The Birth of Fairy Positive

The Birth of Fairy Positive

Every success story has a beginning. Make that every story. The story of Fairy Positive is straight-forward, and winding, and mundane, and interesting. For me, Fairy Positive is the culmination of a lifelong search for my true passion and purpose. It – meaning the entire Fairy Positive project (i.e., blog, membership site, social media groups, videos, art) – is the fulfillment of all my passions: teaching, learning, reading, writing, art, amazing conversations, event planning, technology, etc.

When I started my writing-editing-marketing business 20 years ago, I (a) was still a practicing Catholic, and (b) had no idea how to blend my burgeoning interest in the spiritual-not-religious and the practicality of creating a business in a world where most businesspeople ran as fast as they could from even the hint of woo-woo.

I have since become one of the “unchurched” and the business world has largely caught up with my one foot in business and the other foot in the woo.

Having been a writer my entire life, I always admired artists but never considered myself one. I always had an interest in crafting and creating. My family used to tease me because I’d borrow books of fonts from the library and practice writing my name in 100 different typefaces. They say you can tell early on what a child’s lifelong interest will be. I now regularly use dozens of fonts to create all kinds of graphics for my own business and the few author clients with whom I still work.

Eventually I taught myself Photoshop and am still diving daily into more advanced aspects of InDesign.

Graphic design seems easy, though, compared to actually drawing or painting. Creating images from whole cloth was never a strong skill for me.

Did I mention this was a straight-forward story with lots of bends and twists?

So a few years back, my husband’s grandmother passed away. Mary was a lovely lady about whom I am sure I will tell you more in future posts. She was 93, had been widowed for nearly 30 years, and kept a very tidy house – but stashed away in every nook and unseen cranny were every gift and card she had ever received. She had enough stuff in the bedroom and linen closets to open a small shop. We donated a lot of it. But I was experiencing a lull in my business at the time, so I decided to try my hand at selling some things online. Ooooh – did the online sales siren lure me in.

Eventually I joined a Facebook group related to reselling – mostly antiques, but really anything that has value (practically everything has value to someone – it’s just a matter of finding the right someone at the time you’re ready to sell). It was there that I learned about a concept that had been around for some time: junk journaling.

Junk journals began humbly – reflecting their name. People would rescue paper products headed for the recycle bin (or trash can) and turn them into books. Things like cereal boxes and all the unwanted flyers and envelopes that fill your mailbox. This somehow morphed into a new art form that still bears the name junk journal – but isn’t junk at all. Today’s junk journals are elaborately decorated handmade books (often handbound) that one would be quite hesitant to write in. The decoration of said junk journals ranges from the fairly calm to the baroque.

It was art – it was paper – it was an excuse to hit the thrift stores and estate sales. I was hooked! I watched YouTube after YouTube about how to fold this way and stamp that way and tape over here and sew over there. It was enormously fun and fulfilling – until I burned out. This happened quietly, without my even noticing.

Fortunately, art was on the horizon. Somewhere in the midst of the sea of junk journaling groups and tutorials, someone mentioned ICAD – the annual Index Card a Day art challenge that takes place every year for 61 days through June and July. The goal is to make a piece of art on (or the size of) an index card every day for 61 days. The promoters of the free event offer daily prompts and tutorials, so even non-artists like myself could join and have fun with the process.

Though gratitude is all the rage these days – there are books, videos, courses on gratitude everywhere you turn – it has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. A couple years ago, the question arose in a business group I belong to: How do you know you have won the day? My answer was: When I go to bed grateful. On the realization that I go to bed grateful every single night, I took a friend’s suggestion and turned my thoughts about gratitude into a book, which I called Get in the G Zone: Develop a Gratitude Attitude So You Can Win in Life.

So when I stumbled across ICAD, I decided to focus each of my pieces for the challenge around the theme of gratitude. One of the prompts was to make a pencil drawing. This was my card for that day.

Thus The Gratitude Fairy was born. Another friend from that same group suggested I write her a story. So I wrote it. But who was going to illustrate it for me? Well, since I was having so much fun with ICAD, I decided to jump all the way into the art experience with both feet. So I watched some tutorials about figure painting, took an actual art class on the basics of drawing a face, and The Gratitude Fairy took on a colorful new look as her story emerged.

This led to the creation of the Facebook group, Club G(ratitude).

But I wasn’t done with the art. My friends who read the book asked who the next fairy would be. The Creativity Fairy, but of course! And then The Sustainability Fairy popped into my head. Never one to do things in precisely a straight line, I won’t be the Sue Grafton of fairy books. But I did manage to come up with a list of the books I would like to write, one for each letter of the alphabet.

All those topics meant my message had grown way beyond gratitude. I needed a place to house all of the fairies and their messages. Thus Fairy Positive was born. And you, my friend, are here just in time to learn more about it as we keep rocking, keep rolling, and continue to write and promote all things positive.

Tune in tomorrow to learn more about the ABCs of Positivity. Until I see you again … thank you fairy much for reading.

_________

Laura Orsini is an author, speaker, consultant, publisher, and creator of Fairy Positive, an antidote to the worries of the world. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

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