Artist Blog #5

Varnishing your piece of painted art is crucial in the longevity of your creation.

Hi everyone, welcome back.

Here I will explain what exactly varnish is, what types of varnish are available, when to varnish, how to varnish and I will also tell you what products I personally use and recommend.

So What is Varnish?

-       Varnish is a clear layer applied to a fully dried piece of work,

-       Varnishes for oil paintings are made from a resin suspended in a solvent,

-       Varnishes for acrylic paintings are made from acrylic polymer emulsions.

The Types of Varnish

-       Varnish comes in glossy, matt and satin. It is down to your own preference what finish you want to achieve. You may want to experiment with all three to see which one works for you and your artwork,

-       You could mix two together to create a specific finish.

Why Varnish?

-       It prevents the painting from dust particles, UV rays, normal wear and tear and the colours are less likely to fade over time,

-       It gives a more unified finish to the various areas of the painting,

-       It allows the painting to be more easily cleaned,

-       It increases the colour saturation and the colours look more rich and beautiful,

-       It deepens the colour contrasts,

-       Moisture cannot get to your painting.

How to Varnish?

-       Use a flat, wide and soft brush or flat sponge,

-       Use sweeping strokes across the painting going from one side to the next to ensure you are covering the whole painting evenly,

-       Do not keep brushing over the same area,

-       Put some light onto the painting so you can see any areas you may have missed,

-       Choose a dust free area when varnishing and keep windows and doors closed to prevent children, pets and anything else coming into contact with the varnished painting,

-       use the brush or sponge for varnishing only otherwise if you’re painting with it as well there will be a chance that old paint pigments may come off in the varnishing process and stick to the painting,

-       keep the work on a flat surface whilst varnishing and drying,

-       Remove any bubbles,

-       Apply 1-3 coats,

-       Drying times for varnish is usually 18 to 24 hours. Always look at the manufacturers guidelines,

-       With each layer apply it by going across at a right angle. This will help even all layers out,

-       Wipe the painting with a lint free cloth beforehand to get rid of dust,

-       Place something underneath the canvas at the cross section of the stretcher bars or at the under the corners of the inside of the frame to raise it from the flat surface so the varnish from the sides cannot stick to anything as it dries,

-       Pour out some varnish in a shallow and clean dish,

-       If your painting has areas of heavy texture, then I’d recommend using a spray varnish instead. If you were to use a liquid varnish then it will create pools of varnish in the textured areas,

-       If you use a matt varnish and it’s not properly mixed beforehand then it can leave a milky white finish to your painting and is particularly noticeable over black areas,

-       Leave the painting flat until the varnish is dry to the touch. Once it is touch dry you can lean it against the wall with the painted side downwards facing the wall so as to prevent dust particles from settling into the varnish while it proceeds to dry.

When to Varnish?

-       Varnish once you have photographed your artwork for social media, your website and for prints. This is very important because once it is varnished the painting will become reflective and it will be very difficult to get a good image of your painting due to the reflective glare,

-       Ensure your painting is fully dry before you begin to varnish. The drying times depends on whether you’ve used acrylic or oil paints, he thickness of paint plus the humidity of the environment,

-       The longest time it can take to dry is up to a month with acrylic paints and years with oils. Now this is worse case and it depends on the previous points that I mentioned,

-       For me, I leave my acrylic paintings at least 2 weeks before varnishing and probably the same amount of time for my oil paintings too. I can do this because I use Gamblin Galkyd medium mixed in with my oil paints which speeds up the drying time immensely and I do not use impasto like layers with my paint. The manufacturers say that oil paint, when using Galkyd, dries within 1-2 days if the layers are not thick.

Recommended Varnish

I recommend Gamblin Gamvar Gloss varnish which you can use on both acrylic and oil paintings.

To purchase any of the materials I use for your own beautiful creations then click here

Click on the button below to watch my artist vlog #5.

It shows my painting process of painting 13 of my art portfolio, what has inspired me this week and information on varnishing your painting in video format.

Artist Blog #3

I’ve named this collection Illuminance.

Hi and welcome,

Building momentum with my 30 painting portfolio has been slow but I am moving forwards which is exactly where I want to be headed. Take a look at the art supplies I use for all my mixed media artwork.

I’ve named this collection Illuminance.

My intention with all these paintings is to have a commonality throughout them all. One of these common threads is the subject matter. If you’ve been following my work for a while you may have noticed that the majority of all my art that I have ever created right from the beginning have all included a forest, woodland, trees and most of the time streams or a pool of water within a wooded area. There is something that clearly draws me time and time again to paint such scenes. I think it’s because of how I feel when I am in that space…I feel so at peace and an expansion happens within me. So painting such scenes reminds me of this feeling. It speaks to my soul.

What business aspects have I been working on?

This week I took a course via Skillshare to learn how best to use Pinterest for business and how to implement a Pinterest marketing strategy. I know Pinterest is a great platform to drive traffic to your website or wherever you want your customers to end up. For me, I want them to mainly end up at my website and equally to my YouTube channel. A secondary direction for my customers to head to would be to my Instagram account but that is not going to be my main focus. This week I created a variety of Pinterest pins for my art blogs, artwork that is available to purchase and my vlogs. The pin templates were created on Canva. Canva is incredibly useful and I use it for so many things, such as my Youtube thumbnails, end and intro videos, pins for Pinterest and Instagram posts. This week I also signed up to Tailwind which is an app that will schedule these pins to be posted throughout the days, weeks and months. This will save me a lot of time in the end. So after some research on how to best use Pinterest I now have a better understanding of this platform. I have used Pinterest before for my business but I was using it infrequently which doesn’t do much with the traction you get if you were to have a more consistent approach. I am aiming to upload pins daily via Tailwind and I will be keeping an eye on the stats to see which pins or more successful than others and build the pins refinement that way. So watch this space!

