Exquisite & Delicate - The Journals of Derika Volpi

This coming Saturday, 17 September, I am very excited to be hosting a visual journaling workshop at the Play Café which will be taught by my wonderful friend and artist, Derika Volpi.  She holds a BA (Fine Arts) degree in Information Design, and is passionate about hand lettering, typography, layout, sketching and photography.  Have a look at her instagram profile (@derikavol) and you'll see what I mean!

Derika's visual journals as well as her photography highlights all the wonderful detail that most of us tend to overlook when we see beautiful big landscapes or when we travel to new and unknown places. We are so often overwhelmed and taken by everything that is "bigger and better" that we lose so much of the exceptionally beautiful detail that surrounds us.  This is a theme that keeps emerging in much of her work.

She prefers to work in small and portable formats mostly. As a busy home-schooling mother of 2, many of her journal pages are done in her tiny A6 Moleskine Diary - which is a practice that she has inspired me to follow too.  She believes in a minimalist approach to art materials.  Derika's pages are often a combination of 3 elements only - collage, sketches and hand lettering.




She adores paper and prefers to use old labels, postage stamps, pages from old journals, vintage book papers, even the patterned insides of used envelopes as well as tiny seeds and leaves discovered during nature trips - which she loves taking with her family.

During the workshop, she will be guiding us through the creation of tiny journals made with recycled papers, and also introduce us to her unique style elements as we create our own visual journal pages.

Message me if you'd like to attend - and I'll forward you the details.

Here's a sneek peak into some of her wonderful journals:

My Visual Journals got some Press!

I am elated to share this news! Drum roll please...!

A prominent South African magazine, Lééf (an Afrikaans word meaning "to live life to the full"), contacted me to write an article about my visual journals and the practice of keeping a visual journal.
Spending time with the magazine's editorial team was a wonderful experience and I was inspired by their enthusiasm.

The concept of keeping a visual journal as an effective tool for maintaining emotional and spiritual well-being and nurturing creativity is still relatively unknown over here, you see.
Although information and awareness about it is slowly expanding.
Of course I'm doing my bit too - whether people want to know about it or not!
As a passionate visual journalist it is impossible NOT to talk about it!
I am so excited that this opportunity came along because it allowed me to get the word out on a much grander scale.


The article is currently featured in the January 2015 issue.

You can view it at 50 seconds in the attached magazine flip video.

 Alternatively you can download the digital issue on Zinnio.com or on iTunes.  

It is available in Afrikaans only.

We're taking a Dream Journey in 2014....are you coming?

It was a glorious summer day.  

With great excitement, my friend Sonja and I presented our second and final workshop for the year.  We were surrounded by majestic horses, cajoling bushbuck, trees of glowing greens 

and the sweetest of birdsong.  

And just as we concluded the day - the blessing of soft and cooling rain. 

We made our own journals.  

We reflected.  

There were things that were holding us back from reconnecting 

to our heartsongs.

So first we had to give ourselves permission to listen.

Then we made maps of our 

life stories. 

Because in order to understand the journeys that our hearts 

are leading us on, 

we need to make sense of 

where we have been.  

And where we are now.  

And so the journey of rediscovering our hearts have started.  

A Dream Journey. 

 There's so much more 

to come in 2014.  

Are you courageous enough to join?