Happy Earth Day! Today I had the pleasure of facilitating a Creativity Class at Carefree Senior Apartments. We focused on sending love energy from within out to our home planet Earth. What better way to express our love for our home planet than by creating an upcycled mandala out of recycled magazines, right?

I love how the random wedges can be arranged revealing how interconnected we humans are with nature. In one slice of the circle there might be part of the image of a building and right next to it is a field of wildflowers. I asked the participants to reflect on thoughts about how we humans impact our environment through our creations. By creating this mandala, each person was able to better appreciate how interconnected everything is.

I even had the pleasure of having my own parents participate in the class with me! Yay, for Mom and Dad Kelso! What beautiful mandalas, too!

Give one a try, they really do make you think about your own relationship with nature.  Start by randomly cutting out wedges from magazine photos. I chose pages that showed man-made objects as well as natural objects. You can glue them down to a piece of blank paper or (in the case of this workshop) black construction paper. As you arrange the wedges in to your mandala, notice how the images, colors and textures contrast with or compliment one another. Use a glue stick to paste them into place. Feel free to trim the edges as you want to.

You may notice how words seem to appear just in the right place at the right time as you create. There is a magical synergy that happens when you are in the “creating zone,” so stay open to surprises and happy accidents. Please comment below about any observations you had during the exercise. I’d love to hear about it!

Although I always remind participants that my workshops are more about the process than the final product, I can’t help but love these final products. Every one of them had a unique character of its own.

Wishing you a magical synergetic Earth Day!

Your Creativity Coach,