Capturing this beautiful day out in Woodbridge.

It’s good to recharge your energy with being outside by the water or amongst the woods.

Work in progress of painting 10 of my portfolio.

I found at this stage the painting looked flat so I ended up lightening the background to create distance which ended up improving the depth immensely. The link above will take you to my vlog with the whole process.

Artist Blog #2

An earlier piece that I created during lockdown. It’s when my focus on building my art business went up a notch

Hello everyone,

Finding something that you’re passionate about can take time to present itself into your life and awareness.

To find a passion in life the majority of people will need to try their hand at many different things before something clicks inside of them and they realise that they do not want to do anything else. It’s like finding a key to your own unique lock and that key will bring with it immense joy, excitement and it will make you feel alive.

Soon after I had my daughter, I felt a shift within my core. My capacity to love blossomed to new heights and so did the need to be creative and the need to find a purpose or a passion.

The pull to be creative took me down many paths but in January 2016 I purchased three small canvases and some acrylic paint and I followed my intuition. I painted a silhouette of an old and crooked tree on each canvas with a beautiful purple and red sky in the background. I was both so happy and surprised with how they turned out. A family member purchased them soon after I had posted them on Instagram and that gave me the confidence I needed to pursue this new interest of mine.

During those earlier years I was learning to paint by watching tutorials online and by simply experimenting and being playful. It was a casual hobby up until 2020.

Lockdown was the catalyst for me wanting to be a full-time artist.

During this period I was able to paint nearly every day and having that time at home also allowed me to build my website from scratch. This was a huge achievement for me as I have always believed that I was not very savvy when it comes to things like that. I had now created half a dozen finished pieces of art, sold some of them via social media and now I had my own website to sell them from. I was now determined to give this my all and create a living from my art because So even though lockdown was difficult and stressful in ways, such as not being able to go to work and earn money, worrying about paying bills and how this pandemic and isolation was affecting my daughter and family, it also changed the course of my life without a doubt, for the better.

Painting I created during lockdown

This piece sold pretty quickly and it cemented the dream of being a full-time artist

It also opened me up to new and powerful realisations including first hand spiritual experiences. Which I will talk about another time.

The following year in June 2021 I enrolled onto an art mastery program for a year. I had come to a point in my painting journey where I needed guidance to improve my skills further. So after much debating I took the plunge and signed up for this intensive art program. Best thing I ever did!

The course ended in June 2022, however I am yet to complete my portfolio of 30 paintings. I am currently on painting 10. Once my portfolio is finished my intention is to showcase my work at my first exhibition. Take a look at the art supplies I use for all my mixed media artwork.

These blogs of my portfolio progress will be a regular thing!

Artist Blog #1

Creating my pieces of artwork with many materials gives me a beautiful sense of freedom and possibility.

Hey everyone,

So I have decided to document my art career from the very beginning in the form of blogs and vlogs and to share with you this never-ending adventure which is spirituality.

Why am I doing this? Well, my goal is to build a like minded and supportive community and to also inspire others who also dream big.

It’s not an easy task to build a business of any kind. It’s even trickier when you are doing this whilst working a full-time job and/or being a parent etc. But it is not impossible!

I believe that it takes focus, dedication, self discipline and being consistent. These are the main qualities I strive to embrace every single day.

The vlogs will encourage me to stick to deadlines and personal goals so that I build some momentum with the limited spare time I have to put into my art business. It will also encourage me to commit to a daily spiritual practice, which I know will benefit many aspects of my life.

Both art and spirituality came into my life significantly in early 2020.

I have written about my spiritual experiences in my other blog posts, which I hope you will also enjoy!

So a little bit about me…I am a mum to a teenager Isabella and we have a cat called Charlie.

I currently work full-time as someone who offers support to people in my local community with household chores or in a more caring capacity. It’s a business I began a few years ago and even though I enjoy what I do and it has served me all, it is not something that I feel I am here to do.

How do I know what I am supposed to do with this life?

The simple answer is to follow whatever it is that brings that fire in your belly and that expansion and excitement in your heart. The thing that you simply cannot imagine not doing. I believe it is our guidance system.

I hope you enjoy the vlogs and find them useful in some way for your own creative endeavour.

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Take a look at the art supplies I use for all my mixed media artwork.

An Update On My Experiences

“I was attuned to a particular frequency by a Reiki master”

I know I haven’t posted in a while but I intend to change that.

I have been a bit quiet due to the fact that my experiences are very infrequent now. I am unable to do the technique that I was performing every day during lockdown which was working for me before. That technique required that I wake up naturally without an alarm to then visualise climbing up a rope as I come out of sleep. Now I am back to work and waking up with an alarm pretty much every day I have realised that I need to figure out a new way to achieve these experiences. My astral projection experiences has made a big impact on me and I think about them often. I don’t mean to sound dramatic but they have changed my life. I chase the chance of having these experiences again so I am trying to find new ways of achieving my OBEs. The spontaneous experiences that I have had have been very brief and once I feel the separation I am unable to see anything at all. All I do see is whiteness and the sense that I am moving. I don’t have enough time to demand clarity and focus my intention of seeing clearly before I am back in my body.

In March I took a basic course in Reiki which allows me to practice healing on myself. I was attuned to a particular frequency by a Reiki master and this has caused a lot more energy felt within my body and therefore It’s caused more experiences of obe precursor sensations during the night such as waking up to my body vibrating and buzzing in my ears which travels to my head and with an intention I can feel myself floating but then the experience ends so prematurely. But I have not lost hope and I never will.

