No-Spend June = Creative Possibilities

Hello my lovely readers! Happy first day of June and beginning of the meteorological summer, well here in the Northern hemisphere at least. A little update about things in the Bugler-Perez household. First, we are embarking on a no-spend month which basically means we will spend on nothing extra other than the bills we have to pay and the food we must eat. No outings. no extra coffee dates here and there, no frivolous spending of any sort. Sounds daunting, I know, but I think it will help us greatly in the long run to be able to save for truly extra special events as well as enable us (me in particular) to use the things we have on hand and/or get rid of the things we will ultimately not use. Thirty days of not spending on extras may seem like a long time but in the end I think it will be well worth it.

Another little thing I wanted to share is that I am going to be blogging daily this month using prompts from Hello Neverland for the month of June. I found her blog via Pinterest after I was searching for a way to beat my ‘blogger’s block’ and found her prompts to be really encouraging and fairly easy to fit into my lifestyle blog. Today’s prompt is how do you express your creativity and I think this ties in perfectly with my no-spend month as I am aiming to be more creative in many ways–crafting, cooking, even how I entertain myself and how my husband and I entertain ourselves as a whole. I am hoping this will help us use our time a bit more wisely and allow us to create more.

Generally speaking, I express my creativity in the form of art or paper crafting. I love to create things, pretty things and functional as well. Anything that is visually pleasing is what I like to make to express myself.

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My other main form of creative expression is photography. I just love snapping photos of people, places, things and even abstracts. When I am not shooting with my DSLR my iPhone is almost always out for me to capture a candid shot of someplace or something.

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I’m not particularly interested in how others perceive all the things I make or all the things I photograph, they are mostly for my own pleasure though it is nice to hear that other people enjoy it as well. I also enjoy being creative in the kitchen, trying new flavours and not rigidly sticking to a recipe but sometimes changing it up. I think, being a creative person, I tend to express my creativity in all the things I do on a regular basis. What about you? How do you express your creativity? Is your creative side affecting your pocket too much or have you found ways to manage that well? I am very curious about what you all think and what stories you can tell! Have you tried a no-spend month before?

I am hoping to get creative with all of my paper crafting supplies this month while I am not purchasing anymore to see just how far I can push the bounds of my own creativity. I’ll hopefully be publishing a few entries with how-to’s on my snail mail blog throughout the month of June.

Have a very happy and blessed June! I’m off to bed! Chat more to you all tomorrow!

 

PHOTOS: Paper punched & hand cut shapes for use in paper crafting; far side of Coquina Beach, Florida 2 years ago.

Want to use the same blogging prompts I’m using? Here’s the June prompts from Hello Neverland.

Monday Musings: #Creative #Murmurings

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Creativity is the joy of my soul, it is the thing I most yearn for each day and it is the creative people around me that continue to inspire me. From my friend April Styles of MaddLola to the ever impressive Keren from Free Pretty Things For You, they’re always a source of inspiration.

The other day I went to Keren’s website and found the perfect gift to print out in her printables section to send a pen pal as a birthday gift.

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Neon and fluorescent colours have been on my mind a lot lately and my second giveaway over on my Facebook page was inspired by my new set of hi-lighters given to me by my pen pal Marion from the Netherlands. Yesterday my hubby bought me some fun sticky note tabs to get creative with and I used them in this fun handmade postcard.

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Think I’ll be making some more soon! I got the sketching postcards from Waterstones and they’re a great texture.

A creative lifestyle is definitely the one for me!

How do you pass the time?

Cheers,

Nadia xoxo

In with the #NEW: Chronicling this past #week of #adventure

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This past week has been busy, busy, busy indeed for Alan and myself on either side of the pond. For him it has meant working over time and getting some floor work done in the kitchen of our future first home together, for me it has been setting up our new online shop and getting stationery orders out as we continue our creative endeavors to become fully self-employed over time. It is not easy but it is coming together ‘one pen stroke’ and ‘piece of weathered linoleum’ at a time. I know it sounds strange but thus it has been. It is why you’ve hardly heard from either of us and, when you have, it has been mostly me.

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{1. creamed eggs on toast 2. cutting letter papers by hand 3. decorating an outgoing envelope with stationery order inside}

Today, this Saturday 29th of March 2014, has been a rather gloomy day in Southwest Florida–rain, clouds and not a lot of natural light. I slept in (my body and mind needed it), got up and talked to my hubby via video chat (our best friend in times of being apart) and then made some creamed eggs on toast (Alan has never had any so it is one for me to make for him when we are together again) and ate them in the darkened dining room while solemnly contemplating what next month might bring. As I mentioned above, I’ve been busy creating the grand opening of our Walks in Beauty shop on bigcartel.com. It has been a long time coming and a major labour of love. I’d already been posting on our facebook page photos of our stationery collections/designs and had sold one set to a lovely friend and fellow snailmailer in Pennsylvania who has consequently become our biggest fan and through whom we got our second official order all the way from Canada! Yay!

