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Pink Mandalas, Part One

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Bonnie Gold Bell

Since my own recovery from advanced breast cancer eight years ago, I have wanted to share the love and support I received. Part of what kept me going was drawing on the radiant energy in the Nature mandalas I make with my husband, David. No matter how down I felt, my heart and my body could be uplifted by these bright, life-filled images. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, I have picked out seven of our pinkest mandalas to share, along with some stories and writings about healing.


As I perused the galleries of our work, I was simply letting color guide my choices. The first mandala I came across was, appropriately, called Awareness. Its pink, red and green colors all relate to the heart chakra, and help it thrive. We created this image as part of our 2009 Healing Mandalas calendar. The theme of this calendar is Meditations on Personal and Planetary Peace.

Awareness Mandala

Awareness Mandala
Source: Hibiscus flower, fluorite crystal, magnolia petals, and eastern Earth


From its shining blue-green core to its pastel borders, this image sings life’s radiant refrain. Emerging from the dark red field, snowy stems offer life-giving pollen. Looking deeply into Nature, we gain a new perspective. We awaken to an awareness of greater identity. See your planetary self and be at peace.


Receive healing, strengthen peace on our planet.


In the midst of illness, finding peace is an immeasurably valuable gift. It is so easy to fall prey to the gnawing fear of outcomes. So many other worries crowd their way into our already challenged hearts. We need ways to take our attention out of the loop of concern and locate it in the place of calm and balance. We need to touch into the stream of life that is undimmed by the present pattern of disease. Gazing on mandalas like this one helped me immensely. Balance, wholeness, ease, beauty, and the rich essence of growing things–I could draw all these into my system and gain strength. Nature’s remedies, with no side effects save excessive joy.


If you or someone in your family or circle of friends is grappling with breast cancer, David and I send you loving wishes for strength and recovery. And we want to give you two ways to enjoy and share the Awareness Mandala, both at a special discount for October.


1. A fine art print of the Awareness Mandala in any size. Click here to go to our online store for prints and use this 6-letter discount code– PRCYZE– to receive a 15% discount for the month of October.


2. A set of six Awareness Mandala Notecards with the meditation you see above. Click here to purchase this and other Healing Mandala Notecards, also on sale for October.


It is our deep desire that these pink mandalas will bring peace and healing joy to all.

Categories : Healing
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The Joy of Creating a Custom Mandala

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Bonnie Gold Bell

There are many reasons people ask us to create a custom mandala for and with them. Some want a unique logo to empower their business or service. Some want to capture the energy of a particular place in Nature. Others are looking for an image for the cover of their book. Additionally, there are people who want a meditation piece to help them center or heal from an illness or challenge.


I always enjoy creating art, but never more so than when we make these custom images. Recently, we collaborated with Heike Vargas of Aurora, Colorado to design a mandala for her wellness business. Heike is a Certified Medical Intuitive/T & DNA Healer and Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. From start to finish, co-creating with Heike such a pleasure that it prompted me to write this blog. What made this event flow so smoothly? What makes the co-creation process a joy?


The short answer is that helping someone’s heart-vision take shape is magical and deeply satisfying. When we make custom art, we begin with photographs of real elements: flowers, crystals, feathers, starfields, all the elements of Earth and the heavens. We interview the custom client to draw out his or her or, if a group, their vision. We ask them to say which key words, colors, shapes, symbols, numbers, natural elements are significant to them. What is the feeling essence that they want to embody in the image we are going to craft for them? We take the clients’ clues and put together a photo-collage that brings the elements of their vision together in a beautiful form.


Part of what made the experience of collaborating with Heike so much fun is that she was right there for every part of the process. She was committed and clear in her choices from start to finish. After some initial discussions we created a draft image, and it was very close to what she wanted. And Heike knew just what color element she wanted us to add to take it the rest of the way to embodying her vision. A few small adjustments were made and then, bang! We could all feel when the image took the form that fulfilled the picture in her heart. Here is the mandala we created for Heike (its source materials are listed below).