So I’ve decided to continue with my blog to record any experiences I have moving forwards big or small and any new techniques that I have tried. It will keep me focused on my OBE practices and keep me accountable. I know that there are incredible experiences to be had with OBEs and that’s why I will not give up trying.

The prana energy that I feel in my body has increased over the last few weeks very noticeably which plays a big part in my experiences. This tends to increase after meditation especially after this one (23) (Extremely Powerful) Self Connection Meditation - 432 Hz + 3.4 Hz Binaural Beats - Meditation Music - YouTube

Pink Cactus

I had forgotten that I had asked the universe for this specific sign in answer to a question I had but discovered it on my phone when I was checking back at my old notes.

The note was created about three months earlier.
As you can see from the picture I had asked for a pink cactus if the lady who I saw sitting on my bed when I last had an out of body experience was my spirit guide or my higher self. I should have just picked one or the other, but it doesn’t really matter because either is just fantastic.
when I saw that note and what sign I had asked for I was so shocked when it dawned on me that my dad, a couple of weeks ago, had bought my daughter a pink cactus randomly. He was passing a shop in the town centre and came across a stall outside a shop selling different colour cactus’s. It is the cactus in this picture. No one knew what sign I had asked for as I always keep that to myself until I actually receive them then I am normally straight on the phone to my family.

Pink cactus’s are not very common right?
Each time I get my signs I get so excited!

Pink Elephant

I have been keeping a journal of my dreams to improve my recall and I noticed a theme in a few of them. Now I have been single for a while and I am very much content with my life so I have no interest in dating, however some of the dreams may contradict that statement. Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? So I asked out loud ‘show me a pink elephant if I should be active and open to dating or show me a blue elephant if I should continue as I am’.

A week later I saw someone on Facebook recommend this spiritual teacher on YouTube. I took a look and I watched one of her videos. Halfway through her talking about collective consciousness she says a well known phrase incorrectly. Rather than say ‘The elephant in the room’ instead she says ‘The pink elephant in the room’.

I know that these aren’t coincidences. From the whole experience of my first sign back in December 2020 with the angel with pink wings and the thought that was planted in my mind of where to find my sign. I knew something was communicating with me from the very beginning.

What the w.i.l.d. had to offer

Monday 24th May 2021

“I then feel a hand hold mine”

I decided to finally try out the WILD technique that my Guides had pointed to. I was a little bit sceptical whether or not this technique would work as I had been trying numerous ways to astral project with my memory recall for the last two or three months.

I went to bed at 10.30pm on the sunday and woke with an alarm at 2.30am. I get up, go to the bathroom and come back to bed. I stay up for around 20 minutes, writing down my plan for when I’m out. It’s always been to meet my Guides. I then turn off my night light and let myself drift off to sleep whilst on my back holding onto the intention to leave my body and envisioning myself getting out of bed and going downstairs and making a cup of tea. Making sure I am remembering the feel of the carpet under my feet, the cool hard bannister on my hands as i make my way down the stairs etc. I drift off to sleep quite easily.

Moments later, I am aware that I can feel the prana energy prickling under my skin and I know it’s time to get out so I focus my attention within my body and drag my attention outwards and immediately I am floating upwards. Seconds later I am moving through the tunnel/portal of white energy light and then everything around me becomes white and I cannot see anything. This is common for those who are fairly new to AP. I’m still learning to control my senses and memory. I do not want to have a negative experience so I try to raise my mood but saying ‘I’m excited to be here’ and ‘I’ve done it’. I then feel a hand hold mine. I cannot see clearly who it is but I can just about make out a lady’s face with dark long hair. I wanted to know her intentions so I demand ‘Show me your true nature’. Before anything else can happen I then get pulled back in my body and I am awake but my eyes are still closed and I pull myself out again with my focus. I am floating upwards again and going back through the whiteness.

I am ‘looking’ around me to see if I can make anything out and underneath me I see vaguely some houses and I realise I am flying. My thought is to get down so I can solidify myself in this environment which will hold me to this space longer and it will also bring clarity to my visions. To do this I need to involve myself in my environment such as picking things up, smelling things or even clapping my hands for example. As I have this thought I am down on the ground. All my plans go out of the window which is to finally meet my Spirit Guides…I just didn’t remember this but I knew it was important to keep myself there for as long as possible and could remember what I needed to do. I start clapping my hands and rubbing my arms. I start noticing that everything around me is becoming clearer. I can finally see my surroundings. So ahead of me there is a concrete tunnel that you’d find under a motorway, like a mini subway. I walk through it and I can see the other end where there are houses. Something catches my attention and I look around to find the exact same lady who I had seen before running up to me with a long white dress, wavy brown hair and a smile on her face.

She looks really friendly and pleased to see me but I am cautious and determined to find out whether her nature is pure so I demand again ‘Show me your true essence’ as I step away from her guarded. She looks at me confused and she still remains in the same form. I apologise to her as I continue to walk through the concrete tunnel and I explain that I have had a couple of rattling experiences and that’s why I asked. This must sound a bit crazy but she seems fine with that and she continues to walk alongside me. I continue to clap my hands and rub my arms and she finds this funny. I explain that I have to do this to stay in this place for a bit longer. She doesn’t question anything that I’m saying and just accepts it. I notice to my right there is the beach so I suggest that we head there. I ask her name and she says Helen Willian Mccormick (think the surname is correct). I wondered if she was joking when she said one of her names was William but as I looked at her face I could tell she was serious. I asked if she was one of my Spirit Guides and she shook her head. Why didn’t I ask out loud to meet my Guides while I was there?…I have no idea. I said to Helen that if I was able to make it out again that I would call her name. I asked her if she would hear me if I called her name and she laughed and said she wasn’t sure. I went on to ask if she has a mobile. She replied no and looked very confused. I was so surprised that I had made it out for this long and I had said so to Helen, explaining this was probably the longest I had been out and with that I was back in my body.

