Wishing You a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season!

I'm popping in here to tell you all that I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season! 

What a year this has been. You are long overdue for an update! 

While 2023 has been really good in many ways, it has also been quite challenging in others. In Nov 2022 I started a social media job with a local Christian bookstore in my city and it quickly morphed into more hours than I expected. I've enjoyed it a lot this past year and having the consistent income has been very helpful as our second boy graduated from high school this year and three boys sure do eat a lot. Lol! ;) However, having a part time job and all the activities we have means that I had less time this year for creating artwork and online courses.

Another challenge this past year was decreased energy. I got some help and discovered my iron and vit D was crazy low - what a difference that makes! I've been working on my health this year and thankfully my energy levels are showing improvement though I still need to work on that.

All of this means that along with low energy, I have been feeling a bit stuck and unsure about how to move forward with my website and what I want to offer for far too long. I got into a rough cycle of getting inspired about something and then loosing the energy to do much about it, leaving me unsure about what to share with you through emails and this blog! I'm sorry for the lack of communication and hope that you'll forgive me.

On a more positive side, during 2023, I also experimented more with watercolours! I created a collection of watercolour and ink artwork and have been working with a drop shipping company to create physical products such as stickers, postcards, wall canvas prints, mugs and more. It takes time for this process (that was a bit of a revelation!), to order samples, tweak designs, and so forth but it is so worth it. While I had hoped to have products on a website available for the Christmas season, it just didn't work out for this year. That disappointed me greatly until I finally felt like I got some clarity during December on how I want to move forward on a number of levels - clarity that I have really needed.

This means that in 2024 I will be making some shifts to my website and what I offer. It also means that I'll be returning to Squarespace as it is a much more intuitive system for me than Kajabi. I'm really excited about this change - it feels like a breath of fresh air to me. The best part is that I can offer online courses AND sell physical AND digital products on the SAME website (through Squarespace) as they now offer the very things I wanted them to have two+ years ago. Woohooo!!!

The new website is not ready yet, but I hope to unveil it in early January along with cute stickers, some postcards, greeting cards and mugs in the new online shop. Won't that be fun! I'll let you know when it is ready. :) I hope that you will feel that it was worth the wait.

My next hurdle is to really get to understand the whole shipping process and not let that overwhelm me. So if you are a praying person, I'd appreciate your prayers that I can figure out the whole shipping thing and get that as automated (and correct) as possible so that I can ship to both Canada and the US in 2024. That's the goal! I will really appreciate your patience with me and would appreciate your feedback and a chance to make things right (if anything goes wrong). I want feedback and want to know if you have any issues or want me to check into a charge - this will also help me to tweak the system and to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible for you and for me!

In the meantime - if you have purchased a course from me in the past, please know that I still plan to put those courses online again but with some nice changes. If you stay on my email list during the transition over to the new site, you'll get an email at some point letting you know when the courses are available. I have a new short course in the works that I am excited and can not wait to share it with you!! (Hint: watercolour + joy.)

If you're still reading this far - you're a trooper! Thank you!!

Easy Art Project

I want to share quickly about an easy art project. I precut the papers to 4x6 and 5x7 inches - sizes that you can easily find frames for! Some of the artwork are Christmas themed and some are not. I envision them strung up on a wall, clipped to string with binders clips (similar to how you can clip up Christmas Cards to string). What a delightful and easy display this could be. :)

I hope this inspires you to create some art! I used simple supplies - a brush with black ink inside it (from Art Placement, a local art store). Because I precut the papers ahead of time, I could write/draw on them as I had time during those in-between moments of life. I might colour them yet but I do think they look rather striking as a set in black and white.

That's all for today - have a WONDERFUL Christmas and Holiday Season. Best wishes to you for 2024 and Happy New Year! I look forward to sharing more soon. :)

Heidi