Vargas Custom Mandala

Source: Water lilies, amethyst, clear crystal with rainbow refractions, blue sky and Ultra Deep galactic field (Hubble Space Telescope/STScl)


I hope this short re-telling allows you to get a feeling for the process of co-creating a custom mandala with us. Now, here are some of the benefits you receive from the beautiful visual result.

Top 5 Benefits of Having a Bell & Todd Custom Mandala

1. Your custom image holds the vibration of your purpose in creating it and empowers that purpose.


2. The image serves as a touchstone that draws positive energy toward your purpose.


3. The image, created with elements and colors that you choose, connects you to Nature in a special way.


4. The image, created with geometries and designs that you choose, connects you to Spirit in a special way.


5. By integrating unique vibration, natural elements and spiritual designs, your custom image becomes an interface with ongoing blessings for you and all who view it.


And one more benefit—it is exhilarating to make art together!

We invite you to engage with us in the pleasurable process of collaboration. To see some of our collaborations, visit our Custom Art page.

Categories : Art, Creativity
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Being in the Future Now

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Bonnie Gold Bell

I’ve just been to the post-2012 future, and it is beautiful. Earth and the heavens have come into a higher harmonic, manifesting in new shapes and forms. Balanced, intentional patterns mix gracefully with the wonderfully chaotic and fractal patterns of Nature. It looks like our art, because that is, of course, what I’m seeing. I have just been contemplating and writing blessings for the 12 new mandalas we have made for our 2013 Bell & Todd Healing Mandalas calendar.
Yes, 2013. In order to meet the publishing cycle, we complete these images about 16 months ahead of the year they pictorially embody.


We began the process of making brand new images for each month of the year in 2003. In 2008, we began to also write meditations for each month’s image. Every year since then, we launch ourselves forward via intuition to see/feel what geometries and elements will best support our collective manifestation for the year we’ve charged ourselves with serving.


The words see and feel best capture the dual process of visioning that goes into perceiving what goes into these calendars. First, David and I project our feeling into that future time. We ask guidance to reveal an essence that will be just right for that year. Usually, we will hear a phrase or perceive a sense of focus. Then, feeling extends into multi-dimensional seeing. We begin to discuss shapes and elements, consulting with intuition to clarify the details. For 2013 for instance, we felt and saw the melding of earthly and cosmic elements. We began to experiment with a new form of whole-flower mandalas (using part of the bloom to make a symmetrical but altered flowers) mixed with photos from the space telescopes. Soon the form solidified and we could clearly feel the theme: “Blessings of Earth and Heaven.”


Once the creation of images is underway, I start to write the meditations. What new form of messaging wants to appear in 2013? I feel my way into the words, delicately and then with growing confidence. David reviews and edits everything written. Finally, we give names to the images. Great care goes into each one, because names have a magic of their own.


We may not climb into a time machine, but we visit the future in order to taste its quality and nurture its positive unfolding. We hope you will enjoy the 2011 and 2012 images, designed in the past to serve our emerging present. Thank you for joining us on this journey through time.


healing mandala calendar

Categories : Art
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Magnolia Angel

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Bonnie Gold Bell

On Thursday, we woke to a tornado warning here in North Florida and the news of more devastation and people lost across the Southeast. Across the street from us, a single magnolia blossom on a low branch took the form of an angel with spread wings. Since magnolias are such an iconic flower of the South, we felt a mandala made from this bloom would be a special blessing for this region. We have created a symmetry from the flower for the sake of balance, but know that the flower formed a perfect angel shape before we did that.


The border on this image is made from a picture of a flamingo that we took earlier this month at the Sarasota Jungle Gardens in Sarasota, Florida. The soft peachy feathers connect us to the winged creatures here in the Gulf-Atlantic states and their special ability to lift our hearts. The Air Element, which can cause so much damage in its stormy forms, here appears as calming, uplifting Presence.


Through the interface of this Magnolia Angel, let’s join in sending love and healing light to all those impacted by the storms in the Southeast–and to anyone and anywhere in need.


