so slightly and groaning under pressure, we were all OK. I just had to keep breathing, I just had to stay present.

When negative thoughts grow so large and all-consuming that they start to develop their own zip code, I always go to the same image, which is of me creating a calm center in a wild swarm of bees. Even if I am not able to literally sit down and be still in that moment, I hold that vision in my mind, focusing on the truth that I have a choice as to whether or not I give in to that whirlwind. Making the connection between that practice and a dream where I’m standing in a building suddenly submerged in water isn’t some great interpretive leap, but it does help me see I’m on the right track. I might feel like something is on the verge of falling apart (or flooding, or whatever), but if I’m willing to just take a quick inventory of what is really happening around me, I’ll most likely see that everything is OK. And if I have to really learn that lesson through a dream about an underwater city, then what the hell ~ I’ll take it.

“The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.”  ~Carl Jung

Five:

1. Gwen Samuels for art

2. Taffy Underhill for laughs

3. The Henry Miller Library for your time in Big Sur

4. Love Ninjas Unite! from Simply Celebrate for creative fun

5. Lisa Occhipinti’s private workshops for even more creative fun. All the details are right here:

+ One:

I discovered the Etsy shop TM1985 when they were a featured seller last week, and immediately placed an order. Yesterday my goodie arrived, and not only was it beautifully, artfully packaged, but it is an object I will always treasure. With a look and feel that is part vintage, part Cub Scout, part world traveling free spirit poet, these bags and cases are made to last a lifetime and are like nothing else around. Snatch these creations up while you can. I have a feeling TM1985 is going to outgrow Etsy sooner rather than later.

P.S. There’s still time to enter the 21 Secrets Give Away!!

A couple of quick updates and announcements from the Swirly Studio ~

Registration is still ongoing for 21 Secrets: An Art Journal Online Playground. I’ll be contributing a tutorial on incorporating text into your mixed media creations, and Dirty Footprints Studio has generously offered one Give Away for every instructor. Today is the day for mine! Enter a comment between now and midnight this Friday, February 10th for a FREE spot in 21 Secrets and I will announce the winner Monday.

Have you signed up for the Desire to Inspire Inspiration Deck Card Swap? It is being organized by Jessica Brogan, and she has quite an inspiring crowd of participants!

Five + One will be back in action next week ~ Happy Friday!

Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.

~Hafiz