 Hello there 2014, Are you as excited as I am to make this year rock? I don't make resolutions as such, but I am a HUGE fan of personal development and I love to intend the direction of my life in the coming months. My highest value is self awareness and I want to live a life that is authentic and in alignment with my values and goals. Over the last few years I have been weeding out all the things that don't make my heart sing and I am totally in love with my life and myself. I am very intentional about what I let into my life and I am working on bringing that into my digital life as well. Seeing as I work online, I have friends online and I even meet guys online I have realised how important it is to be selective in the online resources that I allow to enter my life as well. To reflect this, I only wanted to bring resources into my life that add significant value. If I am committing to a year-long programme, I want to ensure that I LOVE it and that I follow through with it. Unfortunately, timely follow-through is a weakness of mine and something that I will actively be working on this year. I am hoping that blogging about my progress will ensure that I DO follow through on what I have committed to. This year I have purposefully chosen three tools to ensure that 2014 is a spectacular year. 2014 Create Your Amazing Year Workbook Firstly, I am working through Leonie Dawson's Life & Business Workbooks. I found Leonie last year and she spoke to me on a soul level. She's an artist with a successful, thriving business. I adore her and they way she does things (well, except for the swearing, she's a self-confessed swear bear and I blush when I say "blums". That said, I LOVE the authenticity of her words and I am prepared to not get offended by her language :P) I half-heartedly did the business edition of her yearbook last July and despite the mediocrity of my efforts, it made such a HUGE difference in my business and joint ventures. I am a complete convert. I am soooo passionate about the way she does things. It's so lovely and feminine and a much more sustainable way for me to do business around my health concerns and family commitments. I am soooo passionate about entrepreneurship and living the life of MY dreams, so this year I am ALL IN with these workbooks. I have been ill for the last 5 weeks, so I am a little further behind than I would have liked, but I am so happy that I am on the right track, that I will give myself some love and grace and baby-step my way to completion. I am soooo passionate about these workbooks that I am going to run two free group coaching sessions next week (date to be confirmed) for all who purchase the workbooks through my affiliate link. One for the Life Edition and one for the Business Edition. If you buy both at once, you are more than welcome to join in on both calls. I heartily invite you to explore how great life can be when you have these areas in alignment! My life is full of joy and excitement now that I make money through following my passions. Scared, excited, want advice and hand-holding? Once you have purchased a copy (directly from Leonie Dawson's site), email me at mail@heartfeltgroup.com & let me know you've purchased a copy/copies. I will email you the details of the call time(s) and how to access. You will be able to enter any questions that you'd like answered on the call on the information page, or send them through to me beforehand. It will be a small, intimate group, so please speak up and get the most out of it! I LOVE to help people have their dreams come true. Set yourself up NOW, for a year of success! Leo Babauta's Sea Change Programme I've decided to sign up to Leo Babauta's Sea Change programme. I don't know much about it yet and whilst I have read Leo's blogs for a while, I am pretty in the dark about what will actually happen. Each month we will be focussing on a different area and I will blog my progress. I love everything that Leo writes, so I am trusting my instincts that this is right for me. This is a new element to the mix of what I can do to make my year fantastic and I am looking forward to seeing where it leads me. 2014: January: A Month of Mindfulness February: Unprocrastination March: Exercise April: Meditation May: Self-compassion June: Wake early July: Declutter August: Let go of expectations September: Simple living October: Productivity November: Improve relationships December: Contentment Ali Edwards' 2014 'One Little Word' Workshop The most impactful for me in terms of changing the way I see the world is participating in Ali Edwards' 'One Little Word' movement. She has a workshop that you can take, I am and I highly recommend that you do too, but a lot of people also follow along without taking the workshop. I have chosen a word for the last three years. It really has changed how I view the world and keeping on track with my goals. Last year I didn't follow Ali Edwards' prompts and I found that I didn't connect with my word as deeply, or have the profound impact in my life that I had had the previous years. So I am signed up again to the workshop and plan to follow along with her prompts in my own unique way. So what is this? One Little Word (OLW) is the process of intentionally choosing and living by a word throughout the year. I have chosen 'Purpose' for 2014 and I will outline this in a future blog post as I have HUGE plans! Do YOU create resolutions for the year? Do YOU set intentions? Do you actively facilitate change in your life? Tell me, I want to know. 