Magnolia Angel

Categories : Art, Blessing, Nature
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How to Heal a Global Heart

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Bonnie Gold Bell

One of the gifts that comes through a sorrowful event like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan is that we feel one with the world. Our emotions don’t distinguish the nationality or religion of the people impacted. Especially now that we are continually connected via Internet and TV, we feel with our global hearts.




This is not easy. We are drawn into caring at such a huge scale. We hear, see, feel not just the challenges of our local neighborhood or town, but the trials of all the world’s people, animals and land. How can we cope with this global emotion and stay positive, responsive? How do we accept the depth of our feeling and also transform it into powerful help?




One strong means that many of us spontaneously move toward is group blessing. On March 11, when David and I heard about the devastating events, we created a short video to focus our own love on Japan and to invite others to join in. We were guided to includes images, words and sounds to help infuse each viewer with light-blessings that he or she could then direct to Japan through his or her own feeling. (click here to see the Blessing for Japan video)




In the eleven days since the events, 9,000 people have viewed the Blessings for Japan video. And many other such videos and positive media have been created and shared widely. This says to me that we awakening together to our global hearts. This is an evolutionary step in our human awareness. We are facing and embracing our profound interdependence with each other and the planet.




This kind of world crisis is also awakening the higher purpose of our social networks. We now have unparalled means of linking our blessings, which amplifies them exponentially.




Knowing I am part of a living network of blessors eases my grief. I feel that I am being constructive at an energetic level in helping those in need. Even in the midst of crisis, my heart expands. Gratitude fills my global heart. I am restored by the gesture of sending out love. Blessings flow in both directions.




May our love and resources continue to flow toward those in Japan, in solidarity with their urgent needs.



Please sign up to receive our monthly Blessing the Time-Wave video meditations and visit this site or our YouTube channel to see additional videos as they are created.





Sunset Lily

Categories : Blessing, Healing
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Blessing for Japan

Posted on March 11, 2011 by David Sun Todd

May our blessings surround you with a strong circle of light.
May every form of help come your way.
May you be held and healed by our collective love.



Strength Mandala

Strength Mandala

Categories : Art, Blessing, Healing
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Making It Together: From Creativity to Co-Creativity

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Bonnie Gold Bell

My partner, David, and I have been making it together for a long time now. What we co-create is energy-charged images, but it’s the process rather than the product that I want to explore in this piece. By combining our creative efforts we unlock a new level of transformative power. I want to share a bit about how that works in our artistic adventures and how it extends to the challenge we face collectively to make our world new.




There is actually a third partner in our collaboration—the Earth, in the form of the photographs that are the foundation of our artwork. What we create are photo-collages. We take pieces of our Nature photos and re-assemble them using sacred geometries. We make mandalas and other styles of images, all with an underlying symmetry. Everything in our work comes from Mother Nature. Beyond relating to her pictorially, we commune with the spirit of the planet as we design our images, which often feature the globe.




Solaria



The human side of making art together is an exciting, sometimes explosive and often ecstatic event. How do two people with independent ideas cooperate in such an essentially creative project? It begins with an originating impulse—we may be creating a piece for a specific healing purpose, or creating 12 new images for each year’s calendar. The purpose guides the initial visioning process. Having a clear, shared purpose is one key to co-creativity.




With the purpose in mind, we begin: Which Earth-element should we use to convey the given intention, what geometry would serve? Sometimes one of us leads that enquiry, sometimes we do it together. But before we decide, both of us come to agreement on the choices. Yes, we can both feel that a purple water lily is the right element to convey the sense of serenity we are looking for.




nature mandala

Water Star






Maybe I want to use one view of the lily for the center of the image, but David, who is the photo-maestro, knows that another view will be sharper. We may go back and forth for a while, but once I really see his point, I yield. What I am envisioning will be even better realized by using his idea. We come up with a draft of the central image, and I get an intuition about just which foliage has the color and patterning that would make the best border. As I am the color specialist, David is willing to give it a try. And so it goes.




