As soon as I opened the door and picked up the package (it was sent in a clear bag), I was like: yep, I’m gonna be needing one of those too.

I’ve always been a sucker for cute organizational supplies, especially bags, and extra especially a dope colored bag. I love it when all my stuff has an aesthetically pleasing home. So as soon as it went on sale, I bought one for myself.

And then…I barely used it. This is not the first time I’ve purchased a cute organization supply and let it sit on the sidelines. Even though it was adorable and very functional, I already had a whole studio full of places for the stuff I was using, so it wasn’t exactly solving a current problem. So it mostly just sat there in the bottom shelf of one of my IKEA Raskog carts.

Then in February, Charlie came along, and for the first few weeks of postpartum life I spent most of my time in my bedroom with her. I was either sleeping or eating or feeding her. My only creative outlet for more than a few weeks was jotting down a few things in the mom five-year journal that I got from my friend Juli. But suddenly that yellow pouch was the solution to a brand new problem—how do I store a tiny amount of supplies and keep them at arms reach?

It was small enough to keep on the bookshelf right next to my bed. I legit only had to lean over to reach any of my supplies. I put my journal, some pens, adhesive, tiny scissors, and a handful of stickers inside. NGL, the fact that it was bright yellow also helped a ton, it was easy to see and reminded me how easy it was to do the thing.

A few months later - after I finally stopped living in my bed with another human being attached to my body - I was out shopping for Awesome Ladies Live door prizes at Odd Nodd Art Supply in Lansing,a delightful little shop and perfectly encapsulates the Lansing vibe. While I was inside, I came across this super cool expanding binder.

My yellow pouch was starting to get a little too cramped, and it wasn’t perfect for holding all the stickers or loose scraps of paper I was accumulating. And I immediately knew it would be perfect for all the little bits I was actively using.

Currently the binder has Brandi Kincaid cards in a few different sizes, stickers, gelli prints, patterned paper, bits of life, and collage scraps. It’s not a ton of stuff, but it’s a nice collection that I can easily leaf through in less than a minute.

And because I’ve been gathering a bit more here and there, I also have one of the Awesome Ladies tote bags from Live holding the bigger stuff—magazines, a big envelope of ephemera, my larger scissors and bit more adhesive. Also, the binder and the pouch fit perfectly in the tote bag, so it’s super easy to clean up and make the living room look like a living room and not a crafty hurricane.

The whole setup lives on the shelf under my coffee table. When Charlie falls asleep in her little chair, I’m usually already sitting on the couch and it’s easy to reach down, grab my stuff, and start making something.

And this quick start is absolutely essential right now because I have absolutely no idea how long a crafty session will last. Sometimes the baby naps for ten minutes and sometimes she naps for an hour.

Lately she’s been fighting naps pretty hard, so whatever time shows up is the time I’ve got. If I need to stop making a page five minutes into the process, I don’t want it to take me 10 minutes just to clean up—or worse, I don’t want to have spent the entire time just picking stuff out to use.

So I don’t. I just use what I’ve already collected.

So, this tiny version of my craft studio under the living room table is helping me actually make things in this season of life.

I still love all the technically involved stuff. I’ve literally been collecting scrapbook stuff for more than 20 years. But if I decide I’m stamping, I’m choosing between a million stamps and ink pads, and if I pull out the gelli plate then who knows where the next half hour is going (thank god for a heat gun, but still).

Right now I need a quick in and quick out. With the stuff under my coffee table, I don’t have to choose between 30 ink pads or 20 bottles of paint. I get to just grab something and stick it down on the page.

Sometimes I still think, oh, I probably have the perfect thing for this back in the studio. But I’m not getting up in the middle of a ten-minute nap to go hunt for it. The last time I had the urge, I just waited until Jeff got home and took the baby, and then went back there to grab a handful of Brandi cards, a few stickers, and some of my fav paper scraps.

My thought is: If I’m going back there, I might as well grab a handful of things and make the trip worth it.

One of my recent pages was basically just a handful of things from a recent Brandi Extravagant Hope envelope. On the left side I used some new washi tape and a little envelope that says “good words for later,” with the little note still tucked inside. The entire right-hand page is a 4x6 art print covered in tiny rainbow hearts that says “let your love surprise you.”

A lot of my pages are looking like this right now. Less mixed media, more lists, more random thoughts, more using up the stuff I’ve got lying around, and more sticking down whatever is already in front of me.

More than anything, right now I’m trying to catch the moments that disappear fast. Charlie changes literally every day. She has already grown out of her little newborn onesies and most of her 0-3 month onesies too. She’s constantly babbling mamamamama and bababababa. She looks (and acts) like a real life miniature human now instead of a teensy alien cosplaying as a baby human.

There are things happening every day that I know I will completely forget in a few weeks. So I’m making messy lists, I’m jotting random things down, and I’m just having fun sticking things into my notebook.

I’ve been documenting my life on paper for a long-ass time. I have a ridiculous amount of experience to fall back on. I’ve made more than a thousand Daily Pages at this point, plus hundreds of scrapbook pages and dozens of albums. I know what I like. I know what my favorite adhesive is. I know what works for me in this season of life.

At this point I don’t have to think very hard about some of this stuff. I know which adhesive I’m going to grab. I know what notebook I want to use (something small, not lined). I know I’ll be able to make a page I like with a handful of stickers and paper scraps in less than ten minutes.

No matter how much experience you’ve got—your pile of already-have stuff is going to look different. Maybe it’s mostly the photos on your phone. Maybe you have a notebook you bought six months ago and still haven’t used. It might be some junk mail, your BFF group text, a magazine, or a bunch of random stickers sitting in a drawer somewhere.

Maybe you’re like me, and you’re extremely good at remembering all the stuff you purchased at the store and somehow forget about the junk mail, magazines, scraps, phone photos, and random bits of life that are already sitting around (thanks capitalism). And I know I’m not the only person whose brain immediately goes, “maybe I just need to buy one more thing...and it’ll all be perfect”

And don’t get me wrong, I love having a ridiculous number of supplies, and the space to store them (thanks Midwestern real estate); having seventeen ink colors doesn’t automatically make me more creative than having three. Mostly it means I have fourteen extra choices to make.

So lately I’ve been skipping a lot of the “what else do I need?” thoughts and coming back to some more boring and ultra simple questions:

1. Where am I actually going to make something?

2. How much time do I really have?

3. What’s already around and easy to grab?

4. What do I even want to remember from this part of my life?

The time question is the biggest one for me right now. I used to have a hard hour at noon for Daily Pages. Now I might have five minutes, ten minutes, or twenty if I’m lucky, and I’d much rather make a five-minute page and have time left over than spend fifteen minutes setting something up and have Charlie wake up before I even actually start.

Your answers are probably completely different from mine. Maybe Saturday morning at the kitchen table is actually perfect for you. Or you already take a tote bag to crafternoon at the library. Or, legit, the only time nobody needs anything from you is the fifteen minutes you’re on the couch after dinner.

