on retreat

I wanted to bring SoulCollageⓇ materials with me on retreat but couldn't do so easily or restrainedly. Once here, though, I found a couple of magazines and set to tearing out images. On our last afternoon of silence, without any glue I just arranged some images on the desk and photographed them.

The card features our retreat house, three different pictures of wheat fields awaiting harvest (close-up shots of heads of grain), and a woman sitting in a field calmly looking into the distance. There's also a small boy at a desk with a pair of scissors.

"I am one who is [pretty much] at peace. I have been given the gift of a couple days of silence, and have been able to rest. I've largely avoided the temptation to try to be what I am not, and although there have been a few nerves I am feeling fairly confident: ready, prepared, accepted."

update: The arrangement I photographed turned out to be considerably larger than my other cards. I still have the original photograph in my i-pad app, but I have also used four of the six original images to make a physical SoulCollageⓇ card of the same size as my other ones. 

Wikipedia

A while back, I looked up Seena Frost on Wikipedia and was a little shocked that she wasn't there. In fact, there seemed to be nothing about SoulCollage(R) there at all. So... I wrote an entry. It turned out to be a lot more work than I expected it to be, and to take a lot longer to get it approved than I had (naively) expected. But it's now up and available!

screenshot, 21 May 2014

Frankly, I'm annoyed at the "needs additional citations" flag, since I went to great lengths to cite just about every single thing I said. For understandable reasons, but irritatingly, Wikipedia prefers to have citations link to objective and published books rather than internet sites, so I worked hard tracking down authors to supplement Seena's own writing. I thought I'd cinched it, and so that "citations" flag really grates. But still, I'm glad my entry has been approved and is up.

Please go have a look, so it gains some international hits and looks useful. :)

trial workshop

A belated report on my trial workshop. Yes, that's in the singular, I'm afraid. It turns out I had messed up the timing of the first one by mis-reading a Facebook poll. It's so irritating that I'm just not going to say any more about that.

Except that I've promised to reschedule it. Happily, at least two people said they had really been looking forward to it. Moreover, two people heard about these trial workshops through the grapevine and said they were really keen, too. So I may have a third workshop on the horizon already... if I can find the time.

But it was good to do a trial run with close friends. Here's my set-up for the IAOW, which was our first activity after opening the workshop with a short meditation/prayer.

One of my big mistakes was setting this IAOW up on the same table I planned to use for card-making later. The reason? Two different participants set their chosen photos back down on this table, and I swept them up along with all the others in clearing space for our cardmaking! Oh no! They had to rummage through to find them again. 

I tried to give far too much information, even though I managed to keep my "lecture" to about fifteen minutes. So people were left a bit confused. But they got down to making cards, and three of my four participants reported afterwards that this was their favourite part of the event. 

Well, one answered in a way that suggested a blend of making and interpreting the card. The highlight for the fourth person was hearing what the others said about their images and cards. And that's a good answer to one of the questions I was asked - namely, if we shouldn't offer interpretations of other people's cards, nor advice, how is it a communal activity? 

There's more I could say but I'll stop here for now. It was a good learning experience for me, and I feel the others enjoyed it despite my beginner's mistakes.

making a start on backing my cards

Both these papers are free downloads from Activity Village (I've mentioned them already, in this post). Both designs are actually from their Chinese New Year collection. I've used the one with bunnies and fish for my Companion cards and the cloud design for my Transpersonal cards.

Ash Wednesday SoulCollage® (linked post)

Here's another SoulCollage® blog post that I found encouraging and inspirational. 


Ash Wednesday SoulCollage®: It seems the grace of the Mass and the message of Lent was still in full effect when I sat down to make the card.

Evolution of a Warrior (linked post)

I came across this blog post about a week ago, and felt I had to share it straightaway with the others who trained with me as SoulCollage® Facilitators. What a wonderfully encouraging story! I'm grateful to this blogger for being so open. It put a huge smile on my face to read her story of growth.

Heart In SoulCollage®: Evolution of a Warrior: My battle-scarred Inner Warrior had grown out of that need to protect Lost Child... I knew I needed to make a new card to represent my inner warrior...

free backing designs

The prototypical SoulCollage®  deck contains four-plus-one suits of cards - the Committee, the Council, the Community, and the Companions. There are also three Transpersonal cards (that's the "plus-one"), which are rather different. If you are using suits (which is not a requirement), it's handy to put a backing paper onto your cards so you can easily pick out a card from a certain suit without knowing in advance which particular card you are choosing.

Even if you aren't using the suits you might choose to back your cards if you are using upcycled cardboard (e.g. boxes made of non-corrugated cardboard) for the cards!

"SoulCollage® does not advocate copying or infringing on the copyrighted work of others in any way", (this is a statement taken direct from the Principles of SoulCollage®) so I think many people use wrapping paper to back their cards. But one woman who trained with me told the story of going back to the store when she needed more and not being able to find that pattern anymore! It occurred to me to hunt for free scrapbook backgrounds online, and download some to use as SoulCollage backgrounds. Since they're free and intended for sharing it seemed the perfect solution to me.

Here are some sites I've found useful:

• Activity Village Scrapbook Paper
• Freebies from Papercraft Inspirations Magazine
• the Crafticious blog
• (the last link is to Halloween (!) resources, but there's no reason a pretty-coloured web needs to be saved only for Halloween)

First Post

I was recently trained as a SoulCollage® Facilitator, and for the short term, this blog is a way of keeping track of links I come across... but of course it will likely also serve as a way of recording some of my experiences - in SoulCollaging, in Facilitating SoulCollaging for others, and related activities.

The birth mother of SoulCollage® is Seena Frost, and she's written a comprehensive guide called SoulCollage® Evolving. She has also made a number of videos, and there's an official website.