Inspiration and beauty everywhere in this magical city…
More Paris posts here: Parisian markets / Paris story / Les papeteries / Parisian cafes / Window shopping in Paris
I was in Paris researching The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design – join us if you want to get inspired with your own pattern designs!
Let’s just say I spent a LOT of time in Parisian cafes. Heaven.
I think this might just have been the best raspberry tartine in the world, ever.
More Paris posts here: Parisian markets / Paris story / Les papeteries / Paris details / Window shopping in Paris
I was in Paris researching The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design – join us for the next course starting in April!
Paris and paper are an intoxicating combination. One particular street in the 4th Arondissement, rue du Pont Louis-Phillippe, is home to Calligrane (I literally couldn’t speak this shop was so beautiful), Papier Plus and Melodies Graphiques. The handmade paper, precision and care of display, beauty and textures on every surface, ahhhhhh it was just perfect.
Take a look…
I also love Intaglio which has shops in both the North and South of Paris.
Take a look at this fab little video from Jamie Kripke/Visa which gives you a glimpse inside Melodies Graphiques.
More Paris posts here: Parisian markets / Paris story / Parisian cafes / Paris details / Window shopping in Paris
A feast for the eyes and stomach…
More Paris posts here: Parisian markets / Paris story / Les papeteries / Parisian cafes / Paris details / Window shopping in Paris
I was in Paris researching The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design – join us for the next course starting in April!
Stole away from my desk for a little trip to Paris a week ago, visiting my first ever trade show and trying out my new camera. It was just what I needed, even though it was for ‘work’. I also had the most wonderful crazy serdipitous happening occur, but more about that another day.
All this week I am going to share some photo stories of my wanderings. Forgive me for my lack of words this week – running, running, running – and anyway, Paris doesn’t need words…
More Paris posts here: Parisian markets / Paris story / Les papeteries / Parisian cafes / Paris details / Window shopping in Paris
I was in Paris researching The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design – join us for the next course starting in April!
I was captivated by Tone von Krogh’s beautiful ceramic work when I saw her stand at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair. There was something in her colours that called me back to one of my favourite places on earth – Antarctica. I have since found that Tone’s palette is actually inspired by the snowy Norwegian winter landscape, and I am thrilled to have this opportunity to share more of her gorgeous work with you. Tone has exhibited widely in the UK as well as in Norway, France, the US and Dubai.
I don’t really know what to say about the Catskills. Up in the mountains the views are amazing, and I can imagine it is a fantastic place to ski in winter. But we had a bizarre experience there and surprised ourselves by not staying very long.
It was the height of the tourist season and the weekend of the crazy Warrior Dash (where people do fun things like fire jumping, pond swimming and mud crawling – so the place was full of people caked in crusty mud!) and nearly every room in the town of Windham was taken. The only room we could find at short notice was in a B&B which we joked looked like something out of a horror film from the photos on its website. When we got there, it was just as weird as we had joked it might be! It was isolated, gloomy and imposing, hidden at the edge of dark woods. We had the worst night’s sleep ever and got up aching all over at about 5am to be greeted by a wild storm. You know how a bad situation can actually send you into a fit of laughter? That’s what we were like as we wondered whether we were only saved from the scary B&B’s resident mad axeman because he also couldn’t move after such a bad night’s sleep…
We had come to Windham to go mountain biking and do some fun stuff on the river, but it was nearly impossible in all the wind and rain so we did something we weren’t expecting to – we left! But not until we had picked up breakfast from a fab cafe, with exposed concrete behind the counter and cool art on the exposed brick walls…
And as we were leaving things got even more strange when we saw this truck driving down the road carrying a house – you would never see that in England!
A couple of weeks later Windham was hit by the edges of Hurricane Irene and the whole place flooded. I hope it recovers in time for the winter season, as I expect it is quite a magical skiing destination at that time of year.
More roadtrip posts here: #1 For the love of travel; #2 Sharks and jellyfish; #3 Boston and Harvard; #4 A fairytale wedding; #5 On top of the world; #6 To Canada, in search of stationery; #7 Japanese paper and pattern inspiration; #8 Niagara Falls
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“Life-changing”, “Revolutionary”, “Awe-inspiring”, “Transformative“ – just a few of the ways former participants have described the Do What You Love e-course.
Do you fancy some of that in your life? Do you want to get closer to identifying your true passion and finding a way to do what you love, for life? Then this is for you!