I am so amazed that the sign pointed to this particular technique which ended up working. It completely blows my mind.

Now I am not sure who this lady was. She didn’t ask me any questions even though she didn’t understand some of the things I was saying or doing. I have no idea how this all works. I am going to continue to journal it all and not make any judgements or pin any beliefs on them. Again, I do not appear to have a body. This will be one of my main points I want to clarify when I next have an experience… as well as asking to meet my Spirit Guide/s for the hundredth time.

WILD

“…so I asked my Guides for help.”

For the last couple of months I have been trying a mixture of techniques to achieve astral projection but none have been successful. Since my last experience I had continued to use the original technique I had started off with, which I had found to be very successful but this required me to wake up naturally, which I am no longer able to do now that lockdown is over. I am back at work full-time, meaning that I am setting an alarm in the mornings. I tried using my old technique at the weekends but it had stopped working for me altogether. Is the reason for this due to the fact that I am trying to AP less often or is it because of the last experience had caused a bit of anxiety and therefore fear is stopping any further experiences? I am not sure what the answer is.

I started to incorporate new techniques during the week that aims at keeping the mind awake while the body sleeps. As you can imagine this is very tricky to do and needless to say I couldn’t do it. I have not had any experiences worth writing about. However, while in sleep on about two or three occasions my mind has become consciously aware that I’m going through the portal/tunnel of light/energy and I do recall anticipating what is going to come next knowing that I am now at the beginning of an AP experience. After exiting the tunnel/portal my memory cannot recall what happened next. I have also felt vibrations in my body after coming out of sleep and feeling a slight separation beginning to happen but nothing had come of it.

I was feeling very frustrated with the fact I had learnt this weird and wonderful skill that I had been totally unaware was possible to have, being able to induce the experience whenever I had a strong intention to now not being able to bring the experience to fruition. After continuing to read many book s and listening to podcasts about AP I came across an app recommendation which was Lucidity. This app contained five different techniques that could be used to achieve AP which were all abbreviated (as shown in the above image on the left). I was unsure which one to focus my attention on for the next few days so I asked my Guides for help. This is a subject in itself which I will be writing about soon in this blog. I asked my Guides which one of these techniques will work for me. I then go to grab my dream/AP journal to begin writing a plan of action that I will begin to practice until my sign is given to me. But before I go to open up the journal I notice a sticker on the front cover of my book (right of the image above)… and there was my sign…..WILD.

So I tried the WILD technique and it worked first time!

Paintbrush

I asked for a sign on whether I should continue to pour everything into my art. Is this my purpose? I didn’t request to be shown anything, I just wanted the universe to come up with something this time.

That same day, on my way back home from work, I decided to take a different route home and as I was walking I came across an artist paintbrush in my path on the pavement. It was not a DIY brush but a specific artists brush…what the….

‘Welcome Hannah’

Saturday 27th February 2021

…I notice a young lady in white sitting on my bed…

I write two tasks that I would like to experience before I go to bed. Most of the tasks I have set beforehand have been to meet my spirit guides and in this experience I believe I did but not knowing it at the time. So I set my alarm for 1am then got up to go to the bathroom to then come back to bed while mentally going over my affirmations ‘I am powerful, I am strong, I am out of body’ before falling back to sleep. I woke up naturally in the morning and I was fully conscious as it was starting to get light outside but I kept still and kept my eyes closed. I tried the rope technique while repeating in my head ‘I am out of body’ but that didn’t work so I moved on to the roll over technique instead.

This worked and it’s my favourite one because the exiting is so vivid and you feel your lightness leaving your heavy dense body. When I’m completely out I slowly push myself up so I’m sitting on the bed then a second later I find myself standing at the bottom of my bed trying to find my bearings. As I turn to face my bedroom door I notice a young lady in white with dark bobbed hair sitting on my bed very still with her hands on her knees but at that moment I don’t take much notice of her as I thought she was me in those brief moments that she was in my peripheral vision. The reason I came to this conclusion at that time was because the very first astral projection experience I had was similar to this one where I rolled out and found myself in the exact same place at the bottom of my bed.

My first experience I had then asked to see my reflection and immediately saw my reflection in my door. However looking back at this new experience, the lady didn’t look like me and I was standing while she was sitting. So after I turned to head to the door I opened it and the hallway was dark and I couldn’t see a thing. The darkness caused me to feel a little apprehensive and as soon as I have this feeling I then hear a voice from the hall say ‘Welcome Hannah’. I instantly felt rattled and asked to go to Nirvana where I felt a rush of movement like I get when I go through the tunnel but before I could go anywhere I was then back in my body.

So even though the voice scared me I didn’t actually see anything scary. In the book Adventures Beyond The Body it mentions that you will face challenges and you may face some things that appear scary however if you investigate it, then it maybe a valuable lesson for you or a potential experience that you would ultimately be grateful for. For example, William Buhlman describes someone’s experience of seeing a dark figure when they had this one particular OBE and rather than getting out of that situation, e.g. going back into your body or requesting to go to another place, they faced it and the shadowy figure turned out to be this persons deceased son. Another example is William Buhlman himself said of his own experience that he found himself looking down these dark stairs and seeing a shadowy figure which after a few seconds turned out to be some animal like creature. He was so scared but he did not move and when the creature reached him it wrapped their arms around him and licked his face. He said that he felt that he had stepped up in his journey which then allowed him to go on to further and more profound aspects of the astral projection experience.