If your answer is the couch after dinner, don’t build your whole setup around the craft table you sit at twice a month (as much as that might seem like “the right way to do it”). Put your stuff near the couch.

And, more than anything, please do not read this email and decide the first step is buying yourself a new pouch.

I mean, the pouch is great and if you want one, go for it (or honestly put a price alert on it). But I bet you already own something that can hold a few things (and you can always make it cuter with some more stickers). So, grab a couple of supplies and put them somewhere you can easily reach them. A bag. A basket. A project box. Whatever works for you.

That little pile underneath my coffee table is basically my craft room right now. Instead of multiple desks, Kallax shelves, hundreds of stamp sets, and 20+ years of accumulated stuff, I’ve got a yellow pouch, a pink binder, and a tote bag.

Time-wise, I’ve got five minutes here, ten minutes there, and occasionally longer when the babe decides to really commit to nap time.

When I’ve only got a little bit of time and no idea what to make, I usually go back to the same place: a Currently List. That’s where we’re going next week.

My thought process was: at some point after maternity leave, I would get back to Daily Pages. Monday through Friday, noon Eastern, just like before. Maybe I’d just start with Monday and ease into the rest of the week. Maybe I’d set the baby up in a little bouncer or a pack ‘n play next to me while I made. Maybe I’d get really good at coordinating her naps (this was my real goal) with Daily Pages. I figured that it might take a little while to figure out, but eventually this familiar part of my life would slide right back into its old spot.

I knew having a baby would change pretty much every part of my life. I just didn’t realize how much it would change the way I needed to - or honestly, wanted to - fit creativity into my days.

One of the biggest things shaping my return has been my body. As a person with overlapping chronic health issues, I had a relatively easy pregnancy, and a very easy labor & delivery. But, getting physically back to where I need to be has taken longer than I expected. I was back at the cardiologist’s office with chest pain 4 days post partum. My headaches have been back with a vengeance (tried Botox to no avail). Pumping breastmilk is legitimately a full-time job (and not something I was expecting to be doing at all). Charlie is still waking up once or twice most nights, which means that when she takes a decent nap during the day, there is a very good chance I’m going to need to take one too.

And that getting her down for that nap often happens right around noon. The exact time I used to sit down for Daily Pages.

I still catch myself looking at my watch and realizing it’s 12:30 and I completely missed the window to check in with the Daily Pages livestream. I get a little annoyed, also a little sad. There’s also that teensy part of me that feels like I’m letting people down because I’m not able to be there every day the way I used to be.

For almost six years, Daily Pages Live at noon, Monday through Friday, was somewhere people could reliably find me (which even writing out sounds unbelievable). We made together. I sent out emails with my finished pages. I showed up and we hung out. That was a significant of my work, my creativity, and my actual life, and of course I miss it like crazy.

But the other, slightly more realistic part of me knows that doing that for well more than five years was pretty incredible to begin with. All my people understand that lives change and evolve. The community hasn’t disappeared because the way I participate in it has changed (which is the real success here). My heart and my body both know that I’m just not able to be back in exactly the same way right now.

And I think that’s connected to one of the most important things having a baby has taught me: basically nothing goes the way you think it’s going to go--easy or hard.

There were things I researched and worried about because I thought they were going to be incredibly difficult, and then they turned out to be pretty easy (labor & delivery). There were other things I barely thought twice about because I assumed they would be simple (or “natural”), and those have been way harder than I ever expected (breastfeeding and everything having to do with feeding in general).

You can prepare. You can do the research. You can ask questions. You can make plans. And then you actually have to do the thing, live the life, and find out what the it actually requires. If you’ve ever spent any time with me in a class or working through a project, you know I’m a huge fan of learning from when shit goes sideways.

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I used to be a huge perfectionist, I’d let screw ups defeat me and I’d feel really bad about not getting every single thing correct on the first try (thanks my 20s). Then I realized one of the best ways to actually learn how to do something was to screw up and learn through imperfection (Thanks my 30s).

And honestly, my studio might be the most literal example of all of this.

Even though I had a (relatively) easy pregnancy, the last few weeks were really rough physically. Charlotte was sitting right up against some of the nerves in my back, and I legit couldn’t stand up straight or even sit down for more than five minutes at a time. The last two weeks were me laying down on the couch or in bed almost the whole time (I watched a lot of quality TV). So at that point, cleaning and organizing my studio had moved very, very far down the priority list.

So I left it a mess. Like an absolute total disaster. Just piles of stuff everywhere.

After Charlie was born, it became an extremely convenient place to put even more stuff. If something didn’t have an immediate home (the second car seat, stuff for when she was a little older, and all the random stuff I was collecting for her baby scrapbook), the studio was right there and it wasn’t really being used, so it was the perfect holding place for all the extra stuff. Eventually there was so much back there, completely unorganized, that I barely had room to walk around. It was a legit fire hazard, and if I didn’t have five other doors to get out of my house, it would have made me incredibly anxious.

And this also meant that even if I suddenly had a perfect thirty-minute window and all the creative energy in the world, the place where I used to go when I wanted to make something, was pretty much off-limits, especially if I had the baby in tow.

Last week, I finally cleaned off my desk. Not because I had some beautiful burst of creative motivation, but because Jeff needed to do a video interview on my computer.

Because of Daily Pages and the podcast, I’ve got the nice camera and microphone setup, and the background of his video was going to be my desk. My absolutely disastrous desk. I wanted him to be able to go into his interviews feeling confident so I started straightening things up so his video would look good.

Once I got started, I got into a flow and kept going. I put things away, organized what I could, and made piles of things that I personally don’t want anymore so I can bring them over to the library craft swap in a few weeks.

There is still plenty left to do. There are things that need homes and things I still want to declutter. None of my IKEA raskog carts make sense, I’ve still got piles of paper that I do want to keep, and my computer desk is still cluttery as hell. My studio has not magically transformed into an Instagram-ready craft room.

But I can use my desk again. And once I had some actual space back there, I realized I could make the room work a little better for the life I have now too.

We got an extra Pack ’n Play from an infant class at our local community center, and it had mostly been hanging out in my bedroom taking up space. Now it has a really good spot up against the wall by the sliding glass door, where Charlie can hang out with me while I’m making something at my desk or working on my computer.

Standing in the studio, with the cleaned-off desk and the Pack ’n Play sitting against the wall, I was like—maybe I’ve been using the wrong measurement for whether or not I’ve “come back”.

If the measurement is whether I’m sitting at my desk doing Daily Pages at noon every weekday, then no. I’m not back. But creativity hasn’t been absent either.

Instead of waiting until I could get back into the studio, I started keeping a few supplies in the living room, where I actually spend most of my day. I’ve been using this fun little yellow Delfonics pouch I bought myself last year. I can keep a handful of things together, grab it when I have a few minutes, and not turn making something into an entire production.

I’ve also been taking an absolutely unreasonable number of photographs (mostly of the babe). I’ve kept up with my baby/family newsletter. I’ve made photo books. I get my Brandi mail every month, and it’s been really fun having something creative show up and inspire me.

