Teaching journal play, and a Christmas song

At the end of October I taught a journaling class to a group of fabulous people, some of whom I'd met at New Wine this summer.  It was an amazing day.

There was a huge range of experience amongst the group of fifteen - some people didn't consider themselves 'crafty' at all, others brought yummy stencils and inks along with them as they were already confident 'crafters'.  Art journaling was new to almost everyone.

Unfortunately I only took a couple of photos.  I get so caught up in teaching I forget to take them!!

I'm sure I've said this before, but one of the things I love about teaching is seeing people move from being fearful of the paint, the white page etc, to having a great time just playing, and discovering how free-ing and relaxing this is.

We all started with an A3 piece of paper which we folded into a little book then journaled on each page.  I worked on a few pages as samples for the day, adding in extra pages and tags [by the way, that coloured 'ribbon' was white, I just sprayed it with Dylusions to get the colour I wanted - much easier than taking lots of different coloured ribbons to a workshop!!]

I still have some pages left to work on... 

...but I've been mad busy at work and I think I'm using all my creative juices up in the classroom!  I've just finished a sheep costume and a spider costume for the song we're singing as part of the nativity play.  Yes, a spider, I'm sure there must have been spiders in the stable.  I wrote new words to Blondie/One Direction's song 'One way or another'

[WARNING: linking these lyrics to the tune may cause that tune to stay in your head for a looooooooooooooooooooooong time!!]

Down in, in the stable

Who will we see there

with baby Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus?

Down in, in the stable

Who will we see there

with baby Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus? (rpt numerous times!!)

Donkey, spider and cat

Dog, mouse, sheep and a rat

Let's see who's around!

Down in, in the stable

Who will we see there

with baby Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus?  etc

Last year I put new words to Mamma Mia, which has taken some matching, but I'm pleased with the result, especially since we can sign a lot of this song easily!!