Afri-love

How to: screenprint, with Creativity and Noise

 

I have a confession to make: despite how much I enjoyed screenprinting in university, living with a screenprinter has made me lazy. Why bother when I can ask/beg Lusungu to print something for me? :). However, the more and more I witness the joys of printing, the more and more I want to try my rusty hands at it again. 

Lucky for me, and you, Lusungu’s Creativity and Noise screenprinting workshops are finally here! He’s been planning them for a while and he’s finally got some dates booked. 

Reconnect with your creative self

 

Over the past 9 months or so, I’ve been reconnecting with something that I used to do – making art! Not for work but, just for fun – just for me. It’s been the best thing I decided to do.

My friend, Stacy Moore – a chartered psychologist – came up with a wonderful idea. She used to love making art too and has been longing to experience again, the joy which she used to derive from it. In her words:

“It seems ludicrous to me that there are activities we put a lot of time and energy into when we were young, developed talents and a love for them, and then let them all go in preference for “a proper job”.

So she’s decided to do something about it and I’m so glad to be on board.

Creative experiments: plant collage

 

Soon after I moved to the UK, around 10 years ago, I bought my first house plant. It has been with me through moving house, several times (including moving city – twice!), and through all kinds of neglect (I know, shame on me). The poor thing got bent out of shape – literally.

My Women Change Africa Interview

 

I'm honoured to join the family of 'Bosschiques' over on Women Change Africa – a blog and brand founded on the theory that if women are celebrated, connected and cultivated, change will occur in our communities.

Women Change Africa founder, Moiyattu Banya had some great questions for me, providing an always welcome opportunity to pause, reflect and appreciate. 

Read the interview over on Women Change Africa. I love the last question and would love to hear how you'd answer it. Let me know in the comments below.

The Afri-love List: 4 (East) African Photographers to Follow on Instagram

 

 

This is the first of many lists as I’m constantly discovering amazing African photographers (and other creatives), through Instagram. The four featured here all hail from my part of the continent – the east. This is just a slice of their repertoire so be sure to check them out their Instagram feeds. In alphabetical order …

Plant Something Daily – April Favourites

A third of the year has already gone by! Doing my #plantsomethingdaily drawings has been an interesting way of tracking the progress of time. Here are a few favourites from April…

 

Return to the Mothership

 

Blog beginnings

When I started this blog, I had a hypothesis behind it but, as the years went by, I continued to write about the things that interested me, without consciously checking them against those founding ideas. What I did realise is that there were some emerging themes: creativity, enterprise and wellness. 

Now, I can finally articulate what underpins these potentially disparate things – sustainable living.

 

Sustainability begins with me

In this context, it’s sustainable living on a very personal level – how can we, as creative people, respond to this calling while earning a heathy income and taking care of ourselves, so that we may continue to create (and live). All these three things are interdependent.

Those who’ve been reading the blog for a while might be bored by now of my insistence that it all starts with self. I truly believe we can’t effectively help others until we’ve helped ourselves. However, what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, is sustainable living on a larger scale.

Plant Something Daily – March Favourites

 

My daily art challenge continues and I reached the 100 milestone last week. Here are some of my favourites from March. As you can see I had quite a bit of fun with filters (my photo editing app of choice is still VSCO Cam).

Below is a special drawing inspired by a woman I met while vending at the Southbank Centre's Women of the World festival. Her last name is stone and she had such a beautiful spirit!

Workshop: social media confidence

 

If you’re on the Asilia ‘Lunch on Asilia’ mailing list, you’ll have read a version of this already.

When talk turns to social media and the power of the internet – my eyes light up. The love affair started when I was in university and discovered MSN groups (remember those?). I created one called Taxi9 (long story), to keep in touch with my friends, who were all around the world. A couple years later I started blogging and the rest is history (Afri-love is actually my third blog. If you ask me nicely, I’ll share links to the other two).

Over the past four and a half years, my business, Asilia, has benefitted immensely from the relationships that we’ve established and nurtured, thanks to social media. We’ve been introduced to clients around the world; we’ve been given the opportunity to participate in exciting projects – virtual and in real life and; we’ve gotten to know like-minded people who have become supporters, collaborators and friends.

Social media has also been responsible, directly and indirectly, for many of the speaking engagements, workshop facilitation opportunities and interviews I’ve had the opportunity to be involved/featured in. You can find out more about those here.

The power of social media has been so real for me and my business that I’m big on helping my clients and my community leverage this too. 

African style / 1

 

I have a Pinterest board called 'African Style' and finding pictures for it brings me much joy. We are truly a creative and beautiful people! I've decided to do a regular round-up of some of my favourites. Here's number 1.