I’ve also started getting super excited about December Daily. I’ve been looking at inspo on Instagram and on Ali Edwards blog and thinking about what I might want to do this year (I think this is going to be an amazing excuse for full page baby photos). It’s a big project, and I already know that if I really want to do it, I’m going to need to plan for it. But getting excited about a future project has always been a big part of my creative life too.

And last week, I finally posted a Thursday3 again.

I needed a picture of myself for something I was working on recently, so I opened my camera roll and realized that I have approximately two thousand photographs of the baby and almost no photographs of me without the baby.

Which is like, totally fine, and absolutely makes sense. She’s brand new! I spend all day with her. She’s literally the cutest baby that has ever existed. I want to photograph every single thing she does (and her grandparents constantly ask to see photos and videos of everything she does.) But I don’t want to disappear from my own documentation because I became her mom.

I started Thursday3 about fifteen years ago because I wanted a regular reminder to turn the camera around and document myself. I’ve always talked about how I wish I had more photos of my mom and my grandma throughout their lives. And honestly, even though it became completely routine—starting that habit fifteen years ago wasn’t effortless either. I had alarms on my phone. I put it on my calendar. I was doing it at a specific place during a specific time, but I still needed something reminding me: Hey. It’s Thursday. Take the selfie. Post the selfie.

So I’m doing that again. And I hope you’ll join me again too.

I want Charlotte to have pictures of her mom. I want her to know who I was during all these years when I was taking thousands and thousands of photographs of her. And maybe even more importantly, I want her to grow up seeing that I thought documenting myself was worthwhile. I want her to know that she gets to do that too.

Thursday3 has been one of the easiest outlets to come back—something tiny that I totally know how to do, has a regular routine with social accountability, can really help me build some creativity into regular everyday life again.

And on the other hand, my other biggest creative returns this summer looked almost exactly the opposite.

Awesome Ladies Live gave me an entire weekend where creativity was the thing I was supposed to be doing—and it really happened. The time was already blocked off. We had a specific project to work on. I had other people making alongside me. As soon as the weekend started, it felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. And yes, it totally helps that I have an incredible partner who is an amazing dad, and I didn’t have to think twice about what Charlie needed, but man did it feel good to be back in that creative flow state again.

My favorite part of the weekend was when we were standing around the table swapping the collage pages we’d made with one another. Everyone had access to all of the same supplies, and everyone had made something completely different. Seeing what everyone created and then physically sharing those pieces with each other was just super cool, and definitely one of those moments where I could feel that creative facilitator part of myself light back up.

ALL also helped me realize something:

Coming back looks like many different things all at the same time.

In some instances, creativity worked because I’ve made it super small. My yellow Delfonics pouch on the coffee table in the living room. My Thursday3 weekly selfie. Whatever little thing I can do without waiting for the perfect moment (honestly, cooking has been an amazing creative outlet lately).

And, in other instances creativity worked because I made it big. An entire ALL weekend. One big project that we worked on. Or a room full of other people from around the world.

What I realized is that that I don’t need to force my old routine into my new life (and honestly, can’t force my old routine into my new life). And the best thing to be doing is paying attention to whatever is actually helping me make things now.

I think for a while I was measuring my return from maternity leave against the wrong thing.

The creative life I had before Charlotte was awesome. A lot of it worked beautifully for me for a long time, and there are parts of it I absolutely want to keep (creating in small notebooks being at the forefront). But I don’t have to—nor will i ever be able to—reconstruct that exact creative life post-baby.

Guess what, you don’t have to either.

Whatever you were doing in the past that made your creative routine doable just might look completely different now. And that’s totally okay. Everyone goes through life changes, both ups and downs, and it doesn’t mean that your creativity is gone forever.

It probably just means you haven’t figured out what the new version looks like yet.

You might need to move your supplies into the room where you actually spend your time, put an alarm back on your phone, make something alongside your friends, give yourself one single specific project, or decide that right now five minutes is what you’ve got to work with. And sometimes, the thing that works is blocking off an entire weekend.

Different doesn’t mean worse.

Right now, I have a desk that is clean enough to use. Not perfectly clean. Enough.

I have a yellow pouch with a few of my favorite supplies on the couch in the living room. I’ve got my Thursday reminder on my phone as well as a ridiculous number of baby photos. There are upcoming projects I’m excited about. And, I think most importantly, I have a safe space for Charlie in my studio.

The baby is in the room with us right now IYKYK.

The goal isn’t to make the baby or all my new mom stuff disappear long enough for my old creative life to suddenly appear again. I’m figuring out how to make enough room for creativity inside this new life I’m actually living.

And more than anything, I’m really curious to see what I make from here.

Throughout September, I’m going to be talking more about beginning exactly where we are—with the time, energy, space, supplies, stories, and lives we actually have. Not the imaginary version where everything has finally settled down and we live in our perfectly clean homes, decorated with large custom craft furniture, where we have an unlimited budget for both time and supplies.

But for now, what I want is to hear back from you:

What would you like to come back to—and what do you think might need to be different this time?

Hit reply or leave a comment and tell me.

This week’s Currently List

Watching—A bunch of new to me stuff: Furious (Hulu), Lanterns (HBO), and rewatching Lupin (Netflix) before the new season comes out in October.

Reading—Literally nothing important. I’ve got a baby book on my coffee table that I haven’t started, and a novel sitting on my shelf that I’ve been meaning to get to.

Listening—Harry Potter audiobooks while falling asleep. Lawrence and Vulfpeck in the car/on YouTube.

Making—Lots of good food with summer produce. It’s tomato season, so I’m having fun with those and whatever else we get from the CSA or the Farmers’ Market.

Feeling—Pretty okay. My headaches were decent this week. We didn’t have bad weather or anything, so the week was pretty mild.

Planning—The rest of the fall, substack essays, Awesome Ladies Live 2027, and some fun stuff for when my family comes into town.

Loving—How hilarious the baby is. She knows the sign to be picked up, and she uses it all the time. She also makes the best noises to communicate and I’m pumped for when she can actually start to use words.

Download the Currently List: https://theawesomeladiesproject.com/currently/

I’ve been on maternity leave for the last three months, and I’m slowly finding my way back to this space and the real world in general. Slowly is the big word here.

I am not returning with a color-coded content calendar, even though I seriously miss my color-coded calendars. I do not have a perfectly tuned workflow, because flow is not exactly the vibe (or even possible) right now. And I definitely do not have an epic plan to pretend my life has not completely changed. I don’t bs you. My life has completely changed.

I’m a Momma Now

I had a little baby girl on February 28th, and the whole thing has been wild. Pregnancy, labor and delivery, postpartum, being a mom. All of it. What a crazy journey. We’ll get into all of that eventually, because obviously I have a million thoughts (and photos), but today I mostly want to ease my way back into this newsletter and say hi.

So first, let me tell you a little bit about the baby.

Her name is Charlotte, and she is tiny and perfect and changing all the time. I already have a million nicknames for her, which was one of the reasons we chose Charlotte to begin with. Charlie. Lottie. Chuck. And somehow, since the day she was born, I’ve been calling her Kitten. I have no idea where it came from. She was just so tiny, and the name stuck.