The Do What You Love e-course is open for registration now and places are limited so book now to secure your place. This is the last time it will run this year.
This is your chance to join a global tribe of like-minded people who will support and encourage you to find your way.
It could be the most influential six weeks of your life… Join now!
Today’s shared stories come from Hillary Rubin and Cathy Bueti who have overcome huge life-changing events – including the loss of a loved one and a serious illness – to discover their life’s purpose and passion.
For me doing what you love is being in alignment with your desire. I’m not a believer of purpose even though it’s in my tag line and women come to me to discover what their purpose is. Most of it really is work to go back to what they love, tune into what they desire or rediscover what they love now.
I have seen from my personal experience when I’m not doing what I love my soul aches. When I’m not doing what I love my body cries. When I’m not doing what I love the best part of me dies.
In 2010 my husband had a crisis – or what I call a course-changer. He was not doing what he loved and like a good man was providing for our family. His soul suffered so much that he ended up in the hospital.
It was scary to see the man I loved suffer. He had a foot of his colon removed and made a promise to himself never to do it again. Today he is healthy in mind, body and spirit.
Now we have a contract that we do not take on projects, jobs, or clients unless it is for something we love to do. I cannot think of a better commitment to have to yourself and with your partner.
Being a Gemini, I love to do so many things and always like to have a healthy learning curve. At the beginning of my life most of my choices were from survival of what I had to do. I chose to move to NYC to study at Fashion Institute of Technology. I loved it. I felt alive and free.
I went from doing windows at ABC Carpet and Home to being a fashion editor at a menswear magazine, and then to styling, to producing fashion shows, to having my own PR company and then at the top of my career landed a plum job at Prada.
Prada was not as cool as I thought. I hated it but wanted to be on the in-crowd so I stuck it out as much as I could.
Until my time in fashion came to a painful end with a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. After I let myself out of a prison of victimhood, I was on a new quest to heal myself and to my surprise found what I loved.
It was through my pain that I found what was next on my what-I-love-to-do path as an artist, healer and cultural creative. I devoured all I could in the alternative realm to defy my prison sentence of ending up in a wheel chair. In 2002 I moved to LA to take a yoga teacher training course and worked as a PR director for a fashion company. It was worth giving up a six year relationship, a fabulous apartment in the west village and the fast hip lifestyle for my healing cocoon.
But I really did not give anything up… I got so much more.
Right after my yoga teacher training ended, I started teaching and never stopped. Something came alive in me. Not only was I healing but I was stimulated like never before. It was love at first sight. I was on my path. I travelled the world teaching yoga, connected to amazing people and ended up getting certified in Anusara Yoga(TM).
Not only did I love teaching classes, I went on to create a yoga podcast called Hillary’s Yoga Practice + produced my own bestselling DVD called Yoga Foundations with Hillary Rubin.
I loved it and never looked back.
With hindsight, I know now that whatever I do creatively is my body of work. It will always evolve and I cannot do it wrong. I listen to myself and let my intuition guide me. When the fun stops that is my red flag to shift my attitude or let it go so the next wave of creativity can come in.
If you are feeling challenged to do what you love then I suggest you release the following:
Once I released this for myself I was able to flow and evolve. I have a foundation in yoga, am a spiritual life design coach and a multi-passionate entrepreneur. I help women stop licking their wounds and create a life filled with passion, purpose and unshakable self-confidence. I love creating valuable content that breeds transformation and freedom to live the life you desire.
What’s next for me is launching a group program for women to get back to prosperity without shame, be healthy without guilt, find purpose without overwhelm and be happy without excuses, publishing my first book and hosting my television show called Get Real with Hillary.
[All images courtesy of Hillary Rubin]
Find out more about Hillary on her website or connect on Twitter.
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I remember loving art when I was a child. I was always doodling something or spending hours with my coloring books. My most vivid art memory was when I created a pastel butterfly in the fourth grade. As I grew older art seemed to disappear as life got in the way. A crazy childhood with an alcoholic father, my parents divorce, becoming a widow at 25, and then a diagnosis of breast cancer at 31 halted any thoughts of creativity. I graduated college with a degree in occupational therapy and worked for almost 20 years in the healthcare field. After my husband was killed I began keeping a journal. I discovered I enjoyed writing. I continued journaling during my cancer experience and began writing a book hoping to one day share my experience and help others. It was during this time I also discovered a love of photography and most recently painting.
