Oh, yes! It’s that time of the month, already: It’s the Craft Leftovers monthly giveaway!

To enter the contest, simply leave a message in the comments with your name and contact information (Email, blog, etc.).

On wednesday, april 21st, 3 lucky people will be chosen by a random drawing.

In this month’s issue:

March and all its dreary weather has flown by with the help of some plushy goodness. Now April is just around the corner and Craft Leftovers Monthly is here to help usher in the spring season!

:: Bike riding
:: Basket making is the prominent theme (recycled paper and reed weaving projects)
:: A great spring bunny pattern from Absolutely Small
:: Easter Egg lore and painting:: Easter Egg lore and painting
:: A great interview with SewDanish!
:: And of course a few other fun things too.

Good luck to everyone!

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered The Creative Entrepreneur book by Lisa Sonora Beam. I never had heard of her, but from all the good reviews she had from her book, I decided to give it a go and try it. I’m a book-lover, so money spent on book is never a bad thing for me.

From the start, I really liked the visual of the book. I was afraid that, perhaps, there would be too much text, but no, there’s plenty of pictures and the guidelines are easy to understand. The images in the book are mostly made of other creative journals pages, of course. Which I found to be very inspiring. I love to read, but I like my craft books to lean on the visual side.

An interesting page with two self-portraits

The author takes you step-by-step in the making of your creative entrepreneur journal. From the materials you will need, the reasons why you should make a creative journal for your business and she even explains each step of the process very clearly.

I’ve been very interested in art journals lately and their creative ventures. As I’ve been thinking about starting my own business for years now (Yes, years! *sigh*), I thought that this approach on the creative side would certainly help me get some things done and understand some of the “reasons” that stopped me from doing so.

A beautiful positive & negative page. I ♥ the butterfuly idea!

This book is defenetely for you if, like me, you’re trying to start a creative business but may be “stuck” somewhere. You may have other reasons as well as you are not sure if “busines and art” can go together. (A sensitive subject for many artists, from my experience.)
You also need to want to start a creative journal with a business goal, in mind. You need to be open-minded and patient as I don’t think such a journal can be filled in an afternoon. The author asks you deep and thought-provoking questions, which are not always easy to answer, but all of your answers may be very rich.

***

To help you getting started, here’s my own creative entrepreur journal that I recently started:

I went to my local arts & craft store, and bought a 8″X10″ small drawing journal with medium to thick paper as I want to paint in it. Oh, and it’s got 30% of recycled fibers, as well. So it’s all good with mother-nature.

One thing I wish to do in the next year, is to finally focus on the things I really wish to do. So I did an entire page on this subject!
It says: “Focus on the things that’s important to your hearth.” Do you think my subconscious mind will finally get the message? I sure hope so!

That’s the interesting thing with The creative entrepreneur book, it’s that it opens doors to many thoughts that I’m keeping shut. While doing an exercice, I will often drift away and think about some other important issues I’ve been having. If I feel this is something that needs to be cared of, I will make a page about it to help me out.

Here are some links that you may find interesting to get more information about this book or to start your own creative journal:

• The Creative Entrepreneur book website
• Owl notebook cover tutorial by Hanna
• Tutorial: A super simple way to cover a composition book by Sister Diane

Have you ever started a journal with this entrepreneur theme as a goal?
Is this something that interests or repulse you?
Let me know as I’d like to know if this is something that interests you or not.

Life has an interesting way of sending me messages, lately.

Yesterday, I’ve been told that there were some restructuration in the company and got laid off. Woah.

I am half-happy and half-sad.

Half-happy because, inside, I knew I wouldn’t stay forever in this job. Having  followed graphic design classes in the last year, I couldn’t stay too long in a regular cubicule job that had nothing to do with what my hearth desired. Not to mention it wouldn’t do good for my long-term career goals and projects.

Half-sad because you do get attached to the people and the place. I was a receptionnist, so I got to greet everyone each morning. Even thought I knew everybody at some different level, I still knew them.
Oh, and I could get free latte coffee… Yep, good times.

Right now, I am trying to focus on the good things coming up. I will have lots of choices to make in the following weeks/months, so this is certainly going to be one interesting ride.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll have more time to blog. :p

During Easter’s weekend, while everybody was enjoying the nice temperature we had in Quebec, I was inside a room, making a mural for a client. This is what happens when you’re juggling a bread and butter job with your creative ventures. :p

It was a 10 ft. x 8 ft. and took me around 14 hours to make it. Which is not that bad considering I didn’t even made sketches before. It was inspired from an image my client already had.

It’s not the first time I do murals, here’s a children’s room with a jungle theme I did a couple of years ago. But it’s two totally different styles.

It made me seriously consider taking more murals orders when I will jump-start my creative career. I don’t know if there is that much of a demand for this, but any creative venture that can help me do the switch is always interesting in my book.

In case you’re interested in making your own mural, I found this page which has a ton of “how to” links about making murals. There is a lot of different techniques and way to make them.

And if you’re in the Montreal area and would like to get a nice mural done by me, feel free to contact me.

This summer, I did 6 illustrations for the Privilège de roi fantasy novel by Anne Robillard and Martial Grisé. And it’s just been published!
Like they say: Woot!

Anne Robillard is a famous fantasy author in Quebec. She sold about 1 million of copies of her serie, Les chevaliers d’Émeraude (Knights of Emerald) in Canada and she now is selling them in France, as well. Her serie is getting well-known over there, too. They even call her “The J-K Rowling of Quebec”. Nice!