She makes new faces every day. She has new sounds. New opinions. New tiny baby ways of being a person. I have taken approximately one million photos of her, because she really is the cutest baby, and no, I will not be accepting alternate opinions at this time. I’m not ready to go back into full scrapbook mode yet, but whenever I am, I will have the material. The camera roll is prepared.

One of my favorite things right now is seeing her in all the little onesies that people decorated at my baby shower. There is something so fun about watching her lounge around the house wearing these tiny bits of art that our friends and family made for her before she was even here. It feels like she’s wrapped up in all this love and color and time people spent thinking about her. It’s also super helpful for when she needs five outfit changes in a single day.

I Miss Creating + My People

I also miss writing to you. I miss making things in public. I miss making things on a regular basis. I miss talking about creativity and stories and paper and stickers and what it means to make space for our lives while we are living them. I’m finally in a place where I have enough brainspace to miss all the stuff.

And I really miss my people.

And honestly, more than that? I really, really miss creating with other people.

I miss sitting around a table while everyone is playing with paper and making something different. I miss the sound of scissors and paper trimmers. I miss someone asking if they can borrow the black Versafine ink pad. I miss looking across the table and seeing someone use a color or a stamp or a scrap in a way I never would have thought of, and suddenly I get a little boost and my own creativity feels a little more awake.

That being-in-the-room energy is its own thing. You all know I love my internet friends. Online community is real, and it’s the best. Especially for those of us with chronic illness, those of us who live in the middle of nowhere, or those of us whose IRL friends live far away. I have built huge parts of my life and the work I do around community online. But there is something different about being at the same table and hanging out in the same room.

I’ve still been creative during maternity leave, just in the tiniest, most seasonally appropriate ways. I’ve been playing with stickers here and there. I have a five-year journal that I got at my baby shower, and I’ve been using that as a little anchor. I keep a small creative kit in the living room (inside this yellow bag that I’m totally obsessed with) next to my pumping tools, because that is the reality of my creative life right now: pumping supplies, stickers, baby things, a tiny bit of paper (mostly stuff from Brandi Kincaid), and whatever pen I can find.

That’s the season.

I’ve taken a few Thursday3s here and there, but I’m not really in a huge social media sharing place right now. Honestly, being away from social media during pregnancy and these early postpartum days has been absolutely incredible for my life. Highly recommend accidentally opting out of the internet when possible. But I’m so glad I have those snapshots from this moment. A photo here (and by a photo, I mean 1000 photos of her and a handful of photos of me and Jeff). Jotting down three little things there. A tiny bit of proof that I was here, in this body, in this life, in this exact weird and beautiful season.

That’s what creative practice looks like for me right now. It is not big. It is certainly not polished. It is not happening at my desk with a full cart of supplies and three hours of uninterrupted time lol. My actual studio is a complete disaster. That was the one part of the house that I never got to organize before the baby came, so it’s literally an ADHD hoarding zone. My creativity is happening in tiny pockets, next to the baby stuff, between feeds, around headaches, near the pump parts, with whatever is within reach; and honestly, a lot of it has been happening on my phone, in the Canva app, in my camera roll, in the digital books I’ve been making.

Which keeps bringing me back to this: creative practice has to fit into the life you actually have.

Not the life you had three months ago. Not the life you had before the baby. Not the life you have in your fantasy calendar where nobody needs you and everything is just new media release dates, where the laundry is magically done, dinner appears from nowhere, the garden waters itself, your inbox is empty, your body feels amazing, and you have an uninterrupted afternoon to lovingly arrange scraps of paper while drinking something cute. Even though that sounds sooooo amazing.

I Miss Creating + My People

Creative practice has to fit into the life you actually have, in the season you are actually living.

Right now, my actual life has less time for pretty much everything; and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, it’s just the season of life I’m in. Everything takes a little bit longer with a baby attached (there are no more 5 minute grocery store runs, it legit takes 5 minutes just to get her out of the car seat and into the baby wearing thingy). So all the stuff that keeps life moving has to get a little more intentional. Cooking. Gardening. Keeping the house moderately clean. Talking to friends. Making sure I eat something with protein in it. Getting outside. Taking care of the baby. Taking care of my body. Doing the adulting. Figuring out what work looks like now.

Is it ever perfect? Absolutely not. But knowing what actually needs to happen makes it a lot easier to make the day work.

And for me, my body is still very much part of the conversation. My headaches are back with a vengeance. Because I’m breastfeeding, there are only a few medications I can take, and none of them help a ton. I’ve also had some more heart stuff happening. We’ve ruled out the scary things, which is great, but it is still annoying and exhausting when your heart skips a beat and your whole body goes, “Um, hello?”

So when I say I’m coming back slowly, I mean it. I’m here. Everything is good. I am so wildly in love with this baby. And I am not ready to jump all the way back in. All of those things are true at the same time.

For the next few months, you can expect one real newsletter from me each month, usually on the first day or two of the month. There might be some event-specific emails or sales emails here and there, but most of that will happen over on the Awesome Ladies Project email list. Here on Substack, I want to keep showing up with actual letters. The kind I can write with my whole human self. The kind you’re excited to open. The kind that gives us something to think about and something to make.

I don’t want to come back by immediately recreating the exact same pace I had before. That pace belonged to a different season. TBH, it belonged to a different me. This is a new season, a new mama, a new version of my life. And new seasons need new containers.

That’s true whether you just had a baby, moved houses, started a new job, lost someone, got sick, changed relationships, entered a new decade, became a caregiver, went through burnout, or simply looked up one day and realized your old creative routine no longer fits your current life. It is okay to take a break. It is okay to let life consume you sometimes. It is okay to disappear into the season you are in.

None of that makes you a bad creative person. It makes you a human being having a human experience.

Your creativity is not gone just because you needed to put it down for a while. It may be quieter. It may be smaller. It may be living in a weird little corner of your life right now, wearing sweatpants and eating string cheese. But it is not gone.

Your creative practice is allowed to change shape. Mine is currently a five-year journal, a few Thursday3s, a million baby photos, and three stickers next to my pumping supplies. Tysm to Brandi and her Extravagant Hope subscription, because that sticker mail is doing important emotional support work over here.

Sometimes the creative thing is a photo on your phone or in the Canva app. Sometimes it is a list in the Notes app or whatever paper you’ve got on your table. Sometimes it is one sentence before bed. Sometimes it is a tiny kit in a cute bag on the living room coffee table because that is where your life is happening right now.

The point is not to force yourself back into an old routine just because it used to work. The point is to ask: what would help me stay connected to myself in this season?

That is the question I’m asking right now. Not, “How do I get back to normal?” Normal is not the goal. Normal is gone, if it was ever really here in the first place. The question is: what does creative life look like now?

And one answer keeps coming up for me again and again.

I need to make with other people.

