This is What You're Buying
A Deck of Cards
Individual A5 cards you can shuffle, spread out, select and revisit whenever you like. Printed on sturdy 300gsm uncoated paper, great with most mediums. They're made to be used, either by you or shared with others, not kept pristine in a book.
Original Artwork
Explore original designs created by a trained art therapist, with space to make each one your own. No more artist block or performance anxiety. Just choose the next colour and fill each space in whatever way you feel. Scribble it, make it smooth and neat, create a pattern or zentagle. There's no right or wrong way, only your way.
Reflection Space
Reflective prompts invite you to check in, notice what's happening within you, and see what, if anything, shifts along the way. There's no right answer, expected outcome or insight you have to uncover. Just expression and experience. Do it your way or not at all.
When words are not enough, we turn to images and symbols to tell our stories. And in telling our stories through art, we find pathways to wellness, recovery, and transformation.
~ Cathy Malchiodi, PhD,
Art Therapy Without Borders
A Little Space...
STAY IN THE KNOW
Creative Connection
...for Your Client
Sometimes, finding the words for what we're thinking or feeling isn't easy. Sometimes we have plenty of words, but there's more going on beneath the surface. And sometimes, we need something to focus on so we can hear our thoughts and notice what is going on inside us.
Cards For Your Soul brings creative expression and reflective prompts together, offering another way to approach self-exploration within a therapeutic setting.
These cards can provide a shared point of focus without requiring the conversation to follow a particular path. These are not used to interpret the artwork, search for hidden meanings or arrive at a particular insight. The prompts are invitations, not questions that must be answered. A client might find something they want to explore further, notice a feeling they hadn't paid much attention to, or simply enjoy the process of creating something in shared space.
Another way into the conversation
A client might find it difficult to express in words what they have experienced, spending time with the artwork in silence can allow them a safe space to gather their thoughts and words.
Clients can feel confronted by eye contact or the face-to-face nature of therapy; colouring while talking can help reduce the pressure and give them permission not to make eye contact.
Let the client lead
The cards don't need to do all the talking. They're just a resource you can draw on if and when they feel relevant to the work you're doing together.
“I suffer from night terrors, doing a CFYS card before bed at night has helped me sleep better through the night."”
Lauren, QLD
The exploration doesn't have to end when the session does
The take-home card can be used to ease into the next session, or it can just be something that helps the client self-regulate between sessions. They could bring it back with them to keep working on, or you could help them process it without them bringing it in. It could be that the client simply enjoys the process without any need to explore or process any deeper.
Take it home to practice self-regulation
Continuing the Journey
...Between Sessions
Sometimes a conversation leaves a client with something they'd like to spend more time exploring. A thought they keep returning to, a feeling they've noticed, or a question they're not quite ready to put down.
Cards For Your Soul offers a way for the client to continue that exploration in their own time, between sessions. They can take the card they were working with in session home to finish, or you can give them a blank card to work on and bring back to the next session.
You might invite a client to continue exploring something that came up during your session, or suggest they choose a card that catches their attention and see what emerges. The reflective prompts offer another way to explore their thoughts, feelings and experiences, without requiring them to reach a particular conclusion.
There's no schedule; this isn't a mandatory task or requirement. This isn't something that needs to be done in one sitting. The client can do just a little bit each day to practice putting themselves first, to practice noticing, to practice being present, or whatever it is you think they need from the card.
The cards aren't a test, a task to tick off, or a measure of progress. They're an opportunity for the client to continue making a little space for themselves between sessions, continue to sit with whatever needs more attention, and an opportunity to practice self-regulation outside of the therapeutic space.
Self-exploration
...for Yourself
You don't need a problem to solve, a question to answer or a particular destination in mind. Sometimes it's enough to give yourself dedicated space to create, to notice what's happening within you, and see what emerges.
Cards For Your Soul bring original colouring artwork and reflective prompts together. They offering an opportunity to explore your thoughts, feelings and experiences through creative expression without having to fix anything.
Make time to express yourself
Choose a card that catches your attention, or pick one at random. Colour it in your own time, using whatever materials you enjoy. You can work through the reflective prompts as you go, or leave them until you've finished colouring.
Lead with intuition and follow with curiosity
There's no particular outcome you're expected to achieve. The cards offer a starting point for exploration, leaving you free to decide what feels meaningful to you, what you'd like to explore further, and what you're happy to leave right where it is. Mostly, they are a way to make time for yourself a sacred practice while still feeling productive without having to be productive. Rest at its best.
As you colour and reflect, you might notice thoughts, feelings, memories or associations arising. You might find yourself responding to the artwork in an unexpected way, or discovering that a prompt gives you something new to consider.
Or you might simply enjoy making marks on the page for a while. There is no right or wrong way to practice using these cards.
Reflection & Reset
...to Put Things Down
Working alongside people through their experiences can leave us with thoughts, feelings and responses of our own. Sometimes something from a session stays with us. Sometimes we need a moment to notice what we're carrying before we move on to the next person, or a play to put what is not ours at the end of the day before we head home.
Cards For Your Soul offers a creative space to check in with yourself. These cards can be somewhere you place your own responses that a client might have triggered, explore what's coming up, and give your own experience some attention.
