Yes, I’m getting ruthless! Which has everything to do with my important announcement.
This episode is an expansion of this post, which started out as an email to my calligraphy subscribers.
The show notes are minimal today, which will all become clear when you listen to the episode…
My Creative Sandbox Community members have been up to something pretty cool that I’m excited to share with you:
We’re producing an adult coloring book!
As I wrote in the book’s introduction,
This book is a labor of love and courage, a collaborative project and gift to you from seventeen members of a very special group: the Creative Sandbox Community.
It’s a labor of love, because we are selling the book at cost—none of us is making a profit from our work. It was a fun project for us to undertake, and it feels good to be able to gift our creativity to you.
It’s a labor of courage, because sharing creative work can be scary, even for self-defined artists, and not everyone who contributed would define herself as an artist!
Those who contributed despite their fears did so because inside the Creative Sandbox Community we practice creative courage. We do this, first, by sharing our creations inside our private Facebook group—artwork, writing, music, and anything else we create. Even inside this safe container, sharing creative efforts can be scary at first, but the way to get over fears is to do the very thing that scares you. And here’s a secret: the more you do something, the more normal it becomes. [Click to tweet!]
Eventually, sharing inside our sacred space on Facebook starts to feel easy and normal, which means it’s time to seek out bigger pastures—like this book.
And yikes! That’s scary, because it’s new.
But we encourage and champion each other, and I specifically set up this project as an opportunity for each of us to practice imperfectionism: forgiving ourselves for being human. I’m thrilled that these seventeen members all decided to contribute, in spite of any fears. That is creative courage at work.
Get the Poster!It’s a colorful, hand-lettered version of my Imperfectionist Manifesto, combined with my Creative Sandbox Manifesto, so you get two posters in one!
It’s ready for printing and posting on your wall where you can consult it daily (I sure do!) Just click the link to download:
We’re at the final stages of getting the book laid out, and just starting to tackle the technical hurdles of dealing with ISBN codes, CreateSpace and Amazon, having a proof made, etc.
It’s a lot of work, and I will be SO glad when it’s done, and the book is out in the world for you to play with.
So why on earth would I title this episode “The Dangers of Coloring Books”? [Read more…]
