Hello!

Friends!

I wasn't going to take up space in your inbox again so soon, but I promised that you'd be the first to hear the name of my magazine project….and for a variety of reasons, I decided it's time to let the cat out of the bag.

So without further ado, meet: Strawberry Moon Magazine!!

Everything is still very much under construction, and I'm probably putting a couple of carts before their associated horses, but what the heck! It's always more fun to get things out in the world before you are sure you are actually ready for the world to see them.

TL;DR: The next part is the whole story of how I came up with the name. I won't be offended if you skip it, but in case you are interested, here are the details:

I actually had been actively trying to avoid naming it because once you name something, it has a tendency to follow you home. But at some point, I knew I was going to at least try this, and I had to come up with something.

So many possibilities had run through my head. Puns? Something to do with art supplies? But which art supply — there are so many and I didn’t want to leave anything out! After seeing something about a magazine called The Turquoise Iris, I found myself thinking it would be fun to have a name that was a little whimsical and had nothing to actually do with art journaling (at least at first glance…)

That got mashed that up together with my increased awareness of the cycle of the moon and hearing that the June full moon* is called the strawberry moon. So, on one unremarkable day in July, it occurred to me that Strawberry Moon Magazine would be the perfect name for me to use.

*(In the northern hemisphere, anyway…where June is the start of summer and the time when the strawberries are ready to be picked…)

Strawberries represent good luck, humility, kindness, fertility, modesty, goodwill, and happiness. The are juicy and sweet and remind us of the best parts of summer.

The moon represents the rhythm of time, gentleness, sensitivity, compassion, and connection with others. The full moon in particular is a time to celebrate growth, note progress and reflect on how far you have come.

If you swirl all of that together, you come up with the perfect summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish with Strawberry Moon Magazine.

We’ll be celebrating artists, reflecting on what art journaling is and where it is going. We’ll be doing it with sensitivity, kindness, goodwill, and compassion. We’ll be connecting readers with artists and each other. Hopefully we’ll bring some good luck and happiness to everyone involved.

WHAT'S NEXT

I'll go back to working on building all of the behind the scenes stuff I need to have in place in order to start accepting submissions and actually create a magazine!

But having shared the name and logo makes it all feel a little more real, so I guess I'd better get back to work!

I hope you have a wonderful, art-filled weekend!