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Right now there is a deep stirring within me. Between the coaching I have been doing and embracing painting and mixed media art I feel this undercurrent of movement. I feel like the real me has been growing stronger and stronger and she wants to be seen. I need to be seen and heard. I can no longer control it, I HAVE to shine brighter. If I was to hold myself back anymore, I would slip into a deep depression, I would do my body more harm. My soul is stirring, my artist soul, and I have to listen.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” - Anaïs Nin  This photo I have taken from the Crazy Monday Kits website. Check them out. It is a NZ based scrapbooking kit company that I have been subscribing to for the last three months. This is April's Kit - 'Picture Perfect'. I have blogged a review of it today. Read on below... I have had the craziest few days. My car had a petrol leak, which is potentially very dangerous. Luckily the local mechanic came to my rescue on his day off! It turned out that when I got a tether put into my car for a child car seat the firm had put a hole in my gas tank :( As my local garage couldn't do it, I had taken it into the city to get it done. Now here I was back in the small town that I live in and unable to return it to them for repairs due to the safety risk. Thankfully for me the two mechanics talked it out between them and my local garage fixed it and sent the bill to the hole-making mechanic. Meanwhile I had a day of carer support work in the city - which is a 45 min drive away from my house... Luckily for me when I rang the in-loves they were also heading into Dunedin. They came out, picked me up and dropped me off for my day of work only 45 mins late. Yay. I then needed to stay at my client's house the night, get a ride with the parent's into work the next morning and wait in the local library until Ma came in for an appointment late that afternoon. When I finally got home last night I was so glad to be back and was so looking forward to having a bath and listening to an audio book to relax. I got up to my back door and the courier had wedged the pizza box, that my scrapbooking kit comes in, under my back door handle. Squeee. How exciting! Unfortunately I was too tired to even think of opening it then. Luckily for me I have schedule Tues nights as scrapbooking night so I can have a play this evening!  This is what I saw when I opened the box. Crazy Monday April Kit. I was a little hesitant when I saw this kit. I don't like bulky embellishments and I don't like browns much. However I do like cameras so I was looking forward to really looking at the papers in detail. There was one paper that I was so excited to use and I had planned a page around it already. It had Fuchsia on it and i was so excited to add this colour into the kit to go along with the gorgeous aqua and teal highlights. I will alter the pegs perhaps and use them to create a inspiration board in my studio.  The first disappointment came when I looked at the first side of papers. On the computer one of the papers looked have fuchsia, aqua and yellow banners. Unfortunately it was more of a wine brown. This looks like a kit that would be great for men though (and people who like brown!)  I don't really have men in my life that this kit would be ideal for, so I will see what I can do with it. Maybe I will get around to doing some extended family photos, or maybe as a travel papers? Still I was really excited to see a pink paper. That will definitely get used. The colours are just so blah in real life. I am really into vibrant colours.  The various Embellishments that came in the kit this month: -1/2 sheet American Crafts Gold Glitter cardstock -Pebbles “Walnut Grove” pegs -Bo Bunny “MamaRazzi” jewels 2 x Tim Holtz trinket light bulbs -2Crafty Chipboard filmstrips -Whisker Graphics tiny bags kraft -3 x Freckled Fawn doilies -2 x shipping tags -Gold and Teal sequins Along with the alphabet - American Crafts Thickers “Maggie Holmes Gold” In case these really are your colours -the 2 cardstock and 7 papers were: 1 x American Crafts vanilla cardstock 1 x American Crafts black cardstock 1 x Bo Bunny “MamaRazzi” – “MamaRazzi” double sided patterned p 1 x Bo Bunny “MamaRazzi”- “Balance” double sided patterned pp 1 x Bo Bunny “MamaRazzi”- “Shutterbug” double sided patterned pp 1 x Bo Bunny “MamaRazzi”- “Tripod” double sided patterned pp 1 x Carta Bella “So noted”- “Always You” double sided patterned pp 1 x Carta Bella “So noted”- “Music Score” double sided patterned pp 1 x Carta Bella “So noted”- “Anique Silhouette” double sided patterned pp Conclusion?All in all this is not my cup of tea. I think the kit is beautiful and so well put together, but just not my style. That is kind of the point of trying out kit clubs though. New product, a new way of seeing things put together and the chance to see what you can do with it. Perhaps after I had bits and pieces to 'me' it up, I will have a kit that I am really excited to play with. I am so glad that I trialled the kit club for the last three months, but I will not be renewing. It has really been boosting my excitement and the amount that I am scrapping so I am very grateful for that! I would have loved to have got a position as a guest designer but alas I missed out. I have ideas brewing in my head though, so watch this space for what I come up with.