I need to put creative time on the calendar and treat it like it matters. I need to sit at a table with paper and photos and stories and snacks and scraps. I need to be in a room with other Awesome Ladies and make something that only exists because we made it together.

That is why I’m so excited about Awesome Ladies Live.

About Awesome Ladies Live 2026

Awesome Ladies Live is happening July 25–26, 2026 in East Lansing, Michigan, at the Graduate East Lansing. It’s a small, in-person creative weekend built around the theme Tell Your Story—Together. And honestly, that theme feels even more right to me now than it did when I first chose it before Charlotte was born.

Storytelling is personal, but it does not have to be a solo act.

At Awesome Ladies Live, we’ll spend the weekend making, writing, playing, taking photos, swapping supplies, talking, laughing, and building a handmade book together-but-not-the-same. Our main project is called Pieces of Us, Pages of Me.

We’ll start by making collaborative collage sheets as a group. Then we’ll cut those sheets apart and share the pieces with everyone in the room. Those shared papers will become part of each person’s own handmade mini book. Your finished book will be yours: your photos, words, colors, stories, and choices. But tucked into the pages will be pieces made by the people who were there with you.

That’s the part you cannot recreate at home by yourself.

That’s the whole magic.

This is a small, intimate creative weekend for introverts, extroverts, and all the complicated people in between. No giant conference energy. No vendor hall trying to sell you more stuff. No one-size-fits-all class where everyone leaves with the exact same project. No pressure to be the most social person in the room or the most polished scrapbooker at the table.

Just creative people making things in community.

You can come because you want structure and breathing room. You can come because you want to meet new friends. You can come because you miss making with people who get it. You can come because you want to go home with a finished handmade project, and yes, finishing is a skill you can learn too.

You can also come because you want to meet Baby Charlotte, who will definitely be making an appearance. If part of your motivation is “I want to make cool paper things and also meet this tiny new Awesome Lady,” I fully support that agenda.

Registration is open now, and you can read all the event details here:

Awesome Ladies Live 2026

And whether or not you are coming to East Lansing, I want you to take this with you: tiny still counts. Weird little couch creativity counts. One sticker next to your pumping supplies counts. A note in your phone counts. Taking a break counts too, because sometimes life is the project.

What’s Next

Your creative practice is not supposed to be a fancy museum exhibit. Its job is to help you stay connected to your actual life.

So here’s your tiny creative invitation for this month:

Make a page, list, note, or tiny creative thing that starts with:

I am coming back to...

Maybe you are slowly coming back to your notebook. Maybe you are slowly coming back to your body. Maybe you are slowly coming back to your friends, your kitchen, your garden, your favorite pen, your morning routine, your sense of humor, your stories, your art supplies, your desk, your courage, your softness, or your own damn self.

It does not have to be deep unless it is. It does not have to be pretty unless that sounds fun. It can be one sentence. It can be one photo. It can be one sticker on one page.

Start where you are. That is always the place.

I’m coming back slowly, and I’m making space carefully.

Summer gives us a little bit of a softer landing right now. Jeff finished his master’s program and is finally getting to enjoy some paternity leave while he looks for jobs for next school year. Charlotte is still a tiny baby who changes basically every time I look at her. I want to be here for that.

If you want to keep up with our personal family updates, I’m sharing those over at my private family newsletter: myfamilystuff.substack.com.

Over here, I’ll be showing up about once a month with creativity, stories, paper, life, and whatever this next season teaches me. And one of the spaces I’m most excited to make this year is a room full of paper, stories, snacks, scraps, and people who get it.

I would really, really love to sit at a table and make something with you.

Talk to you soon!

xoxo,

Kristin

P.S. Awesome Ladies Live registration is $649. Once you register, you’ll get the hotel room block link so you can book your room at the Graduate. If splitting the ticket into two payments would help, email hello@theawesomeladiesproject.com with your PayPal email address, and I’ll set that up for you.

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For today’s page, I wanted something super simple, so I grabbed this envelope of Brandi Kincaid bits that I found while cleaning up my living room and decided to cut out the little umbrellas. It fits perfectly with the snow storms we’ve been having every other day.

Technique of the Day

This week’s Currently List:

Watching:

Community, Super Bowl, Olympics, the new Game of Thrones Show, The Pitt, Industry, and a few others.

Reading:

Lots of books and manuals about labor and delivery, as well as stuff about caring for newborns.

Listening:

The Great Library series—Book Four. I get these from Hoopla, and they’re delightful. One of my favorite YA series in years.

Making:

Thank You Cards (almost done!)

Feeling:

Very uncomfortable. Large. Tired.

Planning:

House rearranging. The baby’s room is ready (even if she’s not gonna sleep in there for months), my room is ready for her as well. I still need to move some stuff around to transform our old library into a play area for her, but that’ll happen eventually.

Loving:

Heating Pad and Paczki

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• Field Notes

• Brandi Kincaid

• Currently List

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She’s due in four weeks, so the doctors have me primed and ready to go. She could decide that tomorrow’s the day (she best leave Super Bowl Sunday alone), but we’re packed and ready for whenever she decides to make her arrival.

In addition to that, because of my “advanced maternal age” I’m at the doctors office each week for a 2-3 hour appointment just to make sure that everything is going according to plan. So far the tiny human has been doing amazing and everything is going perfectly—and I’d love to keep it that way for as long as possible, so I’ve had to cut back on a few things, including sitting at my computer in the afternoons once it gets too uncomfortable.

I’ll have an email out next week with my full maternity leave plans (these Daily Pages emails will stop for a few months, as I personally won’t be doing the live show and it won’t be recorded—although if you’ve got access to the Daily Pages Live show, there will absolutely be folks hanging out and creating). I’ve got some emails scheduled for while I’m away; but I’ll mostly be taking the spring off to figure out what life looks like with a tiny human.

All that to say, I am sorry that I’ve been a little MIA lately, and I’m definitely going to be more MIA going forward. If you’d like to keep in touch while I’m on maternity leave, or just check out how things are going with the babe, you can subscribe to my private family blog.

My Family Stuff

My family newsletter.

By Kristin Tweedale

It might take me a couple days to get you on the list (I manually approve every single person), but I make sure to go through the list before I send out a new post. It’s the only way that I’ll be sending out updates about the family for the next few months. It is so much easier than a shared photo album, or trying to text message every single person in my phone (and then invariably missing someone and hurting their feelings). So I’d love it if you joined us and kept up with me and Jeff and the baby while I’m away.

Technique of the Day

For today’s page, I wanted to make something pretty easy—I have to keep alternating between sitting and standing, because neither is comfortable to do for more than 5-10 minutes at a time.

I grabbed a sheet of patterned paper from a 6x6 paper pad, added it to the right hand side and then kind of just sat there for a few minutes figuring out what to do. Since all the days are messed up in my head, I didn’t even realize it was Thursday and I could have just done a Thursday3—instead I took some hot pink masking tape, dropped down as many lines as fit on the page, and then did some right now journaling (basically the exact same thing lol).

Almost everything on the list is baby or pregnancy related, since that’s my entire life right now—and I wanted to get a bunch of it down before this part of life goes by and I totally forget everything that happened.