Choose a card, a medium, colour(s), and spend time with the reflective prompts. Spend as much or as little time as you need, to explore a response to something that's happened, notice what you're feeling, or reflect on what you need before moving into whatever comes next.
You spend a lot of time holding space for others, so here is some for you.
For when there's something you'd like to explore more deeply or you need to acknowledge a feeling you've been setting aside while supporting someone else. It could be that you need somewhere to set aside that feeling so you don't carry it into the next session so you can come back to it when you have time. Perhaps you need a few moments to pause and turn your attention inward.
Your experience matters too
The aim isn't to force yourself to resolve something, leave every difficult feeling behind, or switch off your thoughts on command. It's about giving yourself permission to notice your own experience, explore what feels useful, and decide what you want to carry forward and to put down what is not yours to hold.
"A relationship with our imagination is a relationship with our deepest self"
~ Pat B. Allen
Art is a Way of Knowing
My name is Samm Starrs, and I hold a bachelor's degree specialising in Arts Psychotherapy. This, along with my lifetime of experience with creative practices, inevitably led me to create the Creativity for Your Soul deck.
It all began during a discussion in class about colouring books being marketed as art therapy, and the concerns within the art therapy community about the distinction between colouring and the relational process of art therapy. Having experienced art therapy as both a practitioner and a client, I had a lived experience of that distinction. However, we also discussed how simply doing art, or something creative, is therapeutic in and of itself. I agreed. Afterall, it was the experience of how valuable creative expression is therapeutically all by itself that even led me to pursuing my degree in the first place.
Being someone who has never been particularly good at accepting that something can't be done just because someone says it can't, I found myself wondering:
Creativity as a Way of Knowing
What if we could bring a little more therapeutic value to colouring in?
It became a bit of a challenge. How could I take something familiar, accessible and enjoyable and create opportunities for people to use it as a starting point for self-reflection and exploration? This became the seed for my Art for Your Soul colouring journals.
Sometimes we understand an experience by talking about it. Sometimes we need to write things down, sit with a feeling, or approach something from a different direction. I envisioned people being able to use their colouring practice to explore their inner worlds just a little bit, maybe gain some insight, new perspective or simply to begin to understand themselves better.
Creativity gives us another way to explore
From Journals to Decks
The Art for Your Soul colouring journals are the beginning. Cards for Your Soul is an extension of that idea, with a new format that offers greater flexibility in how we engage with creative expression and reflection.
Instead of working in a single book, the deck offers individual cards that can be selected, shuffled, spread out and revisited. This creates a different kind of flexibility, whether you're exploring something independently or using the cards as a resource in your work with clients.
A new way to explore
A single card becomes a small space for creative expression and reflection, whenever, wherever and with whomever it feels useful. You can:
Explore your own thoughts and feelings
Connect creatively with friends and family
Support clients in and between sessions
Incorporate creativity into group work
Make space for your own reflection as a practitioner
Send a little creative connection to someone far away
Take a creative pause whenever you need one
The artwork and reflective prompts remain at the heart of the experience. What changes is the way you can engage with them.
Creative expression offers another way to explore what's happening within us. As we make choices, respond to colours and shapes, and spend time with an image, we may notice thoughts, feelings or associations we hadn't consciously considered before.
Making Space for the Process
Express
Give yourself permission to create. Choose colours, make marks, follow your intuition and let the artwork become your own. Add extra lines, make patterns, fill the page as much or as little as you like.
Notice
Pay attention to what is happening within you. Notice what your mind is thinking, what your body is feeling. Listen to the stories your mind is telling you and notice how that is affecting your mood and your energy.
Explore
Practice curiosity. What was it about the colour you chose, the mark you made, the happy little accident that occurred. What happens if you make a mistake. What happens if you switch colours. What happens if...
Experiment
Try something different. Make patterns instead of blocks of colour, try one of the colouring trends or a new medium. Maybe you want to cut out the shapes and rearrange your image. Go with your flow.
Sometimes we understand an experience by talking about it. Sometimes we need to write things down, sit with a feeling, or approach something from a different direction.
These cards aren't designed to tell you what your artwork means, diagnose what you're feeling or lead you towards a predetermined answer. Your experience belongs to you. A prompt might spark an insight, raise a question, bring a feeling into focus or leave you with nothing in particular to explore. You might notice a shift, or you might not. The invitation is to approach yourself with curiosity, to make room for what you notice, and to decide for yourself what, if anything, you want to do with it.
Express yourself unapologetically, and see what emerges.
Something else in mind?
Let's create something that works for you.
Sometimes the resource we're looking for doesn't exist yet. Perhaps you've been searching for something that supports a particular kind of client, complements the way you work, or explores a topic you haven't been able to find the right tools for.
Maybe you'd love a resource designed around your practice, with your own branding and visual identity.
If there's something you've been wishing existed, I'd love to hear about it.
Creative Alchemist creates original, creatively engaging resources designed to invite self-exploration, reflection and expression. If you have an idea you'd like to explore, get in touch and tell me a little about what you're looking for.
Have an idea? Let's talk.
Contact Samm for more information about custom-designed resources for your practice.