The lady I saw looked like the same lady in my other experience at the hospital. I believe that she is one of my spirit guides. Why do I think that? Well, I set an intention beforehand pretty much every time I have wanted to astral project to meet my guides. Plus after talking with some people on the AP Facebook group I have been informed, that most of the time, spirit guides show up in white. I’m annoyed that I missed that opportunity to talk with her. I have so many questions! Maybe I’'ll get another chance to speak to her now I know that she is my guide.

Flying Without Sight

Wednesday 24th February 2021

‘I am powerful, I am strong’

I went into a deep meditation for 30 minutes before bed to get myself into a good mindset before my OBE and I woke at 1am. After getting up to go to the bathroom I then repeated ‘I am strong, I am flying, I am out of body’ before I went back to sleep. Like the previous experience, I was again dreaming and sensed the electricity flowing in my physical body so I focused my attention on my toes then move it to my foot and I said in my mind ‘I am flying’. Straight away I floated out of my body and rushed through the white tunnel/portal in a blur. Then I felt I was flying very fast but not being able to see anything. Just a white haze around me but it felt exhilarating none the less. I said ‘Take me to Nirvana’ and I continued flying, sensing the motion and feeling excited and free as I sense the vastness around me. After a few moments I could make out foliage underneath me going past in almost a white blur. I felt so happy and I remember saying ‘I am powerful, I am strong’. I felt these affirmations were vibrating through me with such power as I was saying them out loud. It was amazing. I wanted to change my surroundings before I would get pinged back in my body so I requested to go to Andromeda but I run out of steam and got pinged back before anything happened.

Moving forwards I really need to demand clarity or awareness with great intention next time as I understand from other peoples experiences that this will work for me. Taking the time to meditate before bed really helped with a more positive experience. I feel this is going to be a ritual of mine.

Moving From a Dream to Astral Projection

Saturday 20th February 2021

…this plane it is VERY sensitive to thought.

So this method of achieving astral projection was new to me as I got there via a dream unintentionally. So I set my alarm for 12.45am after going to bed at 9pm and I am dreaming. I begin to notice while dreaming that I can sense the ‘electricity’ feeling in my physical body. This makes me become more aware and I know what I have to do. So I begin to manipulate that energy. I pull the energy to the top of my head and mentally ‘squeeze’ it which causes me to rush through this light tunnel/portal that I often go through before I experience an OBE. The only difference now is the portal is white and no longer has a green/blue tinge to it. While travelling through the tunnel I am aware that I am astral projection and I am anticipating what I am going to experience this time. I can’t see much apart from movement and white light. Seconds later I find myself gazing up at a ceiling and appears I am travelling through corridors in a fluid movement.

Then some people come into focus at my side who are looking down at me. I sense that I am in a hospital and these are doctors because they are in white and they seem concerned while I am being rushed through the corridors. I have a man in a white gown at my feet and a lady with dark bobbed hair to my right and I think to myself that I need to get the lady’s attention to let her know that I’m ok and there is no need to worry. So I look at her intently and I smile. She then looks at me and returns a warm friendly smile.
Now after this experience I have stopped watching anything negative or scary the night before I intend to have an OBE because on this plane it is VERY sensitive to thought. So saying this, I vaguely remember feeling a bit apprehensive at one point then automatically I find myself being grabbed by two odd looking mischievous characters who appear to my left. They march me down the corridor while holding onto me. I am not scared by this but more annoyed that I can’t investigate this experience more and find out who those people were.

I am mainly focused on doing some proper exploring which I have wanted to do from day one so I try flinging my ‘arms’ about to shake these two off me but movement is still a bit tricky for me and my ‘arms’ feel heavy. I feel that my apprehension/nervousness affected what I saw. Again it doesn’t appear that I have a body and I am just a point of consciousness. Moments later I get placed into a dark room and I hear the door slam shut and the turning of a key. But as soon as I find myself in this room I remember that it is possible to move through walls and doors etc. So that’s what I do but as soon as I walk through the door I am back in my body.

Moving forwards I will not watch anything negative on tv before I attempt an OBE as this seems to interfere with my experience. I want to have a clear mind and be full of positivity because your mind frame will spill over to this place.

Two Incomplete OBEs

6th February 2021

…I immediately felt that I was lifted up vertically and then catapulted forwards in a blur.

The night before I didn’t set as much intention as I normally do and I now recognise that it crucial to have an OBE. The intention is letting your subconscious know what you are wanting to achieve so repeating it over in your mind before sleep or writing it down will solidify the plan of action . Due to the lack of intention I put out there beforehand I kept forgetting to perform my normal techniques whenever I came out of sleep and it’s vital to do them in the first few seconds of coming out of sleep. I will write up my techniques in another blog. When I did remember what I should be doing those vital early seconds were long past. So I went with using my prana energy as described in my previous blog instead. I focused my energy from my toes to the top of my head and held it there while mentally squeezing it to the crown of my head.

I didn’t need to repeat this action because I immediately felt that I was lifted up vertically and then catapulted forwards in a blur. I couldn’t make out anything around me but I was aware that I was out of my body because I had that ‘knowing’ sensation that I am now familiar with. I didn’t feel the actual exit this time, however after reading many peoples experiences the exit isn’t always felt. The other determinate factor of how I knew I was out of my body is that I seem to go through a tunnel or portal at very high speed. the tunnel feels like it’s full of motion or energy which whizzes past me in a blur. Everything around me has a green/blue haze to it which is what I experience every time I have had an OBE.. Also the environment just has this different energy to it. It makes me a little nervous when I first enter this ‘place’ but I am not as scared as I was the first time. I think it doesn’t help that I cannot see clearly when I’m there. Apparently your vision does become crystal clear when you’ve experienced a few OBEs but this is my third time so it’s still very early days for me. Now I cannot make out any objects or any indicators of where I may be but oddly I can feel my eye mask still on my physical face. So I automatically go to take it off in the hopes that I can see better. The number one rule when you’re out of body is that if you think of the physical body you immediately get pinged back which was what happened to me.