Next blog post, I will show what additional items I decided to add to make it more ME and easier for me to scrap with... Allie x This is one of my favourite Layouts in a while. I am working on a painting and misted a part of it with a butterfly mask. There was a lot of leftover ink on the mask so I grabbed the top paper in my section white papers and pressed it into the ink. I loved the pattern that it left, complete with paint transfer on the top of the paper. I put it aside to dry and decided to create a LO with it on the next Tuesday Night Scrapbooking Session (I am making a commitment to regularly scrapbook. I have an ISCA training call in the afternoon and I am always buzzing with excitement and energy on Tues night so picked then to be creative). This Layout came together really quickly while I listen to an audio book.   I am still loving this set of Thickers! The colour, the scribbling, the size. Oh My! I put the geo tag on as a reference to the fact that be we need to be ourselves, that it is a place to be all the time, rather than a destination to strive for! I am also loving the date stamp at the top. I had a large one, but I found this at my friend's place when I was helping him tidy his office. I told him how much I loved it and he said that he never used it so I could have it. YAY. Now every time I use it, I think of him and his family (the reason I was there in the first place was that his wife had just had a baby! Yay)  I love this random layering! I first saw this messy thread nest technique done by Lisa at RecklinghausenMusings. I decided to give it a go and I am so glad that I did. Most of this page was from my kit, but I added the butterflies and thread from my own stash, along with the two buttons and brad that I used.  The butterfly that inspired everything stayed being a major focus on the page. I loved what I did with it. I used the mask to cut out parts of the wings for a little dimension and I layered paper underneath. I used two smaller of the misting masks to create other butterflies to layer. I had a black velvet butterfly in my stash that I then put on the very top. Each layer moves to reinforce the being-free theme (that is a very strong need of mine!) Finally I had some crystal swirls left over from a 21st so I cut them into antenna to top the butterfly. I added another thread nest to the bottom and added a red brad button to bring the red back onto this side as it was quite heavy on the right. The bottom strip is two free hand cut paper strips stitched down with the washi tape layered under it. I am so very happy with the outcome!
Lately I have been getting really inspired by challenges and blog posts. Unfortunately, I often I just think that I am too busy and read and then move on. As a way to keep these blog posts together I use GoogleReader. I have a lot of great inspiration in my GoogleReader feed including the great blog shimelle.com. There were a series of posts that fed into one another to get me jumping OFF the computer and over to my scrapbook desk. This one, this one and this one. Go on, click them, they open up in new pages so you can read them and then pop back. I will wait, I promise ;) Okay, so in summary Shimelle and a couple of guests were using frames as inspiration to create scrapbook layouts. My brain had been percolating ideas but the handcut, layered frames was so very motivating. I grabbed my March Crazy Monday Kit and whipped up this gorgeous layout. I added a few tidbits - a deep teal paper from Studio Calico, bits and pieces of the Everyday Eclectic kit that I had as well as a wood veneer bird to reinforce the up and away theme. Just like with a traditional polaroid I will write my journalling across the bottom (hence the 'notes' sticker) This photo as taken when I was on my very first training call with the Inspired Spirit Coaching Academy. 2 years later I am still studying with them in the advance programme that she now offers. I love being a Life Coach and get quite emotional looking back at this photo that literally catches the beginning. I want my journalling to be very heart-felt and I am not going to rush it. I will jot ideas down on paper and work and rework them until I get what I want to say. It is such a different approach from how I normally work. Generally when I scrapbook, I write my journalling on the layout and embrace all the imperfections that may crop up. Spelling mistakes capture where I am now and my handwriting is often changing depending on my mood. It is a great way to capture the here and now of me and my life.
 I came across this photo in my box of photos to sort. As I looked at it, I realised that SO many things had changed from when this photo was taken. I thought February's Kit from Crazy Monday would work best with the pink in Kat's top and the love paper that was included. The bright blue paper, the shaped journalling box and the mists I added to help lift the colour of my top out of the picture as well. That way the two main people in the story were more prominent. I love capturing a different story from what is obvious in the photo. This was actually a farewell dinner as John and I had decided to leave Piha to move down to Otago. Pa came up as he had not visited our place yet and this would be his only chance. Kat, Llew, Pa, John and I had a fabulous dinner together. Everyone helped us sort through old things to pare down and also to pack. Pa bought a new van and took a load of our stuff back down south. In the end though, we decided to hire a moving company to come and pack us up and take everything down, rather than putting things in storage. It was a big decision to make in only a week. Still, it was the right one for us. Three and a half years later I am still here and John only just left a couple of weeks ago.  Ma is in her 60's and the papers that I had left in my kit felt very 'her'. I loved the colours and the feel of the papers. I also really wanted to add these textured flowers to the card as I knew that I didn't need to put it into an envelope as I was seeing her for lunch on her birthday.  Everything is from the kit, except the embroidery thread that I wrapped around the card. The stitching around the card and the thread was done to be seen on the inside to lift it up a little. I then added another sticker on the inside and doodled around it to personalise it. I like to write personal messages inside rather than the generic. As Ma is the full-time carer for a boy with developmental delays she rarely gets time to herself. As X has just started school at the end of last year, she is now getting a few hours five times a week to catch up on things that matter to her, like gardening. I haven't been able to help as much as I wanted to due to my poor health. I am now getting to the point where I can volunteer myself again as my strength and energy are returning. As John left not too long before Ma's birthday (after taking her out on a dinner date first) I got a 'quote' from him to add to the card so that he could be with her on the day too. Ma loved the card and we had an interesting time out for lunch.