We try things, discovering together what feels-looks the best until we both come to rest. This image we have made together is greater that the sum of its individual elements and greater than what would have come from our individual visions. Because of the co-creative process that has birthed it, the piece of art has become a vessel that can hold “seedsongs”. This is our word for the vibrational energies that transform this visual image into a tool for healing and uplift. As Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message”. This image that is the product of our co-creativity with each other and with Nature delivers the message of collaboration and synergy. The sacred intention that was the origin of the image shines through the medium of Earth’s beauty.




Are there any secrets to fruitfully making it together? Here are the ones that I’ve uncovered:



  • Clear Purpose—this is the intention that guides the rest of the process. It is the seed-vision that draws each partner past “me-mind” into the “us-mind” that guides the co-creation process.
  • Heartfelt Respect—co-creation is strictly a peer-to-peer event. Each person is the carrier of something special. Respect, felt from the heart, generates a field of trust that fosters the creative process. Inevitably, there are disagreements, but if the worth of each person is acknowledged, the differing opinions can be worked out.
  • Genuine Consensus—no creation is complete unless the partners feel totally satisfied with it. There is no overriding of one’s will by the other’s will. Everything we make together is ours, and only emerges when “yes” comes from all. Making a genuine commitment to this level of consensus has a transformative effect on the participants.





Bright Ally






If I can embrace this co-creative process, anyone can. I am a very earthy double Taurean creature who wants to do things my way. Luckily, my Aquarian moon leads me to feel cosmically and globally as well.  I know in my heart that we are all in this together. Collaboration is not just a satisfying way to work, it is a technology of change based on an awareness of our interdependence and essential unity.




Linking our creative powers is how we are going to shift collectively into a bright future.  Whatever your realm of creativity–be it focused on the home, the service domain, or business–find people to collaborate with. Enter deeply into the messy and wonderful process of co-creating and enjoy the ride. Each of us holds a piece of the puzzle to making our world sustainable and peaceful. Engage with others in the dance of synergy and be amazed by the abundance and beauty that emerges.

Categories : Art, Creativity
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Dave’s Country Kitchen, or the Joy of Feathers

Posted on by Bonnie Gold Bell

The heart of our courtyard garden is aflutter, literally. That’s the site of the squirrel-free bird feeder we call Dave’s Country Kitchen, since he is the one who keeps it full of seeds for the large and small birds. All day long, we are treated to the sight of our brightly colored friends, flitting in to partake of the feast.


nature picture

Flapping Cardinal

Drinking Robins

Cardinal Pair




We live in North Florida beside a strip of forest and a canopied road, in the midst of what used to be a pecan grove. A haven for birds of many kinds. None are more beautiful than the male cardinals, who stand out like Christmas ornaments against the year-round greenery. And none more lethally lovely than the red-shouldered hawk who sometimes lands on our back fence.


red shoulder hawk picture

Red Shoulder Hawk


We have worked with many feathers over the years in creating images. We used feathers and butterfly wings (our summer garden feeds these beauties) to depict the expansive “Evolve” theme in our GaiaStar Codex evolutionary guidance deck.





Seeing these birds does something special to me. Looking at them, I forget what may be dragging at my attention, and let my inner kid fly free. Even in the patterning in their wings, these air-beings convey a special message.  This message is easy to feel and see in the image below, made from photos of flicker and parrot feathers. We call this image “Kindred Spirits”.


mandala picture

Kindred Spirits




I think this name reveals the special function birds serve for us. They remind us of our own spirit-nature, our light-winged self, which may not so visible, but which nonetheless can fly.

Categories : Animals, Nature
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nature picture

The Purpose of the Art

Each Bell & Todd image begins with a photograph of Nature, remixed to reveal its inner glory. We use computer software as a tool for this visual alchemy. We often work with sacred geometries to create symmetrical mandalas and spiritual icons.


Another style of our work features Nature scenes that open windows into the living world. Every image showcases Earth’s astounding palette and patterns, re-combined with reverence for her spirit. The colors and designs of the arts cover a wide gamut, (more . . .)

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