Healing Art Challenge: Gratitude

Whatever our individual troubles and challenges may be, it is important to pause every now and then to appreciate all that we have, on every level.  We need to literally "count our blessings," give thanks for them, allow ourselves to enjoy them, and relish the experience of prosperity we already have.

~Shakti Gawain

I am so excited about our theme this week!  For one, I think gratitude is by far the most crucial act towards living a life of balance, happiness, and healing.  As John Henry Jowett said, it is a "vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic."  Secondly, I'm excited to finally put into use something I picked up at a thrift store months and months ago.  This was a wooden photo stand that I gessoed, painted and spattered.

I watercolored my own papers and cut them to size to fit inside the photo sleeves.

I collected lots of wonderful quotes about the importance of gratitude and being thankful, then copied these on half of my cards.

Now the big task is filling in all the other cards with things I am thankful for. I found I got a wonderful variety if I tried to alternate between the different senses. I have twenty cards to fill up so this is going to be a project! But it'll be fun to flip through or give to a friend.

So here's your challenge for this week, make any type of gratitude creation!  It could be a photo, a doodled list like mine, an abstract painting, a piece of music that you play and send it to me at friendsinhealing@gmail.com.  Please put in the title line "Healing Art Challenge:  Gratitude."  If you need a little inspiration, feel free to pop me an email and I'll be happy to pass along one of the gratitude quotes I collected.  Please email your piece to me buy Thursday, November 25 at 12 pm CST time.  Yes, that's Thanksgiving Day here in the states!  Have a glorious week of creating! ♥