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• Field Notes

• Paper: Studio Calico (discontinued)

• Tape: Blick

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Luckily, I love my house, I love hanging out, and I’m enjoying prepping for the tiny human to arrive, so I haven’t gone too stir crazy just yet. But, who knows what a few more weeks are going to do!

For today’s page, I wanted something pretty simple. I grabbed a Brandi quote card and added it to my spread along with this week’s Currently List. My favorite way to get back into the swing of things after a weekend away from my desk.

Technique of the Day

This week’s Currently List:

Watching:

Breaking Bad, The Pitt, Industry, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Superstore, Fallout, and Hijack. It’s a pretty good time for TV.

Reading:

Nothing much aside from baby stuff.

Listening:

The third book in the Great Library Series.

Making:

Food

Feeling:

Uncomfortable. There’s just no more room in my body.

Planning:

Hospital bag and my Baby Binder

Loving:

That the heat works in the house again!

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Supply List

• Field Notes

• Brandi Kincaid

• Currently List

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Technique of the Day

Today, I just made a simple Thursday3 page with some winter-themed paper. I spent a majority of my time getting most of the chipboard backing off that label piece so it would better fit in my book. A combination of just simply peeling the back off, and an exacto knife worked really well. It’s the perfect technique for keeping things a little less bulky in your notebooks.

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• Field Notes

• Paper & Stickers: Kelly Purkey

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Today, I decided that I’d play around with some of the stuff I got in the mail while I was sick. Over the past two weeks, I got a little sticker package from Pipsticks, and an envelope full of hope from Brandi Kincaid. Sometimes, one of the easiest things to do is to just play with whatever you got most recently. It’s fun to go through new stuff and generally pretty easy to come up with ideas to use it, as opposed to flipping through your stash that you’ve already been through a few times.

Technique of the Day

For today’s page, I went through my most recent sticker pack and picked out these cute little songbirds to put all over the left page. On the other page, I cut up a quote card for my words. It was a simple and easy page to put together and now I’ve got enough energy for the rest of the day. When you’re getting back into the swing of things, especially after an illness—think about how you can make things as easy as possible and go from there.

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• Pipsticks

• Field Notes

• Brandi Kincaid

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Hey friends—Sorry that I haven’t been around the last couple weeks. I had a bad case of the flu. Thank god I got my flu shot, or it would have been so much worse. Luckily it was just two weeks in bed, checking my temperature (they want pregnant people to be in the hospital if you can’t keep your temp below 100.4), drinking lots of fluids, and getting as much rest as possible. Yesterday was the first day that I was really up and walking around the house.

I made today’s page super easy, just to get back into the swing of things. Patterned paper, Currently list, and a little card. It felt great to be back, and I’m excited to make another page tomorrow.

Technique of the Day

This week’s Currently List:

Watching:

Breaking Bad, The Pitt, Industry, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Superstore

Reading:

Baby books—lots of stuff on post partum.

Listening:

The Great Library series

Making:

Daily Pages

Feeling:

Better but tired.

Planning:

Baby stuff

Loving:

All the good TV!

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• Field Notes

• Brandi Kincaid

• Currently List

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I had a little bit more energy today, so I decided that I wanted to pull out some paints, markers, and my gel printing plate to make something a little more fun to finish out the week.

This was a great week getting back into the swing of things. Even though I’m definitely getting a little bit more tired with every passing day, I love coming to my standing desk and creating a page each day. I’m hoping that I can keep up with these pages (and these emails until I go on maternity leave in March).

Technique of the Day

I grabbed a few of my new Sharpie Creative Markers and made a few random marks with different colors right on top of my gel plate. These are honestly my favorite creative supply right now, and they work so well for mark making on the gel plate. I like to pick out 2-3 coordinating colors and go from there.

I added these two cards from Brandi Kincaid to finish up my pages with some pretty text. A perfect place for great reminders.

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Supply List

• Photo — Persnickety Prints

• Pipsticks

• Field Notes

• Brandi Kincaid

• Ali Edwards

• Currently List

• Heat Gun: Ranger

• Trimmer: Tonic Studios

• Paint: Blick, Liquitex, Golden

• Gel Plate: Gelli Arts 8x10, 5x7, 3x5

• Brayers: Stash, Soft, Hard

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Tips & Creative Wisdom

Header goes here

One-two sentences here

Pro Tip: One thing you can do

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I love that the prompt itself just takes all the pressure off my journaling. I don’t need to come up with the most important things or write about anything super specific. It’s just whatever seems to be top of mind when I start writing.

Technique of the Day

Today, for my visual representation of the numbers, I stamped and cut out my 1, 2, and 3 from pre-stickered tissue paper (learn how here). It was simple on the brain (I’m needing a lot more of that lately) while being a little bit challenging on my hands. Which, honestly, was a nice change of pace from all the super easy stuff I’ve been doing lately.

I picked out some warm colors—even though I think any three colors would have worked fine—I’m needing some bright pops of color during these long winter days. Since I wasn’t feeling super verbose today, I grabbed a thicker journaling pen, so my words would take up more space on the page. It’s a great trick when you’re feeling like journaling less (conversely, if you’ve got a lot to say, use a thinner pen), and it was perfect for today. The bold type went perfectly with the bright colors.

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• Tissue Paper — Blick

• Adhesive — Scrapbook.com

• Ali Edwards

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Tips & Creative Wisdom

Balance Easy With Engaging

Not every page needs to be effortless—but it shouldn’t be exhausting either. A little hand-focused challenge can feel really satisfying.

Pro Tip: Pair a simple prompt with a slightly tactile technique (cutting, stamping, layering) to keep your brain relaxed and your hands busy.

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Oh man am I tired today. My brain is just not thinking the way it used to—creative ideas are taking more time, or honestly, just not coming to me at all these days. But honestly, NBD because I’ve got a million different recipes for creating Daily Pages that I’ve stored away for days (and weeks/months) just like this.

Recipes are great for when you’re not up for coming up with new creative ideas on the fly. A few of my favorites (most of which you already know) are:

• Currently List

• Thursday3

• Scrap Collage (what I used today)

• Mini Scrapbook Page

• Repeating Stamped Background

• Cut Up Quotes

• Stickerscapes

Honestly, this would make a great Saturday newsletter—I’m gonna have to put that together one of these days and link to all the great Daily Pages I’ve created over the years.

Technique of the Day

Today, I pulled out a quick recipe for a scrap collage. I grabbed a box of smaller patterned paper scraps and picked out all the scraps in black and white. I think it’s always easiest to pick a color family when my brain isn’t working—it relies more on my eyes than it does my brain and that’s perfect. My eyes and my hands are still working perfectly.

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• Paper — Random Scraps

• Ali Edwards

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Tips & Creative Wisdom

Systems Beat Inspiration

A sustainable creative habit isn’t about feeling inspired—it’s about having systems that carry you through low-energy seasons.

Pro Tip: If you’re stuck, ask “Which recipe fits my energy today?” instead of “What should I make?”