Annoyed with myself I tried focusing on my energy again and a few moments later I feel my light energy/astral body inside me but I couldn’t seem to get it out this time and then seconds later that feeling went.

So moving forwards I have decided that the intention is crucial. You just need to prepare your subconscious on what you want to do so I will go back to writing out my plan and repeat them in my mind before I drift to sleep. Lastly, I need to remember to not think of my physical body.

One night this week I had played around with my inner energy…moving it around like a wave for about 30 minutes before I went to sleep and I woke up at some point in the night with my ears ringing and the energy was moving itself up and down my body without my mental direction. I then felt my consciousness move inwards as though it was going to go deep within me. I wish I could describe the feeling better but I was very drowsy and it was my subconscious trying to take me there. I was not fully awake at this point but the feeling was not familiar to me and I felt panic and before anything could actually happen that pulling sensation to go deeper then stopped. I just need to surrender to whatever my consciousness wants to show me.

Stuck Mid-Transition

4th February 2021

Using my inner energy…..

I was drifting in and out of sleep a few times between 4am and 7.45am and during this period I ran through the techniques I needed to perform to exit my body. I had tried these a few times before falling back asleep and it was starting to get light outside. I thought to myself that I really need to be getting up for the day but I thought I’d keep pushing through with the techniques a little longer. I then had an image behind my eyelids, of being in space. I could see thousands of stars in the far distance and I thought instinctively to focus on my energy/chi that I could feel prickling under my skin. I drew this energy from the bottom to the top of my body and then mentally squeezed that energy when it reached my head. Now, after reading Dr Joe Dispenza’s book ‘Becoming Supernatural’ and also watching a video on Youtube that was explaining a similar topic, I committed myself to doing some of the recommended breathing techniques that helps activate the pineal gland. The idea is to focus your attention from the root chakra and following the focus all the way to the top of your head or to the third eye (depending on which technique you’re following). As you start your attention at the root chakra you inhale a breath while clenching the muscles in the root chakra as well as clenching the stomach and throat muscles as it travels up and when the energy reaches the final destination (third eye or top of the head) you hold the breath and focus on that area.

I started doing these randomly throughout the day even before I experienced my first AP. Since performing these breathing exercises I have noticed that whenever I am still, such as when I am lying in bed, most of the time I can feel the energy prickling under my skin. So when I saw the image of being in space I decided to pull that energy to the top of my head and mentally squeezed it there and as I did I began to exit my body. With my eyes still closed I could feel my body lighten and then there was that ‘knowing’ that I am now familiar with, which is telling me that I can now leave my physical body. As I began to exit I immediately had audio hallucinations, which were the same as before. I could hear my daughter moving around outside my bedroom door. I knew they were not real and I continued trying to move the energy up again as I seemed to be stuck in mid-transition. So I asked, in my mind, for assistance. I have read that some people have been helped when trying to exit and have felt a hand grab them and pull them out but what I got instead was a mans voice ask ‘You want to get out?’, another hallucination? I continue to ask for assistance but without luck. I then realised that my right foot was tucked under my left thigh, which is sometimes how I sleep. But when attempting to AP apparently a lot of people can achieve it when they’re on their back and legs straight down and slightly apart. Thinking that this was the problem I stupidly moved my leg and I was fully back in my body. You are not supposed to move a muscle when trying to AP or think of your physical body otherwise it halts the process.

What I took away from this experience is that I seem to be able to manipulate this prana energy that I can feel inside me to help in exiting. I need to experiment with this energy and I need to continue to follow my intuition. Also when I feel my energy/astral body I should not think of my physical body nor move it otherwise it’ll prematurely stop the process.

Kingfisher and a Red Ball

I cannot recall what my question was for this sign as I am writing this a few months later. I decided to go back and record all the signs I have received in answer to a question. So I asked for a very specific sign this time to prove to myself it’s not a coincidence so I asked for a kingfisher but thought I needed to add something to this to make it harder so I thought a kingfisher with a red berry. But again I felt this was too easy as birds eat berries and I’m sure I’d see an image of these two together somewhere so I asked for a kingfisher with a red ball next to it. I left it like that and thought I’ve made this a bit too hard.

The very next day I saw a sponsored Instagram account show up on my Instagram feed. It showed a beautiful painted wolf which I thought was awesome. So I clicked on the artists profile account and there in the first 6 posts of this artists account was a kingfisher and when I clicked on that specific post there was the red ball underneath the picture to say the painting had been sold.

Pink Feather

It was before Christmas and after seeing feathers fall in front of me pretty much on a daily basis and finding them randomly in odd places at a time where I was feeling a bit lost, I decided to ask out loud to the universe/Source if I am being supported and guided through life with a spirit guide or guardian angel. If I was then to show me a pink feather.

I soon forgot about this and it was about two weeks later I had finished a meditation session at home and as I came to and opened my eyes I suddenly remembered the sign I had asked for. At that moment a thought popped into my head which and it said ‘look at the present from Alison and Lionel’. This thought that came into my head was not my own. It was clear, out of nowhere and very matter of fact. When that thought came into my consciousness I knew within in me that I was going to find the sign I had asked for. Alison and Lionel are clients of mine and they had given me a Christmas gift a few days ago. So I opened the gift and inside was a white knitted angel with pink wings.

