Get Messy
art journal Blog
Get Messy is an online art journaling school that teaches you to cultivate your creativity. Without perfection.
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In a creative rut? Why more art supplies are not the answer
When stuck in a creative rut, buying new art supplies can seem like a reasonable way to go about getting out of it. After all, we all know that art stores (and to a lesser extent, their online equivalent) are magical places; not only full of…uhh, art supplies, but allure and promise and potential. I’m here to tell you to hold your horses. Back up a little. Here’s why stocking up on more art supplies is not the answer.
Intuitive Art for the Recovering Perfectionist with Iris Fritschi-Cussens
This is the story of what happens when a perfectionist decides to actively go against her own nature in lieu of making the art that her soul needs. Iris and I talk about her brave decision to deliberately choose wonkiness, ignore self-doubt, and go for process over...
How to Collaborate with Other Artists
The Get Messy Season of Collaboration was in January. But community continues to be a Big Deal to us Messy Artists.
If you’ve ever experienced a creative drought, you’ll know the impact that your creative family can have on helping you through it, giving tips on finding the other side, and making you feel less alone in your struggle.
If you’ve ever experienced a creative high, you’ll know how much higher it feels when you share your wins and celebrate your creative flow with others.
In this episode of the Get Messy podcast, I’m calling on the combined knowledge of a small group of Messians. Traci and Meghan, Jenna and Dawn, and Sarah and Melenia share what they learned and what they gained from their creative connection during Get Messy’s Season of Collaboration.
7 ways to feel less alone as a creative
The life of a creative can be lonely. And let’s face it: whether we identify as creatives or not, we all know what this pretty rubbish state of being feels like. As humans, we’re hard-wired for connection: we long to be understood by others, we long for relationships with people with whom we can go through our struggles and celebrate life’s wins. This blog post presents 7 ways towards feeling less alone as a creative. And the best part is – perhaps counter-intuitively – many of these can be done without interacting with a single other human in real time.
Collaboration for Art and Heart with Char + Claudette
For the month of January, we focused on creative collaboration at Get Messy. Claudette Hasenjager and Char DeRouin led the way to nurture a safe space for artists to find their creative soul mate. For just the month, or for beyond. This excitement about creative...
Art as a Must Do Rather than a Nice to Do with Gilly Welch
In this Messy Conversations episode, Jenna chats with Gilly about her creative process and thinking around art journaling. They discuss how art journaling encormpasses everything and how you make it what you want it to be.
Gilly shares how she’s able to be creative every single day due to the freedom given – no boundaries, and no rules. We are all busy but when we put small bits together with pockets of time, it starts to make a huge difference.
Creating After a Drought, Art Meditation, and other Questions
This is an AMA (Ask Me Anything) episode, where you’re the one who asks me anything and I’m the one who answers. We cover a host of topics, mostly about supplies and where I’m at in my creative practice.
I share my favourite tools, classes, and resources for making art.
I discuss themes I’m processing through art (now and always), coming back to art after a creative drought, and a new way I’m merging meditation with creation.
A host of miscellaneous questions and answers.
And an in depth look at my love for white hair and #ff66cc.
No Rules. No Perfection. Just Expression with Karen Price
Nope, Caylee didn't become an American for the new year. That smooth, calming radio voice you're listening to is Get Messy Guardian's @ginnistonik. She's interviewing the marvelous Guardians of the Community to bring even more inspir-action and encouragement to your...
A Girl and her Studio: A Love Story
The best thing to come out of 2020 for me has been my studio. It’s my one true love (sorry T). It’s an old shipping container in an old slaughterhouse. It’s gritty, and raw, it’s hipster as hell, and its mine.
This studio has enabled me to do that weird thing people talk about called “work-life-balance” and for that, I am truly grateful.
I wanted to dedicate an episode of the podcast to it. It has a story. It’s a love story. And to make it worth your while, I’m sharing what a studio space of your own might do for you…
Take Time to Make with Anna Baer
Why is it so difficult to just. make. art? We know how much we love it and how it feeds our soul. We know it makes us better in a multitude of ways, but sometimes even the thing we love the most can feel like a massive effort.
I talk to Anna Baer, aka Olive Green Anna, about this. We talk about her mad skills – in creating art, in getting others to make art, and in pep talking directly to the heart.
I wanted to get together to talk about her latest offering, the Take Time to Make at-home artist residency, mainly because I’m taking part in it. I also sneakily wanted to learn more about her as a human since she lives so close to me.
Our conversation lit me on fire. I loved hearing about how her process and seeing art as wildness in control; a way to see what comes out of her. We speak about destroying your own art in order to make space, removing the preciousness of supplies, making shit art, and where we put our worth as artists.
Grab your supplies and let us keep you company while you create…
Using Art to Narrate Your Journey with Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd
The podcast is back! And we’re jumping right into the deep end. We’re not talking about surface level art here, no no, you can’t really do that with my guest. Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd and I are talking about a way to get around how damn hard it is to put your inner heart into your art. Not just putting your likes and dislikes onto the page, not just your paper ephemera, and not just what you did that day (although all of those are great). We’re discussing V’s favourite technique for telling your story without it being draining.
Cause we all have issues. We all have a story that has led us to the point we’re at. We’re all still on a journey. It may be beautiful, it may be painful, it probably is raw. Art is very good at helping unload that weight. But it’s not necessarily easy to do.
We wanted to talk about the creative process of making an online class, but in true Vanessa fashion, we ended up talking about so much more than that.
I’m glad you could join us.
70 Ways to produce more than you consume
The focus of my life currently is this:
PRODUCE MORE. CONSUME LESS.
It’s a bold statement. With so much great stuff on the internet, and with it being so easy to be sucked into Pinterest, Instagram, blogs, and galleries, I’m needing to step back all the more. We consume so many things every day that actively trying to produce more than that is a big feat. There are two ways of doing it: either producing more than a hundred things per day, or drastically reducing how much you consume and making more than that number. I don’t want what I make to be influenced by someone else’s. I don’t want to be comparing how much I make. I don’t want to be making less because I’m too busy staring in awe at someone else’s stuff. I want my Ideas book to be a to do list and I want to get. shit. done.
There are a million reasons why I want to consume less and the number one reason is to produce more. I want to make a lot of stuff. I want to make up for lost time. I want to record all my memories before I lose them. I want to make a whole bunch of rubbish stuff so that I can get to making the good stuff.
And so I made an action plan. Here are the ways that I’m shifting my default to producing instead of consuming.
