Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd

I had two spreads left in my journal so I decided to finish it off by making a synthesis spread for the solar and the lunar aspects of my year. I tried to incorporate as many of the techniques that we did this year into each spread.

This is it, friends, we made it to the last month of the year. The wheel has turned and we are back to the start…what a feeling! I think it will come as no surprise to anyone that the main festival for December is Yule / Christmas. December marks the winter solstice, a moment to celebrate the fact that the light is starting to return and the darkest days are behind us. It is a moment to come together, share a meal and gifts, say goodbye to the year past and turn to the new one starting. So take a moment to reflect on the last year, on what you uncovered in this class, about yourself, about your art and then rifle through your ephemera and see what calls to you. This is also a good moment to purge said ephemera pile before the end of the year.

It’s incredible but here we are in November, the penultimate month of the year. The time we have spent together has been nothing short of magical for me and I am so grateful for your presence.

October is my favorite month. In Canada, it is when the Fall foliage is at its best. It’s the month when I met my husband and when I gave birth to my firstborn. It is when the veil is at its thinnest and we celebrate the dead.

September brings along the official shift in the seasons and the Fall equinox.This gives us a chance to examine our goals and decide what is up for renewal and what can be let go of.

This month’s theme is harvest. In North America, the intense harvesting season is slightly later in the year but many crops come to fruition in August.

Welcome to the second part of our height of summer arc: in July we will be exploring the theme of Spirit.

With the month of June we enter into a summer arc that will carry us over the next two months. Summer is upon us (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the Earth is alive and vibrant with color and perfume.

Welcome to the glorious month of May and the promise of summer. This month we carry on with the garden theme developed in April and appreciate the growth of our flowers.

The month of April and the promise of Spring is here. This month we will celebrate our secret gardens by exploring the theme of fertility. We start with the notions of seeds and seeing what we will plant in our gardens and what weeds we will remove. The technique is a deceptively easy one: collage layers. Collage is great because it keeps our hands busy and our minds focused on the process, so join us this month as we create our fertility gardens.

Welcome March! This month we will be exploring and defining the idea of balance. It can be a fine line to navigate in our busy lives. This is why Rituals became so important to me. Finding the time for art is a big part of my own balance. Our technique this month might push some of you out of your comfort zone but I promise that the reward is worth it: this month we are diving into intuitive painting.

The theme we will be exploring, which will come as no surprise, is love. But our approach to the theme of love is – in total Rituals fashion – a very personal and different one.

A new year, a fresh start. We are at the beginning of the wheel of the year, before us is a clean slate.

Welcome to the class!

The wheel of the year is an eight-segment pie chart which represents the seasons and festivals that people in the past used to mark the passing of time.

3.4 The Monster WithinOne of the biggest realisations I had about my own heroine’s journey is that it is impossible to only blame others or external factors for what is happening. Each of us has a part in this dynamic, in the confrontation with the Boss Monster;...

2.3 The PivotThe Pivot refers to that moment when there is a clear understanding by the heroine that things are already in motion. She sees that she cannot pretend she didn’t open the door to the catalyst; in actuality, the heroine has already changed. For this...

4.1 sPIRITUAL aRIDITYThis first spread addresses the void that appears within the heroine herself during this crisis. She feels that she has lost her way, lost the tools that were helping her and that nothing is set to replace that hole at first. Luckily for her - and...

5.3 AlliesEven though the Heroine’s Journey is a personal one, our heroine is never truly alone. She has allies that support her along the way. As I mentioned, if these are not actual people, the allies can also be personality traits of the heroine or even...

7.1 The Return to self This art spread is a celebration of the heroine’s return home, the return to feeling whole and happy. We will be using tissue paper to create a multi-layered spread. If you have some, try to use printed tissue paper that recalls some of  your...

1.4 The Heroine Feels DifferentOur heroine, regardless of the word we chose, often has an inkling that something is about to go down. We feel a certain pull before the journey starts. It’s just that we are not always aware of that little voice or that little tug...

Now we enter the thick lushness of the Underground Forest. Our heroine makes her way through the Road of Trials and she meets all kinds of monsters and dragons that she has to fight along the way. The Underground Forest This may seem a bit dramatic but navigating the...

4.4 dEATHNo matter how deep within she goes, the heroine realises that she has to let go of many things in order to carry on. In essence, she has to die - her old self has to go - and then she can be reborn. This spread is a monument to that moment when the heroine...

6.1 HEaling the splitThis moment when the heroine heals all parts of her is almost anti climactic in that it is a softening of the self. There are no big trumpets or announcements, it is something she feels within. We will be using transparencies once more to show the...

2.1 The CatalystTo mark the arrival of the catalyst, we will be using the idea of the door. The catalyst comes knocking and once our heroine opens that door, she cannot close it easily! In the video below, I walk you through the process, including how I chose some...

3.3 Boss MonsterWhat happens after our heroine has been on this road for a while? As with any good video game, there comes the meeting with the Boss Monster. This meeting can be an actual moment with a person or it can be a situation where things came to a head. It is...

5.1 Meeting the GoddessMeeting a goddess is no small feat, don’t you agree? Before making spread about the encounter, we will use the idea of imagery under imagery. We will create doors that open unto the goddess herself. We will be using all the sequins, confetti and...

6.4 Walking Back through the ThresholdOur heroine makes the conscious decision to return to the Known World. She is stronger and more complete for having traversed the trials held within the journey. We will be using the same interactive technique as for the first...

2.4 Getting Ready to GoNo one sets off willingly on a journey without properly packing. Even when the journey is not of our choosing, we can have agency by taking a moment to gather our tools (even if these are truly just metaphorical tools). For this spread, we will...

4.2 dOWN TO THE cOREThis realisation that something has to change within is one that the heroine feels down to her core. To illustrate this we will be doing a “peel and reveal” spread. This term I first heard from Orly Avineri. You may remember a similar tutorial that...

5.4 Taming the Inner FireOur Heroine has come a long way. Meeting the divine - whether it’s the divine within or without - has allowed her to tame the uncontrollable urgent burn-everything-down fire that was consuming her. Now, our heroine is better equipped to go...

7.2  The GiftThe gift of putting the words in my Inner Heroine journal was really special to me. This journal was started at the end of 2019 and finished in mid-2020. So you can imagine how much transformation happened in between those dates. Adding in the words,...

1.2 A Simple wordFor this second spread, we will choose a word that speaks to how our heroine is feeling at the start of this journey. Kind of like when we choose a word for the year, this will represent what will guide our heroine at the start of this journey. We...

1.5 Mapping Out the JourneyBefore she leaves for her journey, the heroine needs a map! The one I put in my spread is a compendium of a few Heroine’s Journeys, which you can see and download below.Feel free to use the same steps as the ones I did in the following video...

3.1 In the Dark ForestNow that our heroine has crossed the threshold and followed the passage into the Unknown World, we will mark her arrival. We will start by creating flaps that open up into this new landscape. We will also bring in a visual reminder of our...

4.5 rEBIRTHAfter letting go of what no longer serves, our heroine is reborn. She is reshaped into a new way of being, of seeing, of doing. This is a grand moment that deserves two spreads! In the first video, we add an interactive element to our page using a brad,...