Making Art with Meaning
Welcome! I’m so glad you’ve come by!
Hello, I’m Valerie, artist, designer, art journaling instructor and inspirer.
Art making is a key way I processing life, helping me through hard times in life as well as celebrating the sweet times. It’s a journey of beautiful learning and I love sharing this artful life journey with others.
As you visit here, my hope is that you will find inspiration for your creative journey. In the drop-down menu you will find: art journals, video tutorials, stencils, and art courses. There is a taste of those below on this page. Check out my inspirational blog and you can sign up for the latest updates and most recent postings.
Recently, I’ve added artwork available for licensing, and am excited about venturing into the creative adventure of surface pattern design. Below is a sampling of the patterns. You can check out more in the drop-down menu under licensing.
Pattern & Image Licensing Design Sampler
A Sampling of Patterns & Images Available for Licensing
Find out more!
Courses
Step-by-step Art techniques to inspire beauty & personal meaning
A Beautiful Word
This course walks you through the entire process of making an art journal, beginning with a sheet of watercolor paper and a word.
You'll learn how to dig deeper into a word, find quotes and Scripture online, look for a font that goes with the word, experiment with colors to decide on a color palette, and loosely plan what goes where. Then moving on to making the journal itself - filling it with beauty and meaning and bringing it to completion with the techniques shown in the videos.
The possibilities for a journal like this are endless. The journals below were all made in a similar way to the WORDS journal I’ll be demonstrating in during this course
In the art tutorial journaling videos, it is as if you are standing over my shoulder as I make the journal.
It is designed for you to bring your own word and journal ideas, but you could also follow along and make a similar journal to the one I'm making. The techniques are demonstrated as part of the process making the 'WORDS' journal.
Improve your painting skill while celebrating the wonder of birds. In this course you can! There are 7 step-by-step video lessons with bird themed of eggs, birds, feathers, and nests. Have fun and learn how to paint realistically and expressively with acrylics on a variety of surfaces and backgrounds: watercolor sheet/journal, wood board or canvas, sheet music (thin paper.)
Keys to Drawing Celtic Knots &Illumination
To see a flip through of the ‘Be Thou my Vision’ journal click here to visit the course page and scroll down to view the video.
Join me on this creative and spiritual journey as we learn easy ways to draw Celtic knots, designs & lettering as we travel through the Celtic Christian hymn ‘Be Thou My Vision.’ This online retreat includes nearly 24 hours of edited video, including 20 downloadable video lessons with multiple videos showing start-to-finish how to create 20 illuminated pages for each phrase of the hymn ‘Be Thou my Vision.’ Over 20 downloadable PDF page layouts of the illuminated pages. Some additional PDFs with visual/written instructions. 20 video devotionals, around 10 minutes each, to go along with the phrase of the week. 20 downloadable devotional PDFs with Scripture, “Heart-full” questions and spiritual exercises to inspire you to grow deeper in your walk with God.