I couldn’t believe it! I knew this wasn’t just a coincidence. The fact that I was told where to look, I was given the sign I had asked for and at the same time I was being told that I have an angel guiding me.

This one event was a huge turning point in my life. It was such a mind-blowing experience that it encouraged me to ask for more signs to questions I needed answering and it also gave me great comfort and peacefulness that we all are being guided. We just need to ask for their assistance.

This Morning I Had My Second OBE

30th January 2021

….he walks alongside myself looking pleased to see me and says ‘Hello’.

The rolling over technique did not seem to work this time. I tried the rope technique instead which worked to my surprise as I have tried this previously without success. I began to feel lighter and that sense of ‘knowing’ I could exit my body was back, just like before. I stopped halfway through this process because I thought I heard my daughter come into my room. I kept my eyes shut not knowing what to do. because I was in mid transition. Now, after reading the books as I have mentioned in my first blog, it is said that audio hallucinations can be common in this state of consciousness. You may hear someone calling your name, or someone saying ‘you’re late for work’ or something of the sort. Apparently this is your subconscious playing tricks on you. As I was pondering these audio hallucinations I could feel my legs start ascending higher than the rest of me. I then concluded that the sounds of my daughter wasn’t real so I continued pulling the rest of me out and then my body began floating upwards. A second later I am flying high above the ground but I am unable to make out anything because I am going at such a speed that my vision (again) was not very clear. I then remembered that I need to maintain myself in this place and to do that I need to start focusing on things in my surroundings before I get pinged back into my body. So I conclude that I need to be on the ground to do that.

So I tell myself in my mind ‘I want to get down’ and I immediately start to descend. For those brief moments I wonder if it’s going to hurt when I land because I don’t seem to be slowing down but when I do land I feel nothing at all and land in a fluid motion. I look around and find myself in a town or a city as there are tall buildings around me. I notice people walking in one direction so I follow the crowd. My vision is still a bit foggy so I look around for something to pick up and scrutinise which apparently helps in maintaining yourself in the ‘other side’ and it helps with a clear vision. I notice some purple flowers to my side that look like thistles so I pick one and gaze at it with great intention. I still can’t get a good image of it so I continue to walk along. A man to my left notices me as soon as I landed there and he walks alongside myself looking pleased to see me and says ‘Hello'. I acknowledge him and continue to walk on with him by my side and I also notice another man that starts to walk with us. I remember my first task so I say to myself ‘I want to meet my higher self’. I don’t notice anything so I repeat it again. I then spot a man in a dark suit walking towards me and so I ask him if he is my higher self to which he replies with a sneer and walks past. My friendly companion tells me ‘Don’t talk to him, he’s a demon’. With this statement I then look around to see the ‘demon’ man skulking behind me.

Oddly, I didn’t feel any fear as I didn’t feel threatened. I shouted ‘Go away!’, which caused him to scuttle off quickly. From the book ‘Hacking The Out Of Body Experience’ by Robert Peterson, he mentions seeing dark entities and demons and he says that if you come across such things you need to stand your ground and show them no fear. Get angry if need be and they’ll soon go away when they realise that you are not to be messed with. So I rehearsed this in my mind if I was to come across such situation. This approach obviously worked and it made me feel empowered. The men who were walking with me said ‘well done’ and looked impressed. I remembered again my task and asked the guy who was closest to me ‘Are you my higher self?’ and he sadly shook his head. I then came to in my tingling physical body.

Now, this demon in a suit was something I had read about from either a book or from somewhere else and meeting a dark entity was at the back of my head before I attempted the second OBE. I was a little anxious about this when preparing myself for the OBE so the exact same scenario coming up possibly my subconscious or something ethereal that is putting some challenges in my path to help me grow on this journey. I do not know the answer to this and I’m pretty sure there is going to be a lot more questions than answers to this journey. But I intend to go with it.

The take away from this experience is that I will feel more confident going into my next one.

Also, looking back at my experiences I have not noticed that I have a body. When I’ve tried to rub my hands in front of my face I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t feel my arms or hands. I didn’t notice my hand when I picked the flower. I just saw the flower in my consciousness and when I thought that landing at such a speed would hurt I didn’t feel the impact. It feels like I am pure consciousness. This is something I would like to investigate when I get the chance.

Hello and welcome to my blog you beautiful people!

24th January 2021

I have wanted to write a regular blog about my creative journey for a while but the ‘over thinking things’ caused great delays in me putting this together as well as the lack of confidence in my writing skills.

However, as the months have passed I have begun another journey but of a different kind. One that has blown me away completely and I feel that it needs to be shared so that others can also try it themselves and have an experience of it. I have also come to realise that it doesn’t matter that my writing skills are not up to scratch…what is more important is the content of my blogs and what it can offer others. My hope is that it offers inspiration and also plants a seed that there is more to this game of life than we were made to believe. So this is a perfect place for me to talk about this new and fascinating topic which is astral projection.

I would have never imagined that my first blog would be about Astral Projection/Out of Body Experience

Three weeks ago I was in bed and became aware during the night that I was unable to move. I was not fully awake and yet I was not asleep. I have had this experience before and it’s known as sleep paralysis, which we all have every night but we are unaware of it because we are in a deep sleep. Along with this paralysis I felt a very strong pulsing sensation flowing up and down my body. From the top of my head to my feet. I felt that these combined sensations were building up to a peak of some sort. After a couple of moments I became completely conscious and I immediately felt panic and eventually pulled myself out of this ‘state’. I went online the next day to do some research because that energy was something I had never consciously felt before and I wanted to know whether anyone else had experienced the same thing before. It was completely new to me and the energy that was travelling through my body was quite intense and startling. I wanted to know what it all meant. As I was doing some digging I came across links to Astral Projection (AP)/Out of Body Experiences (OBE). Apparently these sensations are felt in the hypnagogic stage of sleep, which is the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep or the hypnopompic stage, which is the transition state from sleep to wakefulness. Apparently the wave like energy and sleep paralysis are precursors to an AP/OBE. I was very intrigued by this so I decided to take a nap that same day to see if I could muster up the same sensations. It came again and so did the automatic fear which caused it to stop once again.

