Our Create with Me! Community has been creating Artist Trading Cards (ATC's) for an exchange. We want to invite you to be a part of the exchange. You do not need to be a part of the Create with Me! Community, you just need to enjoy creating.

If you would like to take part, even if you have not joined us or do not know what ATC's are, everyone is welcome.

So, what are Artist Trading Cards or ATC's?

According to Wikipedia...Artist trading cards (ATCs) are a conceptual art project initiated by the Swiss artist M. Vänçi Stirnemann in 1997. He called it a Collaborative Cultural Performance. Artist trading cards are 21⁄2 by 31⁄2 inches (64 mm × 89 mm) in size, the same format as modern trading cards (hockey cards or baseball cards). They are self-made unique works or small series, signed and dated on the reverse by the artist/producer, exchanged and collected by the people who...

I embrace everyone I encounter. Being open to people’s differences encourages a sense of community.

Having a sense of community means being open to collaboration. I know that sharing thoughts with others is a great way to arrive at ideal solutions.

Working with others allows each person to contribute their strengths. The collection of attributes builds a team that is stronger than each individual member. I embrace the value that other minds bring to the table.

I learn to remain humble when I expose myself to the strengths of others. I realize that each person brings something special to this world we live in. My openness to learning about what someone else offers reminds me to acknowledge their worth.

When there is a community of friends around me, I feel safe. Knowing that there are people to rely on gives me the confidence to go confront tough situations.

I contribute to the sense of togetherness by showing appreciation to others. I take the time to let others know that...

Getting into a creative routine to improve your physical and mental health, might be something you have overlooked. There are some serious benefits for all concerned when you do this. 

For instance, children improve their self-confidence and self-esteem, by engaging in regular creativity programs. Adults still in the workforce can look forward to reduced stress and depression. As for seniors they too get the same benefits as the folks in the workforce, plus the added benefit of brain exercise.

There are a number of stress factors for adults and each one brings its own issues. By engaging in a creative routine, adults will notice that they become more relaxed in life. One of the main reasons is the healthy chemical that gets released by the brain during these pleasurable creative pursuits. The chemical dopamine is a big ally in the fight against stress and depression. It is believed to create feelings of joy and excitement while making a person become more productive. 

...

I follow ‘Leonie Dawson’ who follows ‘Meet Me at Mikes’. Meet Me at Mike’s shared a taking stock exercise, and Leonie loved it and so she shared it. When I saw it, I also loved it and I am sharing it with you today. This will now be my new weekly check-in. Don’t worry I won’t bore you each week (just this week) with what I am up to, but it is a great tool for reminding ourselves what we accomplish and the changes we are making.

I love the sharing of ideas, I love how we create, collaborate, tweak and build on what we see around us. It is one of my favorite things about the Create with Me! Sessions. I love seeing what everyone is working on, I love trying new things. I have found so many great new art supplies, and suppliers, from those times together.

Taking Stock

Making: I have been working a lot in my art journals, making new pages, trying new techniques.

Getting: One exciting thing I got this week was the Oracle of the 7 Energies Deck by...

I know, you’re as tired of Covid as I am. For months, we’ve all had to deal with the constant threat of illness, layoffs, and deaths while being denied our typical coping strategies like social gatherings, eating out, and family holidays. It’s led to widespread emotional exhaustion that has a name: COVID fatigue.

Covid fatigue hurts more than our mental health. It puts our physical health at risk, too. Covid fatigue causes us to get sloppy about the precautions we know we should take like washing hands, wearing masks, and maintaining physical distance. As we enter the second year of this the exhaustion is paramount.

So What is Covid Fatigue?

Like any stressor, Covid causes our bodies to respond with what is known as the fight-or-flight response (which despite the name is four possible responses):

1. Fight (resist the threat)
2. Flight (evade the threat)
3. Freeze (become paralyzed in the face of the threat)
4. Faun (give in to the threat)

Stresses are not supposed to be...

Do you feel like you lack imagination? Do you struggle to create or to find solutions to the challenges in your life? It’s possible you’re suffering from a few creativity-blocking obstacles. By identifying the obstacles in your path, you can find ways to work around them. 

Eliminate the creativity blockers from your life:

1.   A cluttered mind makes creativity a challenge. Have you ever noticed that your best ideas come when you’re alone? You’re either being quiet or doing something very routine, like driving on a low-traffic road or taking a walk. It’s hard to get the creative juices flowing when you have too much going on.

Find time to sit in silence, spend time with yourself, meditate, go for a walk, journal, take a bath. These are all important self-care techniques that will also help you boost your creativity. Want a great start to your day come meditate, and journal with a community of women who are on their own healing journeys.

2. ...

This past week in our Morning Calm Program we were talking about personal power, and I wanted to share some ways that we as women tend to give our power away. As much as it feels good to give, that's never true for your personal power. 

• Being Passive

The only time it is acceptable to be passive is when you really don’t care. Letting people treat you like a doormat will drain your energy. Have enough personal power to stand up for yourself. Otherwise, people will keep on putting you down. 

Practice saying no to the little things and it will get easier for the big things. Let your voice be heard. This can sometimes feel scary, again try with smaller things, like what you would like to eat for dinner, and work your way up to the larger things.

• Giving Your Inner Critical Voice Mind Space

Be aware of your consciousness because that's the critic that will drain you the most and keep on taking. If you find this becoming problematic,...

Do you feel like your emotions are complicated and confusing? If you struggle to understand why you feel or react the ways you do, you might benefit from using a journal. Journaling can help you appropriately identify and express your feelings to increase self-understanding. 

Once you learn to identify and deal with your feelings in acceptable ways, you have truly mastered self-understanding. By simply jotting down what's going on with you and how you feel about it, you can get a handle on your emotions.

Writing your feelings in a journal helps increase self-understanding in four ways:  

1. Journaling compels you to think about and process a particular situation or occurrence. When you write about an event, you automatically process the event through words and description. Recording the situation in writing can lead you to notice details you hadn't noticed when the event took place, thus increasing your insight about the situation.

• While journaling, put aside other...

Not feeling well? Kind of blah and wishing you had something better to say about the day than a mumbled ‘fine’ when someone asks you how you are? The solution might be simpler than you think.

Our attitudes really are everything. When we’re not feeling great about our lives or how the day is going, everything can seem to go wrong. The problem is, life isn’t a steady thing. You might have one really good day followed by another equally bad. With so many things outside of your control from the weather to politics it might seem impossible to ever truly feel good about anything.

The answer lies in your thinking. By being able to think positively, you will find your entire outlook changes. 

How do you develop the habit of positive thinking?

Rephrase

The obvious answer is to use more positive words. Instead of saying something negative, either out loud or in your head, try to find a better way to say things. For example, work isn’t grueling so much as it...

Authenticity is to be true to one’s personality and character. It means you’re willing to show the world who you really are. You’re willing to live the life that you were meant to live. Authenticity is the ability to show your uniqueness to the world.

There are very few authentic people in the world, but you know them when you see them.

We’re naturally drawn to authentic people. We feel comfortable with those that are willing to be themselves.

Use these strategies to live a more authentic life and show the world the real you:

1. Know your values. What’s important to you? Make a list of every quality you think is important for a person to have. Now, put that list in order. What are your five top values? When you know your values, the authentic choice in any situation is more obvious than when you don’t know your values.

2. Stop doing things you don’t want to do. You still need to pay your bills and take out the trash. However, you don’t...