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Heyo!

Thank you for staying around when my life went downhill for a while. I was expecting it to happen, but maybe not as much as it did.

Today is April 1st and the lovely Effy is inviting us to dust off our blogs in doing another round of Blog Along with Effy.

Today is also the day my lesson is up in her year-long class Book Of Days. It’s not too late to join us! The community and love are absolutely fantastic, everyone cheers everyone and in the current times, it feels like honey on my heart.
I strayed a bit from my usual Nixies and went a completely different road in my journal for this. This is both scary and exciting at the same time 🙂

It’s almost 8 am here in BC and my brain is foggy. So to start this month-long project, I will just unload my brain a little, maybe it will help (you can read my previous Brain Dumps right here if you’d like). In no particular order..:

• Waking up around 5 am every morning makes the days seem way longer than they actually are. Good thing I AM a morning person…
• This college semester is nothing like the first one. I wake up, study, attend Zoom classes, study, think about the exams and projects, try to rally my different teams, study…….. It is overwhelming, to say the least.
• Moving across the country SUCKS.
• I can not wait to be in our home in two days. However, the idea of emptying the storage room where our entire life resides at the moment is not something I am looking forward to (note: my husband and I will have to do it all…).
• I am excited to set up my new creative space. We have not seen our new home in person yet so we are not sure about the actual room sizes. I hope to be pleasantly surprised and no the other way around.
• Huge relief: our daughters love their new school so far (they are in grade 8 and in grade 10).
• My Mom gets her vaccine in two weeks (she lives in France).
• Exhaustion and anxiety are deep today.
• Music and books keep me sane. This is the good side of not having a TV in our bedroom where we are temporarily staying.

Newest video:

Hello KittyKatz!
I am so happy to share with you this short new video. I made it to honour my Soul Whisper for this new year of 2021.
It strangely came to me pretty straightforwardly (if you have followed my past Soul Whisper stories, you might remember that I sometimes struggle to figure it out).

I had a cradled wood panel with the beginning of whatever on it and decided to use this. I usually go pretty small for my Soul Whisper paintings but this one is slightly bigger.

In the past couple of years, I had the sense of losing myself, of being somebody I did not recognize anymore. It took me time to acknowledge it, in the midst of facing depression like never before. So I want to devote this year to putting this Nolwenn I know still exists deep down back to the front.

Do you have a Soul Whisper for 2021? How do you dedicate yourself to it?

It’s finally officially the last month of 2020… 2021 is still a blur but as my Soul Whisper for next year came to me, I realized I did not open back the commissions for the mini paintings in my Etsy shop. It’s now right there if you want to honour your guiding word.

Each mini mixed media painting is custom made to your likings. You tell me your favorite color-s and your word, and then I go with it.
I meditate first, and then I intuitively paint.
When the painting is finished, I send you a picture so you know this is what you were expecting and if I get your “go”, I will charge it with Reiki and smudge it before packing it and sending it your way 🙂

These are a real treat for me, they fill me with hope and joy. And it’s a perfect gift, for yourself or for a loved one <3

Hello Beauties,

Long time no see, I know. But I am still here and I am coming today with an exciting announcement: I will have a guest lesson in the upcoming Book Of Days 2021!
I have been a teacher in this fantastic and inspiring art journaling class in the past. It is filled with a variety of artists, which is great as we all have a different view on why we use art journaling, how we do it and distinct styles as well.

In the past year, my creative practice took a really big toll. I stepped many many times into my ArtCave (the room space I have dedicated as a Studio. This is the best space I have had so far since I started making art regularly in 2009). I stared at all the beautiful supplies I had accumulated (supply hoarded in recovery here). At the art I love from fellow artists that inspire me to be better…. But I went back upstairs, not having touched anything.
It fills me with sadness but one of the thing that remained was my art journaling practice as a positive outlet.

Mark your calendar!

The registrations open on November 15th. AND I am hosting a giveaway on my Instagram account so you could win your spot.
It is happening right there!

Take a peak at the teachers’ list & more

We are back to school. Three out of the four of us have actually started school back at the end of August. This is disorienting, a little scary and a lot confusing. Communication in our school system is not always the best. We knew last minute that our eldest, now in grade 10, was going back to school in person (note that as I write this, she is now in hybrid mode for the month of October, meaning she has a specific calendar this month to know when she goes to school and when classes are remote). Her sister’s school has almost no changes except they have to wear their mask 100% of the time and some lunches are in class, others they can move around (cafeteria or outside). I attend a local Cégep (=college) and only have 1.5hrs/week on site, sometimes another 3 hours are added for another class. Everything else is online.
And if there is something that throws me off, it’s incertitude. Big time..!

What’s in my brain?

1. I hate moving. Because it forces me to stay in the present moment and it is not something I am used to. But especially because it confronts me with the reality that we own way too many physical items. With the pandemic, garage sales are forbidden by our city but it’s mentally difficult to be realistic: dump everything; it would be way better to sell some of it because they could still be useful to somebody. What to do?
2. I should be a fucking hairstylist… been colouring my daughters’ hair and it’s always a nerve-racking process for me (I know this is just hair but still).
3. I can be a fucking amazing friend and a fucking great teammate. But talking to people brings a lot of anxiety.
4. Some classes I have already bring a lot of excitement. I am talking about photography, cinema, P.E. (which was an option I had between lots of different sorts of training and I picked the right one for me).
5. I am learning to let go of the fears I hold around my 13 yo daughter not doing her schoolwork, not knowing at least a little about what she wants to do with her life later on. It is not my job to push her again and again but to listen and guide.
6. Therapy kicks my ass.
7. Code-switching is a real thing! I noticed how I switch to speaking teenagers-from-Québec-slang when talking to my classmates, which I don’t do normally. WTF.
8. Quitting my job brings a lot of shame but it is the right decision right this moment.