The novel I did the illustrations for was written by Martial Grisé and Anne Robillard supported him through the process as it is the prologue of Les chevaliers d’Émeraude. It’s a story the die-hard fans wanted to read for a very long time. Martial has a great knowledge and is a great storyteller of all things fantasy. So it’s no wonder Anne Trusted him into writing this very important book. It’s his first book published and certainly not the last. 

I had a lot of fun drawing Martial’s characters. I really love this one of Omarias, the elven mage. Even thought I had quick deadlines to draw theses illustrations, I still loved every second of drawing them. I even did some better versions with grays shades, but they were not chosen for printing reasons.

This makes me so happy. It’s the first time I’m published at such a huge print run and I am extremely grateful of Anne and Martial. Un énorme merci à vous deux!

If you’d like to get the novel (french only, for the moment!), you can get it online via the Archambault online store or at every good local bookstore.

Also, just in case you’re into medieval/fantasy/renaissance, Martial also makes amazing medieval inspired items like theses awesome leather book cover. Belts, armband, armors… he makes it all. Make sure to take a look at his website. (French only thought)
Next time I see him, I’ll let him know about Etsy.

This weekend, it was time for celebration as it’s been 10 years that me and Olivier have been together. Please, don’t faint.
We started going out at 18, which makes us “college sweethearts”. And we really do take it one day at a time. We “let it be” as the fab four said.

To celebrate, I made us some tasty & simple to make pancakes for our saturday morning. This is a special treat I enjoy making for thoses lazy weekend mornings.

The main recipe comes from one of my all-time favorite quebec-made cookbook, La croute cassée. (Someone really needs to make a translation of this book!)

1 1/4 cup of milk
1 cup of white flour
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 pinch of salt
Chocolate chips 
♥♥♥
Butter or oil (for pan)
Strawberries & Bananas for decoration & taste. :)

1. Mix milk, white flour, eggs, sugar and salt together.  But be careful to not overmix, if there’s some clumps in your, it’s okay. Too much mixing will make your pancakes “rubber-ish”.
2. Add in chocolate chips. Yum!
3. If you wish, start cutting the strawberries and bananas before making the pancakes.
4. Pour some oil or butter in a pan, bake pancakes! To know when it’s okay to turn them on the other side, make sure there are some bubbles on top and that your pancake is getting brown on it’s side.

We realized that the pancakes are so much better when eaten as soon as they get out of the pan. They’re hot and the chocolate is melting! I leave this to your imagination.

And if you wish to know more about making pancakes, there’s actually a .com site about making them. Woah.

I hate starting this post with a “I know I haven’t been posting a lot lately”, but I have to.

Not posting for almost a week 5 days is not something I’ve been used to since this blog has started, more than 7 months ago. It’s not that I am missing post ideas (You should see my “Artvscraft.net ideas pad”! Phew!), it’s just that my bread & butter job has been more demanding lately with the results of draining my energy and time even more.

I’m all in favor of day-jobs because they do help me puirsuit my creative projects. But, as time pass, I know I will have to make choices. I just don’t know yet where this is going, but I am going somewhere, for sure.

So, in the meanwhile, I am trying to find some balance between blogging and my current work situation. I hope you’ll still stay around because I am going nowhere and am so in love with blogging that I’m not stopping anytime soon.

Just wanted to let you know.

For this, I used a good looking hat I once used for my makeup portfolio. A fun fact here, I bought it around Halloween for only 5$. May I say, best costume buy ever?

Then, I headed over to Oli so he could do the drawing for me. A playstation control pad in one hand, doing the drawing with the other one. Such coordination!

And now, drum roll, please!

The winners:

Congratulations to Rebecca,Renee G. and Shelly!
You all won a copy of the March issue of Craftleftovers monthly zine!

Thanks to everyone who commented! I really love doing theses giveaways. It’s as much of a blast for the winners as it is for me. Look for some more in the future!

In case you’d like to read an interview I did for London Art girl’s blog, here it is:

Third tribe artist interview series: Fanie Gregoire.

Laura had some very interesting and insightful questions about my art and I had to take some time to answer them. I discovered some interesting things about myself as I was responding her interview. You should really check her art blog, it’s a great read!

I used to be part of the Third Tribe Marketing community. I tried it for three months but then realized I wouldn’t have much time to spend on it, so I left it. But I found they had some very interesting podcasts and ressources if you’re starting a blog or an online business. But it is also a pay per month service and I have some money choices to make. I’ll have to pay a studio, this year, so I need to save (more on this later! Wee!).  

I hope you’ll enjoy the interview!

I think I am now going to call this the monthly Craftleftovers giveaway! And I mean this in a good way, of course!

So, here’s your once-again-chance to win an amazing Craft Leftovers monthly zine.

In this issue:

This month Craft Leftovers Monthly is taking a nice long look into the world of plush! Recycled stuffing, knitting, crochet, stitching, and a little corned beef and cabbage for good measure!
+Knit a panda
+Crochet a Tiger Kitty
+Stitch a Lion
+Learn about Art Tales’ creative process
+And the best recycled materials to use for the plush we love the most.
+So much more, but it’s a surprise!

To enter the contest, simply leave a message in the comments with your name and contact information (Email, blog, etc.).

3 lucky people will be chosen by a random drawing.

Good luck and… happy monday!