I have a lot more to add to the shop this weekend but wanted to invite you all to peruse what we do have in there anyway by either clicking on the link in this post or the shop tab up above (newly added this week as well). It’s always nice to have visitors come over to our Facebook page as well and you can catch me on Twitter networking all the time. I’ve also spent some time catching up on snail mail in between sending out orders, creating new potential hand made products (including hand-drawn and painted sticker sheets as well as illustrated one of a kind card sets) and digitally designed and manipulated paper products using some fab new apps I encountered to alter my photography, updating apps and software I use and in general being productive. I took a break from all magazine related work this week but starting Monday will get back into the swing of things.

{1. Packaged stationery designs, sampler pack 2. Hand-drawn/painted Peace and Tranquility Stickers 3. Hand painted card design in British Telephone Box 4. More stationery ready to go out for an order}

{1. Packaged stationery designs, sampler pack 2. Hand-drawn/painted Peace and Tranquility Stickers 3. Hand painted card design in British Telephone Box 4. More stationery ready to go out for an order}

{1. Screenshot of bigcartel shop from my iPhone 2. Packing up a set of 8 mini flat note cards for a friend 3. Working with watercolour filters for my photography-new projects 4. Decorating snailmail envelopes}

{1. Screenshot of bigcartel shop from my iPhone 2. Packing up a set of 8 mini flat note cards for a friend 3. Working with watercolour filters for my photography-new projects 4. Decorating snailmail envelopes}

So as you can see from the photos above, there are a lot of new and exciting things going on plus I am also working on getting organised with the blog and getting more regular posts up. I sent a little bit of paper cheer to a fellow blogger and favourite, Ouissi Gretsy from The Old Fashioned Mama. If you’ve not yet read her blog you really ought to! It’s fun, quirky and best of all very honest. All in all, it has been a very productive week and I am hoping next week will be just that! Until we meet again my friends!

Happy reading and happy blogging!

 

xx Nadia

 

Delightful Developments… #stationery #design and more…

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It has been a big dream of mine for about the past 5 years to become my own boss and design my own brand of stationery papers, postcards, stickers, labels and things and I am now FINALLY working on making that dream come true. So, as a bit of a preview, I wanted to show a little of what I’ve been working on—a sneak peek if you will. 

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Above are the corners of some of the letter sets I’ve been working on and developing, some digital manipulations and some hand-drawn designs are included. Below , circle punches with a twist. More to come about that later one.

Processed with VSCOcam with lv01 presetSo, there you have it folks, a tiny peek at what is going on in my crafty space turned mini studio. I can’t wait to show you more! Have a great week!

Cheers!

 

All in the ribbon…

 

I love still life photography, especially when it is of an object I use in everyday life. A crafter first and forever, ribbon and it’s versatility is always a good find. This East of India Agrarian Ribbon made for Williams-Sonoma was a great find at $2.99. Lucky me!

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Redecorating an old journal and…

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I took an old notebook I had lying around which looked like this:

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Replaced the flowers in the window with this:

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Which I felt was more suited to a dream journal and the end result of my work was this:

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It’s amazing what a few scraps of paper, an old card, a glue stick, and a strip of washi tape can do, right? How would you have re-decorated this old journal? The idea of starting to keep a dream journal came from my dear friend Nigel Wolf, kundalini yoga instructor extraordinaire with the kindest heart I know. His joy of life and vivacity are contagious! He has an awesome Facebook page called Tantrajam (his music is beautiful, I’ve heard it on Myspace) which is very inspiring and he also holds various yoga retreats throughout the year in Canada. Thank you, Nigel! WAHE GURU!

 

 

A crafter first and forever…

My creative process in any work of art usually begins with my crafting. I draw inspiration from my crafts, the colors, palettes and patterns I use are often linked to this first initial process.  Yesterday I was organizing some of my supplies and found a slightly more decorative way to display some of what I have.

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Little Decorative Storage

Little Decorative Storage

Creatively blissful…

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The past few days have been nothing but creative bliss for me. I’ve acquired new crafting supplies, written letters on beautifully decorated stationery and have even begun designing and making some patterned paper prints to use in scrapbooking/card-making. The patterned paper I’ve made on a website called COLOURLovers! It’s so much fun!!! Most of the patterns have been ones I colored in and I owe it all to browsing online and having first found the blog Ruffled Sunshine. What a great tool this is for creating papers to use in one’s everyday crafting. I am going to start looking to use my own designs soon too.

Here’s just a sample of what I created myself (it’s simple but lovely):

Color Me Tranquil Design

Color Me Tranquil Design

I hope to play around with it some more and get more familiarized with the program as I progress. Good thing I am a fast learner! I was able to “discover” and name several new colors. 13 colors to be exact. Well, I’m off to create some more beautiful things which I shall post on here soon!