My new RedBubble Store

Translucent White Tulip Petals Red Bubble

Introducing my new RedBubble print on demand store. Just created it on March 15. I'm working on a longer blog that talks about RedBubble and Art of Where, and some current directions for my creative joy.

Meanwhile, here is a link that will take you to my RedBubble store landing page. I already have 20 designs, and am adding more all the time. Had some sales, too. Totally done for love and joy, but happy that people want to buy!

Candy Paull Red Bubble Store

When I create a new collection and put my art in a form that others can enjoy, I'm like a little kid showing my finger painting to Mom and having her display it on the refrigerator door. Even more exciting is seeing someone wear one of my designs, or wearing one myself. What fun!

From the Star Magnolia Trellis Collection

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Excerpt from The Translucent Heart 

There is great power in immersing yourself in a satisfying creative project. First of all, it takes your mind off your worries and immerses you in the moment, in the doing of the thing. It is also empowering, for you are the one who is making the choices. The creative work is yours. When other parts of your life are stressful and feel out of your control, the world you create in your artistic projects tells you that you are capable. The soothing nature of the creative process can calm and center you, bringing serenity in those moments when you are most absorbed in a project.

As you move deeper into the process, you also learn to surrender to the greater wisdom of what is being made. A potter works with the clay, a woodworker cherishes the grain of the wood, the melody demands certain chords, the brush and color sometimes seem to guide your hand. You realize that surrender to the flow and energy can create unexpected effects and combinations, bringing something into being that is beyond what you originally imagined. It is true in art—and it is true in life as well. 

Eric Maisel, author and a psychotherapist who counsels artists says, “Remember the three companions of creativity: loving, knowing, doing. You can propel yourself into a creative outburst by choosing any one of the three as starting point.”  You can rejuvenate yourself by time spent appreciating great art, falling in love with the creations of others—loving. You can rekindle your creative spirit by learning a new skill or technique—knowing. Or you can leap right into a project, allowing the work itself to carry you along—doing. 

Composer Aaron Copeland said that inspiration is the antithesis of self-consciousness. Like children at play, we bring an unselfconscious joy to acts of creation. Tap into the unselfconscious pleasure of creating something that satisfies your soul, nourishes your heart, and challenges you to express your creativity. 

From the Grace of Spring Collection

Austin Tyler Meade wearing the Mystery Pink Peony dress from Art of Where

Mystery Pink Peony

Transforming Troubles

Treasures in the Darkness 

t is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

When troubles come, we have a choice—to let troubles destroy us or transform us. A diamond is just a piece of coal that has undergone extreme pressure. When we are handed a lump of coal in the form of trouble, it’s an opportunity to see how Spirit can transform it into spiritual treasure. Dark ugly things can become jewels reflecting the light of eternity, if we are willing to plunge into the darkness with God and discover the hidden treasure.

The losses may seem overwhelming, but the love and life at the center of your being are more powerful than any sorrow or darkness. The still small voice at the center of your heart is a candle in the dark. Focus on the light and it will grow. Do not betray the life and love in your heart for a darker vision of what life holds. Step toward the light, toward those who love you, and say yes to your own life. Say yes to possibilities that cannot yet be imagined in a sad and depressed state.

God is with you in every season of your life. When the storms of sorrow tear your world apart, Divine comfort is there for you. The Presence walks with you in times of discouragement, waits with you for the perfect timing, and comforts you when sorrow weighs your heart to the ground. This is not a time when logic has anything to offer. This is a time when all explanations fall away, and only deep can speak to deep, Spirit to spirit.

In the darkness, out of sight, the pressures and problems can create the lovely jewel of a quiet spirit, a strengthened character, and a wiser heart. One day you will see—whether in this life or in the shining, glorious crowning glory you will behold in the next life. Remember that there are treasures to be discovered in the darkness and that troubles can be transformed into glorious victories if we can walk though them in trust and faith. Grace will carry you through in ways you cannot yet imagine. Trust.

( excerpt from The Translucent Heart by Candy Paull)

This is what I have learned: With the sorrow, there is grace. When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.
Wayne Muller

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.
Joanna Macy

In all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is you who is painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations.
Elton Trueblood

You number my wanderings;
Put my tears into your bottle;
Are they not in Your book?
Psalm 56:8 (NKJV)

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus

Cultivate Inner Wisdom

The Heart of the Rose 

I'm excited because I have a brand new baby iMac to set up. I also have a new work desk to make room for this 21 inch bouncing baby computer. My life is blooming like spring flowers, and I'm getting my office in order for the new possibilities that are opening up. There have been many reasons for the dearth of blogs in the last year or two, but a season for returning to blogging is coming soon. I love to blog, so I'm looking forward to spending time online again and exploring some other social media as well. Meanwhile, while I'm organizing and getting my new life in order, I offer an excerpt from The Translucent Heart. Enjoy! 


