Relaxing Into Spring
Arting and Stress Reduction +
Free Coloring Sheets!
April is National Stress Awareness Month, which is an opportunity to raise awareness about the impact of stress on our lives and to promote healthy coping strategies. One such strategy is art-making, which has been shown to reduce stress and improve overall well-being from dopamine to heart rate to even potentially lengthening one’s life! Art really does the body good, and I encourage all of you to give it some time during your days and weeks. It’s about the process and getting lost a bit outside of time on the intuitive side.
I’m kicking it off with a series of free coloring sheets you can download and print on you printer! If you want to use watercolor, I found that the presentation, matte paper worked well (though not as good as watercolor paper). You could do these with your family and honestly frame them easily, perhaps a bathroom art!
Mindful coloring is a popular way to reduce stress and anxiety. Choose a coloring book with intricate designs, and set aside some time each day to color mindfully. Focus on the present moment, and allow yourself to relax and unwind. I like to have a candle on too and sometimes some groovey new age music vibes like Anugama’s Shamanic Dream.
A note about the coloring sheets in this series: I make these in Midjourney where I use words to describe what I am imaging, and the AI program returns a series of images. Ones I like, I keep. It is a bit random and good results are a bit of luck and really good use of words. 🙂
Inkjet Paper for Watercolor
Example presentation I used for watercolors. This matte paper doesn’t buckle too much. Regular inkjet paper is fine for markers and dry media such as colored pencils and crayons
If you use these, I would love to see photos of your work and how you experienced it! Use #FloralPolarBearColoringSheet on your posts or tag me @jillyhop333. 🙂
I also am selling a pack of 13 images including this polar bear on my Etsy. Foxes, unicorns, ducks are among the animals featured: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1465403489/13-spring-coloring-sheets-mothers-day
Living A More Intentional Life
I love making things. I love creating space for others to make things. It's fun, it's healthy, and it enables us to more consciously wield our most important asset: our imagination. Our life is a reflection of what we imagine might be and taking action towards that....
November Update: new classes and products coming
I'm excited to be working on a number of products to support the Divine Feminine being born within ourselves and the world, and to support as we traverse these times. November classes include: Virtual intuitive painting for fun, exploring various techniques. Goal is...
Email Newsletter Archive
Competition is a false god.
Culture teaches us to compare ourselves to others, which immediately puts our reference point outside of ourselves, and we are no longer centered in our self. We are taught in fact that it is wrong to be centered in our self, i.e. being self-centered. So if true to...
Art Making Reduces Stress
A study demonstrated that cortisol levels lowered after 45 minutes of creating! Cortisol is the hormone linked to stress and made by the adrenal glands. One more reason to consider incorporating art into your daily life! Read Original Article
Welcoming in 2018
The wheel of the year offers us a way to organize and focus on how we work with rhythms, the sacred feminine of the spiral and tides and lunar orbital energies. I am including here a meditation the Spirits gave me for my last class Breathing Out 2017. They...
Community Painting for Healing House, Madison-area Urban Ministry
Delighted to do a live intentional creativity painting for a fundraiser for Healing House, a respite center coming in Madison Wisconsin for children and families without housing who need medical care and time to rest. Really important that we do this as a...
Dreaming in worlds. #todaysdoodle
x
Healing Needed
The healing needed in the feminine is so deep. Not only as victims but as perpetrators. How do we bring to the light what needs to be seen in order to be healed? And for us all to become whole? We cannot be whole without seeing what is and to own the junk as much as...
