Where Art Meets Real Life: Megan Quinlan’s JIYA Journals

Willa Workshops is lucky to have many incredible instructors, but Megan Quinlan is truly something special. If you haven’t discovered Megan’s work yet, now is the perfect time. She’s a four-time Fodder School instructor, a beloved teacher inside the Willa Workshops community, and a mixed media artist whose classes have helped countless women reconnect with their creativity through art journaling and paper crafting.

There are artists who create beautiful work, and then there are artists who fully live their creative practice every single day. Megan is one of those artists.

She returns to her journals and mixed media projects again and again — not because it’s always easy, but because creativity has become part of how she moves through life. She shows up consistently. She experiments. She pays attention. And over time, that steady dedication has built something deeply meaningful, both for herself and for the students who learn from her.

She shows up. She works in her journals. She pays attention.

Megan’s work sits at the intersection of mixed media art, handmade journals, storytelling, paper crafting, and everyday creative practice. But what makes her classes stand out isn’t just the techniques she teaches. It’s the way she encourages students to rediscover their own creative voice without pressure or perfectionism.

Her class Journal Into Your Art (JIYA) gives students a simple and approachable way to begin an art journaling practice without overthinking every page.

In Journal Into Your Art: Junk Style (AKA JIYA), she expands on that process by embracing layers, scraps, recycled materials, and the beauty of using what you already have on hand.

In The Comprehensive Paper Doll, Megan brings storytelling, personality, and playful creativity into mixed media journaling through imaginative paper doll characters and collage elements.

But what happens inside Megan’s classes goes far beyond learning techniques for mixed media or art journaling.

Recently, one student shared a story that perfectly captures why Megan’s teaching resonates so deeply with people. She had found Megan’s classes during an incredibly difficult season of life while navigating the end of her marriage and facing major uncertainty about the future. During that time, she kept returning to her journal practice — creating, processing, and simply continuing to show up for herself through art.

A year later, she wrote to say that her divorce was finalized, she had moved into a new home, and she finally felt like she was entering a new chapter of her life. One line from her message stood out above all the others:

She said, "You all told me I could make it, and I did."

Somewhere along the way, watching Megan continue to show up consistently to her own creative practice reminded this student that rebuilding is possible. That healing happens slowly. That people can begin again.

That’s the real heart of Megan Quinlan’s work.

She doesn’t just teach mixed media techniques or creative projects. She offers people a creative practice they can return to during difficult seasons and joyful ones alike. Through art journaling, collage, storytelling, and paper play, Megan helps students stay connected to themselves through all of life’s changes.