Mess

 Making a mess has never been hard for me.

I seem to come by it naturally.

I love to get my hands dirty, I have a high threshold for mess in my surroundings, and the messier my art is, the more I like it.

What doesn't come so easily is being part of a group.

I never participate in the "classroom" when I take on-line classes.

I prefer to work on my own and keep it to myself.
 

But when Lisa Wright started a free book group based on this book, I had to join. 

How could I resist?

And instead of just adding my posts to the occasional Mr. Linky, I went and joined the Facebook group and have pushed myself to contribute.

(eek!  social interaction!)

The book is fun.  Lots of prompts and challenges to make a mess right inside the book.

Here's a few things I've done:

Drew something  with watercolor crayons and left the book out in the rain

 It didn't smear enough for my liking, so when it was still wet I scraped inktense blocks over the page and then smooshed the book shut:

I also spilled coffee in my book and turned it into doodles:

Wrote with my toes:

 Did some paint smooshing and then ripped out one of the pages and used it to scrub the sink:

 And then I drizzled glazing medium all over the wet page, and scraped some chalk pastels onto it and topped it off with a healthy dose of glitter.  I'll stick it back in the book when it's finally dry.

 and since I was on a roll, I poured mod podge all over some scrap paper and dumped my pencil sharpener onto it.  I'll be adding something else to this for sure.

Some of the self-professed perfectionists in the group are freaking out over these exercises and are pushing themselves waaaay out of their comfort zones.

Not me.

 I'm challenging myself with social interaction instead.

and I admit, the facebook group is reeaallly fun.

Since the object of the book is not to make art, there's none of that "my stuff isn't good enough" feeling.  There's also none of that "my stuff looks like everyone else's stuff, which looks exactly like the teacher's stuff" syndrome.  Everyone's mess is messy.  Everyone's mess is different. Everyone's having fun.

So now that I'm forcing myself out of my reclusive shell, I'm going to strongly suggest (ok, beg) you come keep me company.

You can find more about the book group here: