Small changes for your Health, Wellbeing and the Environment

Hiya! I wanted to share something different today (not illustration or pattern related) but still important to me. During the quarantine I have tried to make small changes, personal and around the house, for our health and well-being and the environment. 

On the personal side I changed my store-bought deodorant. I made the change a few years ago to the no Aluminium, and no Antiperspirant kind. But I hear @jennakutcher saying that during the transition while your body adapts, you could have more body odor than usual and be more sweety when you change over to an all-natural one.

I bought 2 to try out one from @weledauk and @koparibeauty and kept it in my closet maybe to try it over the holidays or something. But then the 😷 came, and you know not going anywhere, work in PJs + no visitors! Perfect opportunity to try them! I have to report that it is a success!

The first few couples of weeks maybe a bit more sweat and a bit more body odor at the end of the day. My body slowly adapted to the new norm, and I’m happy to report that everything is great and not going back to the old ways! Yay! 

On the environment front I bought wool balls for the dryers. I replace dryers sheets, for Reusable dryer wood balls and essentials oil. I choose Bergamot, which has a fresh and citrus smell. By doing this I shortened the drying time, consuming less energy, eliminating the use of a single-use product for a reusable one.

The clothes smell fresh and are super soft! Win-Win! Small changes can have a huge impact on your life and in the environment! Everything adds up if everyone does a small thing! What would you be doing? Leave a comment below! I would love to know if you have any tips or eco-hacks!

Cheers,

Caro

How to Use Doodling to tap into your Creativity

Hi there! Let me ask you a question, When you see a person doodling, do you assume they are just scribbling and wasting their time?

Maybe that’s not the case. What if the purpose of doodling or drawing is discovery? What if drawing helps her or him feel more comfortable with doubt or helps them approach problems with more flexibility? What about doodling to clarify your thoughts?

Here are a few examples where doodling can help you see things in unexpected ways.

To stimulate discussion

A group setting is a natural place for drawing to clarify thinking and messaging.

Whether we’re brainstorming or outlining tasks on a piece of paper, explanatory drawings can help us process and remember information.

To teach ideas and enhance presentations and videos

Instead of developing a series of presentation slides, explain a process by drawing and using clear messaging.

Simply doodled figures can be a great way to illustrate concepts.

To solve a problem

You can tackle any problems by sketching its components and visualizing a range of answers. Often one solution will stand out as the best option.

For the simple joy of freeing your mind

Drawing can tap into a part of our minds that feels like play, particularly when we’re generating ideas that are not constrained.

Blue-sky sketching is a great technique to use. Start with a clear question and goal. Free your mind from factors that would normally be restrictive – things like budget, timing, resources, and technology.

You should gather ideas until no more are forthcoming. When you are done with your sketches, look them over and focus on the ones that have promise.

For personal inspiration

Keep a drawing journal with images, inspirations, and photos. It doesn’t matter if you can draw well or not. Just do it!

Buy a sketch pad or book, color markers or pencils and set aside 15 minutes a day to doodle. Doodles can spark ideas!

These ideas can be a combination of things swirly around in your head (enter here the image of Dumbledore and the pensieve; #potterhead #geek) that could transform into something else entirely. Think of it as your 15-minute creativity warm-up.

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How I´m planning my year as a creative business

Hi there! I hope you had a wonderful break over the festive period but now is time to get back to the day to day routine and work. I have always enjoyed seeing how other creatives plan the year ahead for success. What tools they use and all that is it involves.

So I thought I would share with you what I´ll be using this year to keep myself on track to achieve my goals.

The first thing I did was a brain dump, of all the things I wanted to do, create and be involved with. Get a notebook and a pen, write everything that come to mind down.

I bought myself a planner that would help me with that, the Livvit Planner. I really like that it comes with ¨Instrctutions¨, to guide you and follow to make the best used of the planner.

I thought this will help with the overwhelm of Where do I start? Right?

Also, I bought the book The Bullet Journal Method. But not create those beautiful spreads you see on the internet, you know I´m a bit of minimalist. But to get the behind the scenes of methodology #I´m geeky like that!#.

Being able to organized aspect of your business, as well as your day to day life applying the same principals is a great thing. The focus is on making sure you are targeting the right things based on your life goals.

So far the story behind it is very interesting, I´ll tell you how it goes!

I´ll be doing business coaching as well with my mentor Amanda Creek from Amanda Creek Creative (link to Amanda´s page). I started working with her last year and it was amazing the results that achieved.

I achieved the clarity and direction I much need it. She is amazing and such a sweetheart! 100% recommended!

Amanda recommended Trello an App that can help you organized and plan better all those ideas swirling around your head. So I´m giving it a try with all the ideas I had from my brain dump.

Is not all Work Work over here! I wanted as well to keep my creative learning journey going not only through books but also through courses.

To exercise my creative side and expand my skills I chose two books. The first one is 365 Days of Drawing from Lorna Scobie.

I´m loving all the different section and exercises in the book, color theory, relaxation.

Another book that I´ll be using is one that I bought in Victoria & Albert Museum from Pen and Hu.

The authors made, what I see as watercolor clouds, and you need to doodle things from it. It reminded me of looking at the clouds to tell what shape they are. So I´m pretty sure is going to be fun to draw what I see!

I really enjoy online learning is very convenient and I can learn around my schedule. Skillshare is a great online platform that can help you to do that. They have lots of courses to you choose from a wide range of topics.

Other Apps I use on my that can help you in general as well are:

• Planoly

• Slack

• ColorStory

• A Design Kit

Hopefully, this behind the scene to my planning process can help you in some way to plan your year!

Until next time! Cheers!

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