It’s the end of a very warm day here in South Cornwall, and just before the sun disappeared for the evening, I reached for my camera. 📷 There’s something magical about that last light. It doesn’t shout for attention, it quietly slips through the garden, kissing petals, leaves and stems goodnight before the day comes to a close. 🌅 I stood there for a while, simply noticing. No grand adventure, no destination… just a few peaceful moments watching ordinary plants become extraordinary in the golden light. Sometimes creativity isn’t about making something at all. 🧐 Sometimes it’s about slowing down long enough to truly see. 🥰🙌🏻 I hope these little moments remind you to look up, look closer, and find the beauty waiting quietly in your own corner of the world. 💜🌿

When I started Smidgen of Calm I never imagined we’d become a community of over 100 creative souls. ✨ So rather than celebrating me, I’d love to celebrate us. 🙏🏼🙌🏻❤️ Here’s the challenge… Create one tiny square of art ! It can be a doodle, painting, collage, photograph, poem, pattern, pressed flower… absolutely anything that feels like you. Keep it small. Keep it joyful. Keep it unapologetically yours. Once everyone has shared their square, I’ll stitch them together into one giant artwork that represents this wonderful little corner of the internet. One hundred people. One hundred different stories. One beautiful piece of art. I genuinely can’t wait to see what we create together. 💜

Why I Created The Lantern Room. 🥰 People often ask me why grief feels so important to me. I think it’s important that I tell some of my story for context 🥰🌱🏮 The truth is, grief has been woven through my life from a very young age. On my thirteenth birthday, my mum married her second husband. Just a month later, he died. None of us knew that years of alcoholism had caused so much damage to his body. Within weeks of their wedding, he was in hospital. His leg had to be amputated, but it was too late. A blood clot travelled to his heart, and he died. Overnight, my mum became a widow. I was just thirteen. What followed shaped me in ways I wouldn’t understand for many years. I found myself carrying responsibilities no child should ever have to carry. I helped organise the funeral and was expected to be the strong one, supporting the adults around me while trying to make sense of my own grief. I was taken to view his body because I was told I was needed. It was an experience that stayed with me long after everyone else had moved on. Just over a year later, my mum remarried and moved to Spain, shortly before my sixteenth birthday. It was another profound loss, and one that left me navigating much of my teenage life on my own. By the time I was sixteen, I was already working in care. Not long afterwards, I was offered a role on a palliative care unit. Looking back now, it feels as though all those difficult experiences had quietly prepared me to sit beside people during the hardest moments of their lives. It became work that I loved deeply. Grief, however, continued to find me. My sister died at just thirty-six from alcoholism, leaving behind her teenage daughter. The grandfather who had always made me feel loved passed away, and I wasn’t told until after he had been cremated. Then, years later, my mum’s third husband died suddenly while they were living in Spain. At eighteen years old, six months pregnant, I flew to another country to organise another funeral. It felt as though I had stepped back into the same role I had been given as a child.

This week is shaping up to be a very exciting one! 🎨✨ Tomorrow Holly and I are heading up to London for one of our favourite annual traditions… the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Every year we wander the galleries together, but this year is extra special because we’re finally going to buy a piece of art while we’re there. I can’t tell you how excited I am. 🥳🥳🥳 We’re also off to see Beetlejuice the Musical (its first run here in the UK!) and we’ll also be visiting the Frida Carlo exhibition too ! 🥰😍 It’s going to be a wonderfully full few days of art, theatre and inspiration. 🎨🎭 I can’t wait to soak it all in… and, of course, bring you along with me. If all goes to plan, there’ll be plenty of photos, videos and little moments to share along the way. Here’s to filling our creative cups. 💜

One of the things I love most about lino printing is that it feels a little bit like trusting the process. ❤️ This portrait was created as a three-colour reduction print. Instead of carving a separate block for each colour, you use the same block over and over again. First, you print the lightest colour. Then you carve away the areas you want to keep that colour and print the second layer. Finally, you carve again and print the darkest layer. 🙈 The fascinating part? There is no going back. 😬🙈 With every cut, more of the lino disappears forever. By the final stage, the block often looks almost unrecognisable compared to where it started. It can feel a little nerve-racking, but there’s something beautiful about it too. Each layer slowly reveals the image hidden inside, rather like a photograph appearing in a darkroom or a story unfolding one chapter at a time. 💜 This print uses just three colours, yet by layering them carefully, the image gains depth, texture and character. It’s a wonderful reminder that sometimes we don’t need more colours, more materials or more complexity. Sometimes a few simple layers are enough to create something special.🫶🏻 Have you ever tried lino printing, or does the thought of carving away your work make you nervous too? 😊