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Technique of the Day

I really didn’t know what I wanted to do this afternoon, so I went looking around my studio (still a mess) for some pretty paper scraps and something that I could cut up and put on the page. I’m a huge fan of cutting stuff up when I’m having a low-energy day.

I picked out this quote from a recent envelope of Brandi Kincade cards, and after I snipped up the lines, I realized it was going to look better if I rotated the notebook 90 degrees instead of cutting up the quote lines across the two pages. It worked much better for today’s page, and it’s fun having to turn the notebook once in a while to catch everything.

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• Field Notes

• Brandi Kincaid

• Ali Edwards

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Tips & Creative Wisdom

Let the Page Rotate

You don’t have to work with the notebook—sometimes it’s better to work around it. Turning the book can unlock a page instantly.

Pro Tip: If a layout feels awkward, rotate the notebook 90° before cutting anything. A small shift can solve the whole problem.

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Happy New Year Friends! I’m so glad to be back doing Daily Pages with you. The next few months might look a little different as I continue to progress through my pregnancy. I’m due at the beginning of March and plan on keeping up with Daily Pages until then. I’ve been feeling pretty good most days, but as I get further along, I feel myself getting a little more tired each day. So I want to apologize in advance if I don’t get an email out to you every single day, I promise I’m doing my best!

I’ll have another email in a few weeks that will talk about what I’m doing for maternity leave, and what you can expect here and over at the Awesome Ladies Project community. But for now, let’s all celebrate the new year and everything that comes along with it!

Technique of the Day

This week’s Currently List:

Watching:

Mad Men (probably my third or fourth time through?)

NFL Football

Reading:

Lots of baby books.

Listening:

Audiobooks—looking for a good new one.

Making:

Daily Pages again.

Feeling:

Uncomfortable

Planning:

A bunch of different newborn classes

Loving:

The new year

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Supply List

• Field Notes

• Brandi Kincaid

• Currently List

• Heat Gun: Ranger

• Trimmer: Tonic Studios

• Paint: Blick, Liquitex, Golden

• Gel Plate: Gelli Arts 8x10, 5x7, 3x5

• Brayers: Stash, Soft, Hard

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I had no idea what I wanted to do this afternoon when I got to my desk. Then someone reminded me that it was Thursday3 and I could just do a Thursday3 page! What a simple idea, that I completely forgot about.

Originally I was going to put this page on one of the blank pages a little further back in the book—I’ve still got Days 8, 12, 13, 15, and 16 to create. But then I decided that it would just work out perfectly if I put it on today’s page.

Then I had a bit of extra time, and decided to go over to page 12 (a day I don’t really have a story for) and add in some fun holiday embellishments.

Technique of the Day

I wanted to make today’s page easier on myself—so I flipped through my journaling cards and found one that would work for Thursday3. Then I flipped through the rest of my holiday papers and found a background that coordinated with the journaling card. For the opposite page, I cut out some presents from a totally different journaling card, added some shiny gold washi tape as a base and made that page just a cute little holiday visual. Perfect to go with the journaling.

For my Day 12 page, I grabbed a tag that I had mostly created last weekend when I was playing around on the couch. It was a cute little sequined shaker pocket. I added the day’s number on the front and matched up the right side of the page with some great little holiday embellishments.

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• Brandi Kincaid

• Ali Edwards

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Tips & Creative Wisdom

Built-In Prompts Save the Day

Having a go-to page format like Thursday3 means you never have to start from scratch—even when your brain is done for the day.

Pro Tip: Keep 1–2 “default pages” you can fall back on when you don’t know what to make. They’re creative safety nets.

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I had my 28 Week checkup appointment this morning. They did the glucose test—I had to sit around for an hour and read my phone to pass the time until they could do the blood draw. They did the tdap vaccine. They checked her heartbeat. And a bunch of other little random things. But now I’m absolutely exhausted—even though I came home and laid down for a bit, I’m still feeling extra tired today, and I needed a page that would help me document all the things I just told you.

Technique of the Day

Big Numbers. I’ve had these numbers forever. And I’ve been wanting to do some 1-10 journaling countdown thing, but I’m just not going to make that happen any time soon, so I figured I’d use the numbers in this book instead. They’ll definitely help with my book being a little more on the chunky side.

I added some alpha stickers, some journaling, and finished it up with a bunch of really cute puffy stickers in all different colors.

I’m so glad I gave myself permission to make an easy page for today. Before the end of the week, I’d like to go back and finish up a few of the pages I’ve left blank (including a Mad Men one I’ve had in my head for a week now), but I’m not going to push myself. This book will be awesome no matter what!

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• Sticker — Kelly Purkey

• Brandi Kincaid

• Numbers — Ali Edwards

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Tips & Creative Wisdom

Big Days Deserve Easy Pages

When your body and brain are wiped, your notebook doesn’t need complexity—it just needs honesty.

Pro Tip: After appointments or long days, choose one simple structure (numbers, lists, stickers) and let it hold the story for you.

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Unfortunately, I messed up recording today’s video a bit, so the first 15 minutes are cut off. Big apologies for that. Hopefully you can get a sense of how I put the page together, it’s a pretty simple one.

I’m a huge fan of spending some of my other crafty time making little things that I can use to make my everyday pages easier, and this is the perfect example. When things are busy and I’ve got a little crafty time, I like to do a bunch of stuff that’s easy to complete in bulk—like stamping and cutting these little tags out.

It makes creating pages like today super easy, and gives me the time to add little extras like the ribbon and the tiny houses on the bottom. It’s all about setting yourself up for success with reasonable expectations.

Technique of the Day

This week’s Currently List:

Watching:

Game of Thrones, Mad Men, HP Baking Show, Football, Pluribus

Reading:

All of the new baby books that people have been sending to the house

Listening:

ACOTAR Book 4. It’s perfect for the holiday season.

Making:

My Baby Shower scrapbook! I got a bunch of work on it done this weekend.

Feeling:

Tired.

Planning:

The holiday season. I need to get some more Christmas decorations up and start putting my presents under the tree

Loving:

Warm blankets and space heaters!

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• Brandi Kincaid

• Currently List (stamp)

• Ali Edwards (stamp + houses)

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Tips & Creative Wisdom

Prep Once, Use Often

Doing a little creative prep ahead of time can make everyday pages feel effortless later. Those stamped tags were already waiting for their moment.

Pro Tip: When you’ve got extra crafty energy, batch-make small elements—tags, labels, cards—that future-you can grab and use fast.

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So I’ve been carving out these little pockets of time for my December Daily Pages--just enough to remind myself that even in a season of mess, I still get to make things.

And I am so looking forward to having a full carved-out long weekend soon where I can just show up, have fun, make projects, and set myself up for next year—all while hanging out with friends!

That’s exactly what the Awesome Ladies Project Virtual Scrapbook Festival is for.

Registration for Festival is officially open--and it’s FREE.

Festival runs Wednesday–Saturday, December 17–20, 2025.

