come as you are | Mother's Day Mini Sessions

 

recognizing + honouring
the everyday beauty of motherhood

no need for make up, dressing up
or cleaning up the house

just you, as you are
with the ones who call you Mom

This Mother's Day, my heart would like to honour + celebrate the truth of where you are at, right now, in your life as a Mother:

YOU, in your home, going through a few of your everyday routines with your little ones.

Nothing posed and nothing to hide, just the real moments: from the overwhelming mess + impressive tantrums to the intimate snuggles + whispered I Love Yous.  Let's document your Motherhood in all of its chaos and beautiful imperfections for you and your kids (and their kids...) to hold close, relive, and share for many years to come.

We are beautiful and we deserve to be remembered!

_________

$250 |  30 Minute In-Home Session
8 Spots Available for the month of May

ART CLUB | Week 2 Wrap-Up!

I learned a lot over the 2 week stint of our Art Club.  Made tweaks and took a lot of notes as I went along.  I know I am too hard on myself, but I gotta keep those standards up there!  Everyone had a great time and there were many parents who requested Summer classes through person, text and email, so it seems like I'm not going to have a choice.  This is good.

Anyway, just a quick bunch of photos from Week 2!

THANK YOU to the ladies that encouraged NAY pushed me to set-up these classes.  A special Thank You to the many moms who have been there over the last few years with my photography, for supporting me yet again on this new path.  I am so lucky to be part of a community of amazing women!  And a very warm Thank You to the new moms that I have met for joining in on a fruitful and fun experience!  I truly had a great time with the variety of creative minds and hands, I really loved being able to recognize their different strengths and wiggle them out of their comfort zones.  Looking forward to seeing familiar faces come summer time!

THANK YOU!!!!! 
xoxoxo

ART CLUB | Day 4 + 5: Stamps, Patterns, Mixed-Media

Day 4 was a flop.  There had to be one flopper and it was ok because we bounced back on Day 5.  Also, the kids didn't realize anything was wrong as they still had a great time, but it was definitely good for us to discuss how things sometimes go awry and when they do, you push forward.

Day 4 we worked with a bunch of homemade DIY stamps to create fixed and organic patterns.  We moved on with our book, one of my absolute top favourites: Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett and illustrator extraordinaire Jon Klassen.  It's really the most lovely marriage of story and pictures.  Our stamp exercises moved over to printmaking where we cut out shirts from burlap and printed them through a rolling press to emulate the yarn pattern that was used throughout Extra Yarn.  The kids created self-portraits with their printed shirt and made their Day 4 buttons before moving onto the next project.

The next project was inspired by Oliver Jeffers' STUCK.  We integrated stamp/printmaking with bubblewrap to create our own tree and used pastels to illustrate, cut out, and paste all the ludicrous objects ...

Dev here was super into his buttons.  He may very well have the best set of them all as well because of this.  Week 1 was great and it felt good to have that first taste of what I would be dealing with for future classes.  I have had nothing but positive feedback from the kids via their parents which is really encouraging, and requests to host classes for younger kids and adult sessions!  Much to plan ahead for the summer months!

xo

 

ART CLUB | Day 3: Monster Mash-Up!

This was a fun one.  We did a bunch of playful "letting go" exercises for this class, encouraging kids to relinquish creative control and be open to the ideas of others to produce collaborative pieces.  What better theme than MONSTERS to to really amp up the colourful and crazy nature of these exercises.  Our inspirational book was Peter McCarty's The Monster Returns.  We started out with trifold monsters, everyone drawing the head, passing onto the next person to do the body and again for the legs, WITHOUT PEEKING!  We moved back to colour and shapes, asking each person to draw any sort of shape before passing it onto the next person who would then draw a monster inspired by the colour and shape presented to them.  It gave the kids a chance to see how their work could inspire others, discover different perspectives and share one another's imagination.

I had them paint a variety of shapes and colours which were then cut out and mixed up in a big bowl.  Random handfuls were then redistributed to the kids to create a monster using the shapes they were given!

This was definitely a really really fun day for everyone!  Looking forward to seeing the monsters that are created this coming week!

 

xo

 

ART CLUB | Day 1: Colour Theory

As with any job I take on, no matter how big or small, my Motherhood anxiety kicks in and i procrastinate by stuffing my face or scrolling through my FB/IG feed.  I'm not sure why I was having anxiety over leading kids through an art project but it was there.  Day 1 was a success and I am now super stoked for Day 2, no anxiety.  So, because I had my hands full, this post looks more like photos of my house as opposed to photos of the kids in action.  That said, I think it turned out to be a pretty sweet environment for the kids to work in, especially considering it's my dining room.  I made my first trip to Welk's back in January, and one of the purchases I made was an art card collection of one of my favourite artists/topographists: Jessica Hische.  It's been on the backburner to have a set of the Alphabet framed for the hallway but it just hasn't happened yet.  I have also had this giant blank canvas sitting on our wall for probably almost 6 months.  These two potential projects came together perfectly as the backdrop and display board for this Art Club class!  HA! 
 

Day 1 would focus on basic Colour Theory.  What better book to start with than Peter Reynold's THE DOT.  If you haven't read this book, pick it up.  We've had it for a few year's now and it continues to be an inspirational favourite.  And if you have read THE DOT, then you can probably guess which book is hiding under it...  FIND OUT TOMORROW!

Can I just say that after a year of living in our little ranchero, I am finally falling in love with what is happening!!!  I LOVE IT.  I had 2 girlfriends over for a Birthday Breakfast and asked Kevin to throw on some Velvet Underground on the record player.  When I saw that he had put the sleeve up on the shelf with Andy's Banana I wet my pants a little.  This is now the designated record spot.  It has changed since then, but what better record cover than this for Art Club, right??? SWOON.  That's Chloe's self-portrait from the portrait painting session I led last month for Eve's birthday party.  And those super rad fantastic crazy animals are the ones from Mexico that I said I never wanted to show anyone.  I went back to Welk's last week and bought a bunch of mini succulents for these new little shelves.  The cute bowl beside the record was part of a pair, the other pair being the one that Chloe accidentally broke in the store and therefor we had to buy them. 

Alright, enough of my gloating, onto the nitty gritty.  The kids blew my mind.  I designed a simple Colour Wheel template the night before because I only work at the 13th hour.  I was surprised when nobody knew what it was and had never done one before and then I realized I had never had my kids do one either.  THEY were surprised to find out that I had painted the entire wheel using nothing but the Primary Colours.  We began with Primary, of course, then moved onto Secondary.  PIECE OF CAKE.

Tertiaries proved to be more challenging as they had to mix the Secondary Colours a total of 3 times.  Everyone needed a little assistance with a colour here and there, and everyone took turns holding out their brushes asking me "IS THIS THE RIGHT COLOUR!!! IS THIS OK?!!!"  I was impressed with their perseverance, nobody gave up, and there wasn't a single complaint.

Inspired by THE DOT, I had them move onto a few projects that required more mixing: Painting a GIANT dot in their favourite colour, painting different sized dots in different colours to represent each person in their family, painting a dot by not painting a dot (negative space), and then painting a dot party! 

Each class ends with a button making project where they use what they have learned that day to make a button to take home, sort of like a badge!  I'll try to take more photos during tomorrow's class, hopefully it's a sunnier day!