When I saw the geo tag cut-apart I wanted to document a place. I then looked through my photos and saw this one of me taking a photo my brother Levi via Skype. Most of our relationship is conducted via Skype so I decided to document this aspect of our life again. In the geo tag I wrote both our physical locations (which I have blurred out for privacy reasons). I felt that the speech bubble paper was an excellent fit for this topic. I only added a few things from my stash. I am often really inspired by You Tube user MercyTiara and I watch all her videos. She has a signature style of outlining papers and elements and I felt it really fits in with MY style so I have been implementing it into a few of my Layouts. I love it so very much! It adds such a playful, whimsical feeling to this Layout and as Levi and I are always joking around and laughing it is a great match!
 Opening the box when my new Crazy Monday Kit arrives is sooo much fun. Even though I would have had a couple of peeks on the website, it is still a surprise & I get so excited looking through the box. I feel like a modern-day archaeologist digging for treasure. I simply adored this kit - 'Snippets of happiness', especially the thickers. I love doodling and scratching and the colour aqua so they inspired me greatly! I was so excited that this is the only photo I took. Thankfully Crazy Monday has great photos on their website for you to peruse.  Contents of 'Snippets of Happiness'1 x American Crafts white cardstock
1 x American Crafts grey cardstock 3 x ILS “Why not?” double sided patterned pp 1 x Studio Calico “Snippets” - ”wow” double sided patterned p 1 x Studio Calico “Snippets” - ”me oh my” double sided patterned pp 1 x Crate Paper “Party Day” - ”celebrate” double sided patterned pp 1 x Crate Paper “Party Day”- ”happy” double sided patterned pp 1 x Freckled Fawn washi tape 15 x Freckled Fawn wooden arrows & word bubbles (random designs) 15 x Studio Calico polaroid frames 2 x Whisker Graphics tags 5 x Basic Grey buttons (random colours & sizes) 2 x “A Flair for Buttons” Flairs 2m of The Twinery twine “Carribean” 1 x American Crafts thickers “Sketchbook” aqua  I was looking through Facebook when I saw that Challenge Me Happy had a new challenge up. I still have a huge chunk of the Crazy Monday Kit left so I decided to play along. It so happened that I was listening to the end of Paulo Coelho's audiobook of 'The Zahir' and wanted to document more of how this man is changing me so profoundly. I have a second-hand photo printer that my ex found at an Op-Shop for a mere $8. Unfortunately I don't know how to fully use it so the photos were NOT the size I wanted. I resized them in photoshop (PSE10 for Mac) and then went across to the chemist to print them off. That was the longest part of the layout. The rest of it took about 10 mins to put together and I LOVE it. As The Zahir is about love and I have great affection and admiration for this man's work, I thought the February Kit with it's love theme would work well on this LO. I had envisioned using the 4x4 Divided Page Protectors as a second page but I decided in the end to just create one and only focus on the books that I have listened to so far. Journalling reads: I love personal development and I love story. Through the mingling of these two things PC has become the most profound writer I've ever experienced. I am so very grateful to have found Paulo Coelho -> Life Changer.
This was original posted on my business website Live! Love Freedom If you are interested in coaching or changing your life, then head over there for a free thirty- minute, no-obligation, Sample Session in which we go into depth with one goal or challenge you're facing. You will come out with energy, clarity and excitement for the journey ahead. Dream big, achieve more x |
Allie AtkinsonA recently engaged girl in her mid-thirties living and loving life as best she can. Passionate about health, art and personal development with a side order of getting organised. A business woman, a sexual authenticity coach and a mixed-media artist. Archives
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