Register here

Here’s what we’ll cover in this email:

• What Festival is (and why it matters)

• What happens during the weekend (fun overview)

• How to join + what to do next (low-pressure prep)

If you’ve been craving some structure, some community, and a reason to make a few pages without overthinking every little thing—you’re definitely in the right place.

Festival is a end-of-year creative reset

Festival is our yearly online gathering for creative storytelling--scrapbooking, creative journaling, Daily Pages, art journaling, mini-books, collage, all of it. It’s built around four simple building blocks:

• Pictures: photos, selfies, screenshots, whatever you’ve got

• Words: journaling, lists, tiny captions, long stories

• Creative supplies: paper, paint, stamps, stickers, digital tools, and more

• Bits of life: receipts, packaging, tags, ticket stubs, everyday stuff

The theme this year is Make, Reflect, Repeat--because the goal isn’t “make the perfect project.” The goal is to make something, learn something, and then keep what worked so future-you has an easier time showing up.

This is why Festival matters, especially in December:

• It gives you a container when your brain is already full

• It helps you capture pieces of your real life (not just the highlight reel)

• It puts you in community with people who actually get it

• It creates momentum that carries into the new year

Your Turn: What does “showing up” look like for you right now?
A messy table? Ten minutes after bedtime? One photo and three sentences? Write your version down. That counts.

Register for Festival Here!

What happens during Festival (the fun overview)

1) Daily Pages: Beat the Clock

Short, high-energy sessions where you show up with a notebook and a few favorite supplies, and we make pages together on a timer.

My promise: make pages, meet friends, and feel a sense of accomplishment--all in an hour.

Your Turn: If you did a “Beat the Clock” page today, what would it be about?
A room you’re in? Something you ate? The last text you sent? Pick a tiny topic.

2) Tag Roulette

This is playful, community-powered creative constraint--we spin a wheel of prompts and see what we can make.

It’s a great way to play around, make some fun supplies, and not have to make a million decisions.

Your Turn: What’s more helpful for you right now: total freedom or a constraint?
(There’s no right answer--it just helps you choose what to join first.)

3) Choose-your-own-adventure prompts + challenges

You’ll also have festival-friendly prompts you can tackle in your own time: layouts, mini-books, notebook spreads, Daily Pages, art journaling--all flexible.

Do one. Do them all. Do whatever works for you right now.

Your Turn: Which format sounds most like “you” this season: notebook pages, layouts, mini-book, or messy collage experiments?

And yes--replays will be available, and this year they’ll stay up for at least a year, so you can participate live or take the slow-and-steady route.

How to join + what to do next (low-pressure prep)

Step 1: Register for free: https://awesomeladies.kit.com/04e41771a7

Step 2: Check your inbox. You’ll get an email immediately with your classroom access.

Step 3: Make yourself a ridiculously simple “Festival Prep Kit.” Here’s a starter version:

• one notebook (or paper)

• one pen you like

• one adhesive (or tape/washi)

• 5–10 pieces of something fun (stickers, scraps, tags, anything)

That’s it. You’re done. You’re ready.

Your Turn: What are the 3 supplies you want within arm’s reach during Festival?
Write them down--and if you can, toss them in a basket or a zip pouch today.

If life is messy right now (hi, same), Festival can be the thing that reminds you: you still get to create inside the real version of your life.

You don’t have to be “caught up.” You don’t have to be organized. You don’t have to know what you’re making yet.

You just have to show up.

And I’ll be right there with you—probably with a half-cleaned desk, a pile of weird little paper scraps, and a big sigh of relief that we get to do this together.

Register here (free)

Join us for Festival!

Here’s what we covered today:

• Festival is a free, online creative community event (Dec 17–20, 2025)

• You can join from anywhere, with whatever supplies you already have

• The easiest next step is to register today and build a tiny prep kit

Action step: Register, then pick one small way you’ll show up (live session, replay, prompt, anything).

Talk to you this weekend!

xoxo,

Kristin

P.S. If you want even more, here are three places you can get started:

1. Register for Festival (free): https://awesomeladies.kit.com/04e41771a7

2. Make a 5-minute “showing up” page: one photo + three sentences

3. Put your Festival Prep Kit in a basket today so it’s ready when you are

For today’s story (now technically Wednesday’s story) we had a cozy snow day at home. Even though we got a bit of snow on Tuesday, we got even more on Wednesday, and it was mixed with a bunch of ice and slippery stuff. This meant all the schools were closed, and Jeff stayed home for the day.

We spent lots of time on the couch under the blankies catching up on some shows, and finishing up the story in a video game we’ve been playing for a few months. I didn’t bother taking any photos since the lighting sucked all day, but there’s no reason I couldn’t tell my snow day story with just a few fun creative supplies and my words.

Technique of the Day

Today’s page is a simple repeating stamped background. I used a new stamp that I picked up at scrapbook.com during their Black Friday sale. We went with Ali Edwards’ metallic silver ink (her metallics are my favorite) on a dark green cardstock.

I double-downed on the stamping with the “Snow Day” title. For that I used some red ink on textured white cardstock for a bit of added interest. The title went on the left side, and a manilla tag with some journaling went on the right page.

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Supply List

• Field Notes

• Ali Edwards — Inks, Alpha Stamps

• Stamp — Scrapbook.com

• Cardstock — American Crafts

This post may have affiliate links.

Tips & Creative Wisdom

Photos Are Optional

You don’t need a camera roll full of pictures to tell a great story. Words, texture, and a few intentional supplies can carry the whole memory.

Pro Tip: On low-light or stay-at-home days, skip the photos and lean into journaling plus pattern or repetition instead.

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I’ll admit, it’s a little weird chatting about all these stories a day after they happened here in the email. I’ve been so used to writing about my page and making those pages totally in the moment—but this requires a little more brainpower. It’s absolutely worth it, I’m loving how this book is coming along, but there’s definitely a little bit of friction there.

For Day 9, I wanted to document our quick little shopping trip. We had to pick up a pair of pants for Jeff and something for dinner. So we visited a few different stores, headed to the mall, and then stopped at Trader Joe’s on the way home.

Technique of the Day

Trader Joe’s has a great holiday themed paper bag that they put all your groceries in. This was the perfect background paper for my page. Remember when we used to cut up paper bags to wrap our textbooks in? This took me back to those days, snipping up the brown paper bag and trying to get the prettiest part for my page.

I took a few photos while we were out and about, but they were all pretty mediocre. The lighting during our December evenings is never the best. So, when we got home, I put all the groceries out on the table and did a flat lay photo before putting everything away. It was the perfect photo for today’s story.

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Supply List

• Photo — Printed at Home

• Brandi Kincaid

• Ali Edwards

• Patterned Paper — Trader Joe’s Paper Bag

This post may have affiliate links.

Tips & Creative Wisdom

Everyday Ephemera

Grocery bags, receipts, and packaging are such underrated treasures. They hold texture, memory, and place in a way that regular store-bought supplies never can.

Pro Tip: Save one piece of “everyday paper” each week—wrapping, bag, label—and turn it into a background. It’s instant storytelling.

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