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Do you want to build a… Gingerbread character?
When I manage to stay connected to the present moment, I love the end of the year. Very easily, my mind can get caught up in the storm of festivities and gifts, and I gently remind myself to reconnect with my breath and the simple things. 💕 So, I felt like preparing a little Christmas coloring, very simple, and some small gingerbread characters to decorate. The nice touch was to print them on cardboard paper for a ‘biscuit’ look. I then glued it onto a cardboard to reinforce it and added a ribbon to hang it up. 🎄 I wish you a beautiful week.
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An Advent Calendar to take care of yourself
I have always loved Advent calendars. As a child, I remember having a very thin calendar with a tiny chocolate inside. Back then (yes, I sound a bit like a grandma’), there were no elaborate, grand calendars, and we all had pretty much the same. Nowadays, there are calendars for every taste, and I find them both great and too much. In my everyday life, I love minimalism and prioritizing experiences over possessing many things we ultimately don’t need. However, as an adult, mom, homeschooler, illustrator, etc…. I need time! I need moments for myself, not necessarily long moments, but moments to recharge. So, this Advent calendar is the perfect opportunity. I could have also called it: The Ultimate Survival Calendar before Christmas or How not to succumb to chaotic stress before the holidays but that title was a bit too long… The Advent calendar I created last year was very focused on well-being and the spirit of Christmas. This year, I wanted to make a slightly more neutral calendar. All versions are available in French and English as a free download. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, I’ve also prepared a Solstice version for you. I wish you a wonderful holiday season. Take care of yourselves, breathe, and remember that the most important thing is not what you think. The most important thing is the moment itself ✨
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How do I create a magazine cover?
I love magazines that combine the beauty of illustrations with subjects that are dear to me. Respire magazine, Open Mind, and Flow magazines are on this list, surrounded by many others. Inspired by their work, which I find magnificent, I felt like creating my magazine cover using my illustrations. This gives them a new dimension that I adore. Here is the beginning of my process: I painted my character following an autumnal color code. The lines were done in ink with a dip pen and the colors were in watercolor. With the completed character, my next step is to find and arrange the perfect composition to showcase the illustration. And here is the last step: creating a mockup incorporating elements from magazines that I appreciate or inventing entirely new ones.
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How to live a balanced life? The 4 Agreements explained to children
During a women’s circle, one of the people introduced me to the 4 Agreements. I immediately wanted to dive into this world and started listening to the audiobook to better understand them. It’s a book written by Don Miguel Ruiz If you are not familiar with this work, it consists of 4 major laws to apply in everyday life to find a better balance and transform one’s life positively. ✨ The 4 agreements are: After discovering these laws and starting to apply them in my daily life, I couldn’t help but discuss them with my daughter. I wondered how I could create something visually that could help her better understand these concepts. I found this video (at the end of this post) of Olivier Clerc in French explaining the agreements while making an analogy with knights, and I really liked that parallel. So I decided to draw inspiration from it to translate these 4 agreements to children. ✨ Here’s a quick explanation of the different principles: I hope this poster will help you introduce this wonderful concept to your children! You can download it for free by joining my Newsletter.
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What if we could understand our cycles?
Every month, I find myself getting frustrated and shouting over nothing, which isn’t like me at all. And all of this could have continued for a long time if I hadn’t realized that these moods were happening on New Moon days. The New Moon also called the Black Moon, is the moon that we no longer see at night, the opposite of the Full Moon. Following the moon’s journey allowed me to parallel it with my menstrual cycle. Because yes, modeled on the 28-day lunar cycle, women vary. And that’s an understatement. We evolve, we transform, and sometimes, we feel like a completely different person. And that’s normal! But nobody ever tells us that. No one tells us that on some days, we will feel invincible, and on others, we will just want to lock ourselves away until it passes. No one tells us because we live in a society that acts as if it doesn’t exist. We live in a society that expects us to produce with the same regularity, a society that demands us to be regular, always. But it’s not possible. Women, we have this cycle, this energy that is part of our identity, our strength. For years, I felt helpless in the face of these mood swings. And one day, I understood that it was normal. And, above all, many societies around the world already knew this, but that information had not reached me. I wanted to create a monthly tracking tool in the form of coloring pages. Because I wanted to create a tool not only for myself but also for my daughters, for all women. I wanted to raise my children with this knowledge. Here’s how it works: The first day of our period corresponds to the Black Moon. This phase corresponds to winter.…
