A weekend of work and play with C o l o u r s! Working on covering your storyteller journals today with a view of the most incredible copper beech tree I’ve ever seen right outside my window, had me itching to paint it for a new storyteller, along with the stunning Cumbrian landscape. I think 2025 is going to be my year of painting! The way the light reflects through the leaves is just mesmerising. They are turning red and gold from the deep plum shade of the leaves I pressed in a journal in the summer. Are you noticing autumn where you are? Ruben had a ball jumping into the leaves. We don’t usually let him off his leash because there’s a lot of wildlife around here, plus he’s blind as a bat and deaf as a post, 😅 but today we let him have little run; still life in the old dog yet! 🐶

Brian asked me if I ever get ‘that Friday feeling’... umm, I think I might have forgotten what that feels like. But then it hit me during my afternoon walk with Ruben - that familiar flutter of anticipation for the weekend as we caught the town hall bells chiming 3 o’clock—ding dong, slow down. It’s been non-stop in the bindery this week, preparing storyteller journals for your pre-orders and a few extra for a sweet little holiday shop restock in November. I had to remind myself to pause with a hot brew and a magazine whilst perched on the window seat to actually notice the most spectacular autumn unfurling outside my window. Note to self: Remember to make time for you this weekend. 🍂 ✨ #bookbinding #makerlife #slowliving #autumnvibes #bookbindingstudio #bookarts #curiouslycreative #creativejournaling #lotusblubookartstoryteller #cumbrialife

“Practice any art to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside of you, to make your soul grow.” This year has been one of shifting and eliminating goals I thought were mine, but thankfully I realised they weren’t, so I got rid of them. I’ve spent the best part of 2024 mostly building things and systems that I hope will make this creative entrepreneur life I’ve chosen a bit easier, more enjoyable and which will always make my soul grow first before my bank account. Soul growth is what being a book artist has given me, it’s helped me discover so much about myself, but every few years this sort of growth makes me feel restless and I feel a deep need to strip back, go into a cocoon, and just daydream. That’s exactly what I’m doing right now as I work on your storyteller pre-ordered journals, a collection that is very dear to me and which was created while I was going through cancer treatment a few year ago. Designing and creating the storyteller collection helped me move out a place of despair and into a place of soul growth. Every so often I make changes to them to not only make them better, but also to help me manage the demand for them which grows every year and is now becoming something hard for me to cope with, so next year there are going to be some big changes to the storyteller collection and how I offer them, but before that I’ll be offering one last batch in the current style in November for the upcoming holiday gifting season…so if you’d like a chance to get one, please make sure you’re signed up for my newsletter, you can find a link in the usual place, in my bio. 😘 Even though I haven’t created much work this year, I’ve been daydreaming of creating, a lot! The daydreaming phase is just as important as the practice of any art or craft, no? // #wherewomencreate #soulgrowth #creativestories #bookbindingstudio #bookarts #curiouslycreative #bookbinder #showupshowart