Journaling & Sketchbooking
Writing & Memoir workshops
For more than 10 years, Lisa has helped people plan and organize their stories and find lively, meaningful and compelling ways to bring them to life.
She teaches beginning and intermediate memoir classes at the Paramount Center for the Arts, and has taught classes on A Writer’s Toolbox, Writing Through Tough Times, Travel Writing: Capture a Journey, and Freelancing 101 the Loft Literary Arts Center and the Great Regional Library.
She’s working on her own adoption-themed memoir and has been an active member of an inspiring writer’s group that includes published memoirists Patty Wetterling and Joy Baker, authors of Dear Jacob: A Mother’s Journey of Hope, and James Francisco Bonilla, author of An Eye for an I: Growing Up with Blindness, Bigotry, and Family Mental Illness.
Wet-felting and Hand-stitching
As a lifelong journal-keeper, Lisa guides people in finding fresh ways to nurture creativity, increase gratitude, listen better to their inner voices and practice good mental health through a variety of journaling approaches that include:
Nature Journaling
This offers a way to digitally detox by tuning into the outdoors and the change in sights, sounds and textures as we cycle through 72 micro-seasons each year. (And you thought there were only four!) This combination of sketching and writing encourages close observe plants, insects and animals, curiosity and a sense of wonder, and a deeper appreciation for nature that might inspire you to join citizen science communities such as iNaturalist.
Travel journaling
Take along a sketchbook while you travel or create one when you’ve return to create the ultimate trip souvenir. Writing out your adventures, sketching places, and tucking in phrases, itineraries, cultural information and favorite dining helps rekindle those memories every time you turn a page.
Visual journaling
With an approach similar to mind-mapping, Lisa brings visuals into her regular journals, as well, and has a presentation on keeping simple calendars, having a “brain-dump” page, an emotion explosion, current events, annual highlights, things that weigh you down and help you float, and other creative ways to process complicated feelings and events. A visual drawing of griefs during a difficult year in 1999 became life-changing, helping her move forward with adoption while also initiating a search for her biological father. Lesson learned: Words can work wonders, but sometimes drawings are needed, too.
Sometimes you just need something tactile to work on. Lisa offers classes in wet-felting, blending a variety of colors and different fibers for lively pieces. These can be pieced into pictures or ornaments and embellished with beads and colorful threads for one-of-a-kind creations.
