I am crazy with excitement about 2016 and I just can't hold it in any longer. I've been dying to tell you all about my plans to revise and revive my Book-in-a-Day project. If you've been following along, then you know that I made 52 handmade books in 2013 and then another 12 in 2014. That's 64 books!!! 

Then this year (2015) I didn't get a chance to make as many books as I wanted -- heck, I'm not sure I made any books, really. I can't let that happen again in 2016 so I decided to revisit the way I do Book-in-a-Day and here's what I decided...

• Creative journaling is such a large part of what keeps me sane, centered, and inspired, so there MUST be art journaling during the new and improved Book-in-a-Day.
• Making 12 books in a year is totally doable and less stressful than 52 a year. 
• Instead of randomly making a book, I'm going to plan it out and intentionally use each handmade art journal to document, experiment, excavate, learn, grow, heal, and transform. I'm going to use my art journals to journey within myself as a way to empower myself to live the best life possible. 
• Creativity is much more fun when you bring along a friend or two. 

With all of those revelations, I decided to create a year long experience/adventure for myself and others who want to join in the fun, then I invited 18 of my artsy pals to help me out by sharing their amazing creative process each month. 

I'm calling it The Journey Within: A Year of Handmade Art Journals and it starts January 1st. Here's what the class is all about in a nutshell: 

• We will make a different handmade art journal each month. I'll provide exclusive tutorials for 12 books (different from the 64 I've created on YouTube). 
• PDFs
• Monthly Themes / Weekly prompts / Daily Challenges
• Art journaling video tutorials from me and 3 other teachers each month. 
• A monthly virtual LIVE interactive creative session with me, the teachers, and the other participants in the class.
• Loads of laughing, growing, sharing, support, and creative encouragement.

I will reveal the teachers tomorrow - TUESDAY DEC. 1st, but I had to tell you what I'm planning because I'm inviting you to join me. I'm inviting you to be in community with me and 18 AMAZING women who understand the power of the art journal as a tool for transformation. 

Of course there will be a blog hop so you can meet the 18 guest artists. It's going to be a little different than most blog hops, so stay tuned for that. Yes!! There will be give-a-ways and challenges and creativity. The blog hop starts December 1st, so mark your calendar and come back here to join in the fun. 

Registration for the class officially opens on Dec. 1st. AND that same day I'll be on BLAB.im talking with a few of the teachers at 2:30PM Eastern, so be sure to join us and hear all about the class, our creative processes, and ask us questions. 

 I sure hope you are as excited about this journey as I am. 
OH
EM
GEE
We are gonna have a blast. 
See you back here tomorrow for more information and the list of guest artists. 

So it only took me 3 years, but I've finally created a new trailer for my YouTube channel. It's not fancy, just me and my camera and iMovie, but I'm very proud of it. What do you think? 

I love Novembers for lots of reasons, but this year, I'm especially loving the month because I'm playing in my Pentalic Watercolor Journal for Art Everyday Month.

So far, I've made it to day 8 and I've been really free with what I draw. I've had a crazy year with moving and not doing Book-in-a-Day this year, so I wanted to make AEDM super simple so I would want to come back to it everyday for 30 days. 

Are you creating this month? How's it going for you? 

Here are my first 8 pages for the month. Make sure we are following each other on Instagram (@kialagives).  See you there. 

 I recently found one of my older art journals from a couple of years ago and flipping through it has reconnected me to so many wonderful lessons and reminded me how much I've transformed. Not just transformation in my art, but in my personal life as well. That's one of the things I love about art journaling. It gives us a place to document our growth as humans, and to do it in a way that includes lots of fun art supplies. 

For example, this page - TRUST -- was created on a day when I was exploring some of the reasons I have trust issues. What you can't see is the first two layers of handwritten journaling. I don't remember what I wrote word for word, but I know the first layer was pencil and I was free-writing about my life long trust issues and then that turned into a Sharpie where I made a list of all the people in my life who have betrayed my trust and, in some cases, broken my heart. This went back as early as elementary school. 

Eventually, I wrote about how I see myself in the exchange and what role I might be playing in all of my trust issues. I remember writing the line -- "Are my trust issues a self-fulfilling prophesy?" And this is when the transformation started to happen. It's when I realized that I had to own my issue with trust and seriously look at what role I was playing in all of it. 

My art journal helped me get to a place of self-awareness. I had to move past the surface stuff like: 

• That person hurt me.
• People keep hurting me. 
• I can't trust anyone.
• and on, and on, and on. 

Creating this page forced me to face some hard realities and then move past them in a way that allowed me to start my healing process. I wanted to be able to trust again because in this world of so much disconnection from what matters, I still believe in humans and the good that resides in each of us. I'm a bit sappy that way, I guess.

Art journaling is how I work through my "stuff" and it's how I play with art supplies, practice, and explore in order to discover what's right there in front of me (or sometimes, what's hidden deep beneath the surface).

What about you? What things have you been able to discover (and uncover) about yourself through your art journal? Leave me a note below!!!