I remarried eight years ago and am now a 10 year cancer survivor. During the first few years after I finished my treatments I realised that something was missing. It was getting more and more difficult to work with patients after having been one myself. With my husband’s support I left my day job as an Occupational Therapist a couple of years ago and have the opportunity to create everyday. My life has been tough but what I have found is that creativity helps me deal with the fear that comes in a life after cancer. Being creative gets me to a nice place in my head and quiets my mind. I get lost in those moments with my art. I am discovering myself and seeing all that I am capable of which is more than I ever imagined.
In May 2009 my memoir “Breastless in the City” was published and I was able to fulfill my dream of being a writer. Last August I started my blog Artsy Butterfly where I share my creative life, pieces of my art, and pieces of myself. I also opened an etsy shop which allowed me to achieve another goal and put my art out there into the world to hopefully inspire others.
It was scary to leave a career I had done for so long. I thought, “who am I to even dream of anything else?” Then I thought about how much I have lost and how short life is. I started to realize that I couldn’t let the chance pass me by. I longed to live in the moment and do what would make me happy every day. I believe that everything I have been through has led me to this moment. I wouldn’t be who I am without surviving those difficult experiences.
I can’t help but smile when I think about the man who has shared a few pieces of my art with his little girls. One of them wants to be an artist too. It makes my heart happy to know they enjoy my work. It connects me with the little girl I was so long ago… the one who drew that pastel butterfly.
[All images courtesy of Cathy Bueti]
Cathy is a self taught photographer and mixed-media artist living in Brewster, New York. Visit her at Artsy Butterfly.
Today’s shared stories come from artist Kim Beller and comedienne Jenny Wynter.
For me, doing what I love means to follow my heart wherever that takes me, to surround myself with people I love and to be open to all the possibilities that are usually right in front of me!
I lost my mom a few years ago to cancer. She was only 62 when she died, but lucky for me, we were best friends and she taught me many lessons while she was here. It was after I lost her that I began to listen more closely to the voice in my heart. Things that used to matter didn’t matter so much anymore. I poured myself into art and journaling and making jewellery…..anything to stay busy but more importantly to express myself through art. I have said more than once, “art saved me”. I decided that I wanted to be more serious about my art and creating, but couldn’t come up with exactly how I wanted that to happen.
With Mom
This idea has evolved over the past few years and kept coming up over and over until it pretty much hit me in the face. Thanks to the encouragement of a dear friend, Nicole, I began to share my love of art journaling with others. It started with a few girls in a yoga studio and has since gotten bigger and bigger. I recently co-taught a book-making “playshop’ in Manteo, North Carolina. The joy of sharing the things I have learned over the years and creating with other women (men are welcome too) is priceless.
My world was rocked with my mom’s diagnosis several years ago and we found a house with an apartment so she could live with us, but have her own space. It was really hard to go into that space for quite a while, but thankfully, time heals.
I have recently turned her living space into “heART space”, a place where anyone can come and be true to their self….to make art, work in journals, whatever they need to do in a safe, nurturing and loving space. “heART space” is where I teach “playshops” and share my journey with others. Although it was a lot of work emotionally to re-create this space, it has paid off in so many ways. Being able to share what I love with others, and to honor my mom in this way has been a huge part of my healing. I am able to make art, teach art and share with others in a way that I know my mom would love and be proud of. I love being able to stay home with my girls and to create and work at the same time.
Now that I have this beautiful space to create and teach and play in, my bigger dream is to have some of my favorite artists come and teach workshops here. Perhaps Judy Wise, …..Misty Mawn……L.K. Ludwig…..just to name a few!