AP was something I was unfamiliar with BUT I am an open minded person and so I began to do some more research into it; podcasts, books, articles and after finding a particularly in-depth technique online with a supposedly high success rate, I followed these instructions to the T…. and then I experienced my first Astral Projection.

After using a particular technique it was around 6.30AM and I was beginning to wake up. I had been sleeping on my back and I felt that I wanted to roll on my side to get more comfortable. Part of the technique to have an AP/OBE was to roll over as soon as soon as I woke up but I had forgotten everything about wanting to this in those first few seconds…I was rolling over purely to get more comfortable. So in those first few seconds as I turned my head into the pillow to roll over, with my eyes still closed, I saw a bright light ping on behind my eyelids and a slight buzzing noise in my ears. I froze as I wondered what was going on…still with my eyes closed but by this time I was now fully conscious and no longer in-between wakefulness and sleep. My head was the only part of me that was ‘out’ as I hadn’t even rolled the rest of my body over. As I became aware of these sensations and remembering what i was trying to achieve before I had gone to bed and during the night too, it dawned on me that I had been successful in what I was trying to achieve. I felt like I was peering through a veil at that moment. It is very hard to describe what it felt like but I instantly knew that this was it and I could leave my body. It was an instant knowing. I stayed still for a couple of seconds once my consciousness had caught-up and when it did I sensed that the glowing from behind my eyes was coming from me. In this brief pause I tried to calm my nerves and then began to roll the rest of my body over. I was fully conscious at this point. As I was doing this it was like pulling myself out of water and therefore there was a drag. It was a bit of an effort to pull myself ‘out’ so I felt for the side of my bed to get some leverage and all that time I was thinking ‘I cannot believe I have done it’ and totally gobsmacked that this was actually happening. I was also mentally preparing myself for the unknown.

In a split second I am standing at the bottom of my bed in my dimly lit bedroom. How did I get from from one moment lying on my bed to another moment of standing up over here? I then tried to focus on what I had written down for the tasks I wanted to do if I ever managed to have this experience, whilst trying to stay calm. I need to emphasise that I am not asleep I am fully awake with my normal thought processes and I know I am somewhere other than normal reality even though it appears similar to what my bedroom looks like, but I couldn’t analyse it too much at that time because it was dimly lit. Over excitement or fear can ping you back into your body which I had read many times so I was trying my best to stay calm. The first task was to look in the mirror. As soon as I have this thought I instantaneously see my reflection in my bedroom door and I can see my physical self staring back at me. I really wanted to bring more light to the room and make my vision clearer so I shout ‘Clarity now!’. I cannot feel these words vibrate through me as I ‘speak’ them, nothing was felt in my voice box, but they still appeared in my consciousness and I could also see my reflection in the door mouthing these words. I then try another technique to bring clarity and light to my vision and that is to rub my hands together in front of my face but I found this difficult to do as my arms felt numb. I try shouting ‘clarity now’ with so much force that i’m intentionally using my body as i force the words out. I see the reflection of me react the way I am intending but from where I am standing I don’t feel anything still and as I looked down I realise that I cannot see any part of my body…just the floor. It appears I am simply a point of consciousness. Before I could decide on my next move, as this threw me completely, I then began to sink through my floor boards. I do not feel anything as I float downwards and I see the room rising up and my bed rising up. I really wanted to do some exploring in this new environment as I know that these opportunities do not come frequently to most but I felt quite scared to leave my body behind. Why was I heading downwards? That wasn’t caused by me as I didn’t intend for that to happen. I felt that I didn’t have much control of what was happening and therefore my confidence took a little dip. I had read many times that the second you want to return to your physical body all you would need to do is to look at it or think of it and you’ll go straight back. Hence why I kept my focus away from the bed all this time so as to prolong the experience. I decided quickly that I wanted to get back and as soon as I thought that the experience ended and I became aware that I was back in my bed lying on my back and my whole physical body had this strong tingling energy all over me.

This amazing, frightening, beautiful and unbelievable experience blew my mind as it confirmed for me that we are not just our physical bodies. The words I am using do not do the experience justice at all. I had witnessed a part of me that I never consciously experienced before and it is something I am determined to explore more of.
Even though I never left my bedroom, I didn’t meet any Beings or even fly through our universe seeing amazing sights… this experience changed my outlook on life completely and has awakened a powerful desire to connect to something greater and to look more closely at my inner world. Before this experience I thought I knew the way our reality works but I now know that there is so much we do not know.
Next time I will work on controlling any fear as I know there is a whole lot more to investigate and more profound aspects of the ‘other side/s’. After having conversations with others on an AP Facebook group and reading books such as ‘Adventures Beyond The Body’ by William Buhlman and ‘Hacking The Out Of Body Experience’ by Robert Peterson it’s common to feel fear but the key is to control it. The knowledge I am receiving from all these avenues are encouraging and inspires me to work hard on honing my skills on achieving another OBE as often as I can. I have tried since then to do it once more but without luck. However the technique I used requires you to wake up naturally and it’s not possible to do this on the days I have to work so the weekends will be my time to practice. I keep a journal of my experiences and I will post when I have another OBE.

I believe this ability is available to all of us. It will take practice but if you’re serious about it and you can keep an open mind to it then I see no reason why you cannot achieve it too.