The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
Albert Einstein 

You may have a string of degrees and be smart as a whip. But that doesn’t make you wise. Wisdom comes with experience and through cultivating a deeper relationship with God. Inner wisdom helps you navigate the twists and turns of life, helping you untangle knotty life problems with simple spiritual truth.

Cultivate inner wisdom by making your spiritual life a priority. Spend time in prayer, study, and meditation. Make time for spiritual reading. Meditate on sacred scriptures and on wise words from others who have traveled down the spiritual path. 

Children also show us how to be wise with their wonder, openness, and willingness to try new things. Our children teach us lessons in life’s wisdom every day. They embrace life with a giggle, are not afraid to cry when it hurts, and look with wide-eyed wonder that the world. As adults, we are often reluctant to be open, to learn, to make mistakes. In our quest for knowing the right answers, we leave behind the childlike ability to open to different ideas and new experiences. Jesus said that unless we became like children, we would miss the wisdom of the Kingdom of God.

Wisdom also comes from experience and as we mature we learn from our experience. This includes learning from our mistakes, weaknesses, and problems. Sometimes our hearts know the wisest course to take, but we still stubbornly choose a foolish path. However, we can often learn more from our mistakes than our successes. Our foolish choices may lead us down a path we never planned to take. But on that path we find divine appointments, lessons in love, and wise teachers who point the way back to the high road we left behind. 

As compost makes the soil richer, so even weaknesses, mistakes, problems, detours, and losses can enrich our lives and help us cultivate wisdom. Inner wisdom is found in the secret places of the heart. It is the place where heaven and earth intersect. When you cultivate inner wisdom, you will see changes in the conditions of your outer life, sooner or later. This wisdom is of God, coming from a place beyond and above all circumstances, all earthly limitations. Prepare to be surprised, for when inner wisdom speaks, it becomes a source of divine ideas that can slowly but surely transform your life. 

Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The deeper one sees into life, the wider life opens itself to one, and then every moment of one’s life becomes full of wonders and full of splendors.
Hazrat Inayat Khan

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.
William Wordsworth 

Accumulated knowledge does not make a wise man. Knowledgeable people are found everywhere, but we are cruelly short of wise people. 
Michel Quoist

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
John Kenneth Galbraith

A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought-evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect, he ceases to fuss and fume and worry and grieve, and remains poised, steadfast, serene.
James Allen

The Translucent Heart

 just published my new e-book, The Translucent Heart. It's already available on Smashwords and Amazon, and will soon be available on Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, and other e-tailers. Almost two years in the making. It's been a long time since I published a new book, and I'm very happy to be up and publishing again. 

I also have a new book coming in November with Grand Harbor Press, called Finding Serenity in Seasons of Stress. More to come on that. It will be available in an e-book format, as well as trade paperback and audio book. 

The Translucent Heart is a collection of sixty-one meditations with quotes for the spiritual journey, offering practical ways to bring a little bit of heaven into daily life on earth. This devotional companion offers instant inspiration to illuminate the heart and lift your spirits. If some days feel opaque with weariness and struggle, discover a little bit of light to brighten your day. 

The Translucent Heart is much longer than any book I have written. The sixty-one meditations each come with a cornucopia of quotations, showing that wisdom is universal, and people from different times, cultures, and spiritual traditions often agree on the essentials of what it means to cultivate the interior life. I adore quotes, and this book has some great ones. I also stretched in my writing, creating longer meditations, and going deeper into my own experience. I think it is really important to continue growing as a writer, and The Translucent Heart has been an important part of my personal journey. It is my prayer that it will be an ongoing devotional resource for your personal journey, too. 

The object of the man, the aim of the moment, is to make daylight shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without obstruction, so that on what point so-ever of his doing your eye falls it shall report truly of his character, whether it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 

You turn your captivity, or come out of the house of bondage, thralldom, and misery when you claim the qualities, attributes of God as your own, and when you accept mentally all the blessings of heaven.
Joseph Murphy

As one comes into and lives continually in the full, conscious realization of oneness with the Infinite Life and Power, then all else follows.
Ralph Waldo Trine

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.
Henry Van Dyke