[All images courtesy of Kim Beller]
Kim Beller is a mixed media artist, inspired by the sea and all of nature. Her passion is to create expressive pieces with recycled metals, found objects, heartfelt quotes, photography and bits of nature in her art and jewelry. Most days Kim can can be found in her in the studio with the music turned up and the windows wide open. Find out more about Kim by visiting her website or Etsy shop]
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Doing what I love means feeling grateful for the opportunity to make a living – and indeed, just a life – out of something that I would gladly do for free. My own mother was an artist, a singer actually. She was beautiful inside and out, and when she was around my age now, she won a very prestigious song-writing competition, the prize of which was a recording contract in Sydney. Very sadly, she never made it; she very shortly thereafter, completely out of the blue, died. (She had an aneurism.) Thus, not only have I been inspired by her example to do what you love, but I also realised from a very early age that life is finite. That knowledge, that it could end at any moment, has I think, ultimately made me feel like there’s not much point wasting the short time that I have here doing something I’m not passionate about! ·
The first time I saw Edward Scissorhands, I desperately wanted to be an actor. I cannot explain it, other than that it moved me in such a profound way (I was only twelve!) that I remember thinking “I want to make people feel as deeply as I felt today!” From that point onwards, I was hellbent on being an actor. I never sought out comedy roles (indeed, quite the opposite, I really wanted to be the pretty girl, the romantic lead!) but instead found myself constantly cast in them. That probably should have been a hint…
When I was 22, I finally made the move to Sydney to seriously pursue acting and three weeks later found out I was pregnant. I was completely shocked and at first I thought performing was over for me. A couple of years later, with two kids under two, I heard through the grapevine about an improv comedy troupe looking for players. It sounded so fun, so I called up, auditioned and the following week was performing! That gave me enough confidence that people thought I was funny to start pursuing it professionally, and it just kinda snowballed. Not long after that I entered a stand-up comedy competition and to my surprise, it went really well and it didn’t take too long before I was making a meager living from comedy. It’s funny now to think that I accidentally fell into my comedic calling, because in hindsight I think it had been biting at me for quite a number of years before I really recognized how much I loved it! ·
In 2007 my family and I moved to Canada, so that I could pursue some comedy opportunities over there. I had these grand dreams of returning to Australia a comedic superstar, but my hubby asked that before we move to the big smoke in Canada, that first we go to a quiet little town just to get our family on track (my family having received the brunt of the time sacrifices involved in making my comedy career happen). Then something strange happened – we ended up loving small town Canada so very much, in that it was so fantastic for our family’s sense of togetherness that we ended up staying there the whole time. I was able to do bits of comedy here and there, certainly not to the extent that I would have liked, but enough to keep the flame burning. While I was there I developed a new full-length show, which is much more theatrical and incredibly personal than anything I’d ever done before. On the opening night of its work-in-progress showing, I was literally four minutes away from the curtain opening, with my newborn baby still breastfeeding on me and not a scrap of makeup on my face. I had a moment there of thinking “What am I DOING?!” and wondering whether I was insane to attempt this kind of thing. But then afterwards, when the show had finished and I was basking in the afterglow of post-performance euphoria, I have never felt more happy. ·
I wish I had known how long it would take to actually get good. I think that as an artist, you have to have a certain amount of cockiness and belief in your ability to succeed. But I think that, especially in the first couple of years of my work, I really thought I was a whole lot better than I actually was! Who knows, I’ll probably be saying that about myself throughout my entire life, but I think at the beginning I really thought my stratospheric rise to success was going to strike at any time. Now I’m realizing more and more how it really does take time to master a craft and that actually, whatever that ‘meteoric rise’ I was chasing even looked like, it’s a damn good thing it didn’t happen in my first couple of years because I was not even close to ready! ·
Now I have HUGE dreams. My new show (the one I developed in Canada) is called “The Unexpected Variety Show” and I just debuted it last month at the Cabaret Fringe Festival, where, to my delight, it received some beautiful glowing reviews. So now my biggest dreams are for the show. I’m taking it to the Melbourne Fringe this September, Adelaide Fringe early next year and have my eyes set on Edinburgh in 2012. My ultimate goal for it is that we will deck out a big family tour bus and spend the next couple of years taking the show around Australia and then the rest of the world. Blogging and video-blogging the adventure along the way. That would be heavenly. And I’m sure at times, hell-ish! But I’m so, so excited about the prospect of it and you know, I think we might just do it. Life really is too short not to!
[All images courtesy of Jenny Wynter]
Jenny is a comedian, musician, writer and mother-of-three. To find out more about Jenny and her work visit her website or blog, or connect on Facebook or Twitter]
Emma Smalley is a maker, children’s book author, tea shop and gallery owner, and all-round curious soul with one of the most gorgeous websites I have ever seen. I had a fascinating conversation with Emma about her latest venture ‘Temporary Measure’, based in the Keswick in the heart of the stunning Lake District in northern England. She tells us about Lakeland village life, and creating a life she lives on her own terms.
