Color as Medicine: Using Light & Hue to Heal Through Art

June 12, 2025June 3, 2025 Tina Biornstad-SzafranskiLeave a comment

Have you ever noticed how a soft blue can calm your nerves, or how a burst of yellow makes you feel awake and alive? That’s not just a coincidence. Color carries energy—and when we create with intention, color becomes a tool for healing.

Whether you’re crafting through chronic illness, processing grief, or simply craving a little more peace, today we’ll explore how to choose colors that support your emotional and creative well-being.

🎨 Why Color Matters:

Color psychology isn’t just for designers—it’s deeply personal. For trauma survivors and those navigating stress or fatigue, using light and hue can support self-expression when words are hard to find.

Color can help you:

Regulate emotions
Invite a desired feeling
Create sensory calm or joy
Reflect your inner experience

🧡 Try This: “Color Your Healing” Prompt

Choose one of these emotions:

Peace
Hope
Release
Strength
Joy

Now pick 2–3 colors that you feel when you think of that word.

💡 Example:

If your word is Hope, you might choose soft coral, pale yellow, and blush pink.
If your word is Strength, you might lean into deep navy, rust, and gold.

Now create:

A card
A journal page
A scrapbook layout background
Or even a simple tag or swatch set

Let the color tell the story.

Art speaks in ways our words sometimes can’t. And color gives voice to emotions we may not even fully understand yet. Whether you’re creating for release, expression, or just presence, trust the hues that call to you.

You are allowed to feel. You are allowed to heal. And you are allowed to do both… through color and creativity.

subscribe to my Monthly Creative Club and get guided color prompts each month plus project ideas, videos, and more.

You don’t need to know the rules—just show up and create with light.

creative expression · creative wellness · Everyday Joy · Healing through art · scrapbook · visual storytelling

Scrapbooking the Moments That Carried You

June 9, 2025June 3, 2025 Tina Biornstad-SzafranskiLeave a comment

We often think of scrapbooking as a way to capture birthdays, vacations, and major milestones. But some of the most powerful pages we’ll ever create are about the quiet, ordinary moments that carried us through—the ones where we felt seen, supported, or simply still breathing.

Today, let’s talk about how scrapbooking can become a healing ritual and a powerful act of storytelling when you’ve walked through trauma, illness, or grief.

💬 Why These Moments Matter:

When you’re recovering from something heavy—PTSD, cancer, chronic illness, loss—the smallest moments of light become sacred. A smile from a stranger. A morning with less pain. A handwritten note. A cup of tea.
📷 These are your milestones. These are pages worth preserving.

🖼️ How to Scrapbook These Memories:

Use soft colors like ivory, blush, pale blue, or gold to evoke gentleness.
Pair journaling with photos of objects or places that hold meaning (your favorite mug, sunrise, your dog curled up at your feet).
Layer textures—a torn edge, a vellum overlay, hand-stamped details—to represent healing and depth.
Include a short reflection: What did this moment teach you? How did it make you feel seen?

✨ Bonus Prompt:

Create a spread titled “What Carried Me” and list 3-5 moments from the past year that helped you keep going.

You don’t need a “perfect” life to scrapbook. You just need a heartbeat and a story. By capturing the beauty in your survival, your pages become both art and evidence—you were here, you felt deeply, you kept going.

Let your scrapbook become a celebration of light in the in-between.

Ready to start documenting your healing journey?
🧡 Join my 6×8 Weekly Sketch Club for templates, journaling prompts, and monthly healing themes. You’ll get instant access to a printable layout guide to start your first “What Carried Me” page.
Click here to subscribe!

creating · creative wellness · Healing through art

Why Repetition in Art Can Be Restorative

May 6, 2025April 21, 2025 Tina Biornstad-SzafranskiLeave a comment

Repetition often gets a bad rap—seen as boring or monotonous. But in creativity, repetition can actually be healing. Whether it’s stamping the same image, layering paper in similar ways, or journaling a repeated affirmation, repetition provides rhythm, grounding, and comfort. For those of us navigating trauma, chronic illness, grief, or stress, this rhythm can feel like a lifeline.

🌀 Why repetition works:
Repetition gives our brains a break from decision fatigue. It lets us sink into the flow, bypassing the critical voice that says “this isn’t good enough.” In fact, it can be a meditative creative practice.

🖌 Examples of restorative repetition in papercrafting:

Stamping the same image in a row with different ink tones
Using a grid format for journaling cards each week
Layering the same flower die cut in three tones of pink
Writing the same affirmation on every page of a mini album
Repetitive stenciling or embossing across backgrounds

“When I’m overwhelmed, I stamp a simple leaf image in a soft color over and over. It becomes almost prayer-like. I don’t need to think—just create.”

🌼 Why it helps with healing:

Anchors you in the moment
Creates safety through structure
Boosts confidence as small wins accumulate
Encourages mindfulness without pressure to innovate
Gently rewires neural pathways toward calm and joy

Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself—creatively, emotionally, or spiritually. In fact, that repetition may be exactly what your nervous system and soul need to feel safe and seen.

➡️ Want a space to explore repetition in your creative healing?

Grab my free Bloom Tracker to see how repetition builds creative momentum
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly inspiration and gentle motivation
Share your own “repetition ritual” with the tag #RestorativeArtRepetition so we can celebrate your process