behold the power of a circle of women!
our group came from all over australia and the us to form a tribe of inspiring and open-hearted goddesses. my heart was bursting with gratitude for these women who took a leap, trusted in nicole and i, and made the huge effort to get themselves to bali for this week of self care and love. not knowing each other prior, they melted together and cared for one another in such a dear way and made hilarious and amazing memories that i'm pretty sure will last forever.
we began our retreat with a circle and individual intentions for the week and then dove into the creativity!
nicole and i each offered a workshop - mine was creating juicy colourful fabric prayer flags with lots of different stitchy, collagey, image transfer goodness, and nicole led us in the japanese art of shibori with both indigo and cochineal (hello ground up lice!) dye pots that had us all in a fluster of excitement running to our wardrobes for things to dye and setting record sales at the local scarf shop as it was so addicting to see what we could create by simply folding and stitching our fabrics.





our wish for this week was to provide space for slowing down, for noticing, for filling ourselves up creatively...and trusting ourselves to let happen whatever needed to happen...
our idyllic open air room was the heart of our retreat - where at any given time from dawn to midnight there would be huddles of artmaking - stitching, painting, journalling, bead making. we filled baskets with different gorgeous supplies for a smorgasboard of creativity - the energy and excitement surrounding all the possibilities was exhilarating!













a highlight for me was getting to make jewellery in a local silversmith studio in ubud. we split into smaller groups to spend an afternoon working with silver - there was total creative freedom to make whatever we wanted to - i had so many ideas it so tricky deciding what to make! really fun getting to use all the tools under the casual guidance of the 'two ketuts' who were there to handle the blowtorches with ease and um, fix our mess ups.

in one afternoon i proudly made a wonky ring for my man (who has lost a grand total of 8 wedding rings in our 15 years of marriage) - it started off saying 'love U' on the inside, but when i had finished somehow the 'l' had vanished. oh well, our love isn't perfect ;)...AND a cool pair of earrings for myself - woop!



i know this to be t r u e !
the entire week had me feeling so recharged creatively. so many artistic inspiring details in the landscape, architecture, graffiti, decor, food, fabrics, styling as well as having art supplies and creative people doing creative things surrounding me all day long. and no little people messing it up ;) being free to start a project (barefoot) and then take a break by jumping into the pool, enjoying a piƱa colada and flitting off to start another project! creative heaven. yep.
up tomorrow: food ! xo