Hello from the Other Side

What I've been up to since April

Sunlight filtering through an urchin test held between my fingers, showing a texture of bumps and dots. Blurry trees and seaweed covered rock in the background.

Hello again! It’s has been a long, long, time since my last post, I know! So, if you are actually reading this I want to say thank you and I appreciate it.

You are probably wondering what happened or maybe you are just joining me and had no clue my last post was in April! In either case, I want to drop a very short post to let you know I’m still “here” and still making art. I also have some exciting announcements.

In short, what happened is this: back in April, the week after I published my last post, I attended Camp Thundercraft, a weekend retreat for creative people who also want to create and run a small creative business. I came home with a clearer sense of what kind of business I wanted. I intended to write about this right away but failed. I came home with a clearer understanding, not a certain understanding. And since I wanted to be able to write a “grand opening” type of post to announce my exciting new project, I kept putting off writing about it week after week. In hind sight, that was my good pal Perfectionism getting in the way again. This newsletter is supposed to focus on the process, after all! I’m sharing this with you because I’m banking on the belief that it helps us all to be open about this messy journey we call a creative life.

A woman (me) wearing an orange T-shirt, blue puffy vest, green sweater and a handmade necklace featuring a small embroidery hoop medallion decorated with an underwater motif of fishes, rocks, seaweed, fish eggs, and reads “ALMA” in the center

I still haven’t figured everything out about my business but I do have some things that I can celebrate as stepping stones having been crossed and significant tasks having been completed that are appropriate and timely for me to announce.

First, I now have a business name and website: A Wild Braid at www.awildbraid.com. A Wild Braid is about combining or “braiding” my loves of nature, journaling about nature, being creatively inspired by nature and teaching into one “wild” braid.

Second, I started a second publication with Substack to share my practice of keeping a nature journal. It is called A Wild Braid Nature Journal. It seemed the least confusing to have one publication focused on my creative journey and a separate publication about my nature journal, though in reality, the two are closely intertwined. I abstract colors, shapes, textures from nature and put them into my art but this activity is essentially an extension of the connection to nature that I am cultivating. I will sketch and paint plain air and note weather and biological observations which feeds my life as a naturalist but all that sketching and painting are also skills practice and creative experimentation.

An example of art inspired by my love of seaweed. Watercolor on Arteza spiral-bound cold press 300gsm paper.

I have two major goals moving forward. One is to produce a tide pool themed calendar in time for the holidays. The second is to launch a nature journaling workshop for beginners. Stay tuned!

Beside the hurdle of perfectionism, another reason for the long gap in writing is that I’ve simply been having a lot of fun! I enjoyed my first season as a volunteer beach naturalist for the Seattle Aquarium, spent a week away with family, went camping, went canoeing, went sailing and did lots and lots of beach walking, woods walking, bird watching, and nature journaling. I also did a podcast interview with Bethan Burton of Journaling with Nature! If you are interested in listening it’s Episode #97. It’s available wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you would like to check out photos of my many nature walks and sketches in my nature journal you can find them on Instagram. I am @alma.walks.in.nature.

As always, thank you for reading!

Sincerely,

Alma