Cosmic Smashbooking is a no-rules form of art-journaling. We don’t make art to impress other people or hang in a museum. We simply make art because it’s fun, following the Cosmic Smashbook process. You can use the process to make a fabulous art-journal page about pretty much anything — even a cherry blossom Cosmic Smashbook page.

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Cherry Blossom Cosmic Smashbook Page

The first cherry blossoms were planted around the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC in 1912, a gift of friendship from Japan to the United States. Now, a weeks-long festival is the highlight of springtime around here. Every night on the local news, we get an update on the blossoms with predictions on when they will reach peak bloom.

Cherry blossoms go through five stages from green buds to peduncle elongation before they reach peak bloom, usually around the last week of March or first week of April. This process can not be rushed. Cherry blossoms will blossom when they are ready.

That part really struck me this year, especially as I recently quit my job and decided to plant my own seeds for a new career. I want all of these great ideas I have to start popping NOW! and sometimes I get frustrated when things move slowly. I feel like I should be blossoming faster and I forget that some things need more time.

That’s what I wanted to explore further with my Cosmic Smashbook cherry blossom page. If that sounds interesting to you, I invite you to make one too. Here’s the process:

QUERY (AKA JOURNAL PROMPT)

What is blossoming in your life right now?

And what needs a little more time?

INTENTION

Please show me where I’m blossoming now. Please show me where I need a little more time. (Or whatever words come up for you. That’s just a suggestion to get you started.)

ADD COLOR

Paint, paper, fabric. Use what you have to cover your words and create a background.

IMAGERY: Cherry Blossoms

You can paint cherry blossoms, look for pictures of them and make a collage or create flowers out of paper or fabric. However you interpret the imagery suggestion is totally up to you. I wanted to use coffee filters for my Cosmic Smashbook cherry blossom page. 

Here’s a super-quick coffee filter flower tutorial for a cherry blossom Cosmic Smashbook page:

1. Fold the coffee filter in half. Then fold it in half again like this. Here’s what that looks like for visual learners like me. 😀

2. Hold the pointy end in your hand and cut wavy lines across the top to mimic petals. I used three coffee filters cutting some closer to the top and others closer to the pointy end to get flowers of different sizes. Experiment with length and petal shape. Don’t get fussy! Flowers aren’t perfect, but they are all beautiful.

3. Then I painted each layer pink and white and glued them on top of each other to give my cherry blossom some dimension. Here’s what it looks like (minus the paint). Easy peasy!

4. I used the coffee filter scraps for the buds, simply rolling the paper up and gluing it together to stick. You could also use scraps to make leaves.

Here’s my Cherry Blossom Cosmic Smashbook page!

I created this page during the Cosmic Smashbook Book Club at the Pohick Library in Burke last week, one day before the DC blossoms officially reached “peak bloom.” What is so cool about this process, is everyone in the room was creating cherry blossoms … and every single page was as unique and wonderful as the person who made it.

That’s the magic of Cosmic Smashbooking! 🌟

It’s kind of hard to read in the photo, but I wrote the following across the bottom of my page as a reminder:

The process can not be rushed. The cherry blossoms will peak WHEN THEY ARE READY.

And you will too!

💖 Courtney