Search Results

Diwali, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New year...No matter where you live, chances are you have a couple of festivals lined up in your immediate future or you might always been sucked into what I call the "Festive vortex" for a few weeks now. Festivals are happy time that are supposed to be all about family and celebrating the season, but let's be honest, they are also an incredible source of stress that can leave us exhausted and short tempered as well. What if I told you there is another way though, one were you can enjoy the festive spirit without running yourself past the point of exhaustion every year? The festive season is that time of the year during which we try to replicate the magic we felt as kids at all cost not realising how much of a toll it takes on our sanity and no matter how hard we try, it always falls short from what we remember from our childhood days. of course there are a couple of very logical reason why we feel all that we feel trying too hard to bring back the past in our festive plans : We were kids, we had a much different perspective and take on everything and it's not possible to replicate that We had no idea how much work our parents put in to make the Holidays magical to us, chances are they were as dead beat tired as we are around that time of the year Times have changed, so has our lifestyle and replicating everything won't work keep it simple! I actually wrote that in my planner a whole year ahead of time after I got so tired I couldn't enjoy the fancy Christmas meal I just cooked for me, my husband and then 2.5 years old daughter. Back then Christmas had become a chore, and no matter what nothing went to plan and I felt miserable. The fact I am a Swiss girl living in India had something to do with it, but the cold hard truth is that I seriously brought most of the stress upon myself and I had absolutely nobody but myself to blame. It was December 2011 and I took out my planner for 2012 and wrote "Keep it simple" on the December 1st page of said planner. The irony was that our landlord asked us to vacate the flat on December 21st 2012 to sell it and that year had been exhausting too, but not because I put pressure on myself to deliver a "perfect" Christmas. After that we made good on keeping all festivals as simple and fuss free as possible. In our multicultural family, we celebrate both Christmas and Diwali. don't do what you don't want to do The reason we tend to run ourselves into the ground on Holidays is that we try to make everyone happy, keep up with traditions that no longer make sense just because they are tradition, and before we know it, our expectations run the show instead of us. Part of my "Keep it simple" plan is to do away with anything I don't resonate with, I speak more about Christmas here since in our household I am the MC for Christmas and hubby is in Charge of Diwali (but we both pitch in on both festivals). I realised years ago that I actually don't care at all about the cooking part, for just us 3 it's a waste of time. What I care about is spending time as a family, and we can do that anywhere really, so we now head out to a nice restaurant for lunch and then go catch a movie in theatre. The movie thing came in 2015 when the Force awakens was released (on Christmas day), I'm a huge Star Wars fan and it was also the year we decided we preferred doing stuff as a family rather than exchanging gifts. Since then we found the magic formula for our own unique Christmas tradition, none of which involve sweating in the kitchen the whole day and being dead tired by the evening exchanging gifts that we quite frankly don't feel as excited as we were with as kids. It's more exciting to go watch a new movie we've been wanting to watch in cinemas. If you are hosting a party, you are perfectly into your right to dictate the terms of said party so if you don't feel comfortable cooking all the food, you can announce it as a potluck, or order some take out food or go through a caterer, yes it might cost you a tiny bit more to order, but in the end to you want to be exhausted and resent the Holidays or enjoy it? I'm quite frankly the type that would rather spend less on gifts, and more on caterer fees if that is what it takes to keep me sane during the party. create a keyless life Last year I read Chillpreneur by Denise Duffield-Thomas (Amazon affiliate link) and in it she mention aiming at living a keyless life after she realised how much simpler her life as a busy mom changed when her new car had a keyless feature, letting her open and unlock her car without a key. In her book, she urges her readers to take this approach at simplifying and delegating all the tasks they don't feel excited about as much as possible. The book has been written with entrepreneurs in mind and applies to business, but the keyless principle really applies to everything in life, business or no business. All in all it's another way of saying "Keep it simple" and probably more proactive at finding ways to simplify an already fairly simple thing. For years, Diwali has always been a bit tricky for us. Hubby and I have an habit of doing everything last minute and the result is not unlike Christmas : we get exhausted when the actual day of the festival comes. Diwali usually send people in a cleaning frenzy to get the home ready to welcome in the goddess Lakshmi, then there is buying something made of metal on Dhanteras, decorating the balconies with lights, making a rangoli in front of your door, buying sweets, and new clothes, and oil lamps called diyas... Back in 2019 we were exhausted from just deep cleaning our flat and I remember saying "Next year we hire cleaners to do it" Of course 2020 had other plans, and Diwali was low key, then in 2021 we were going to our family's place to celebrate so this year is the first time we can (and did) make good on that 2019 statement. We hired cleaners to deep clean the bathrooms, kitchen and clean all the windows. We also hired an electrician to come hang up Diwali lights on all 4 balconies because both hubby and I are afraid of heights and hanging them was always a source of stress. Since all of our lights fired over the year we also asked them to bring us new lights (that we paid for) to hang. Two of the tasks we dread the most each Diwali are now out of our way and our sanity is still intact. This year I also set out to go buy all the small things like diyas and rangoli powder early (no last minute shopping this year) and I got introduced to "Rangoli mats" by my favourite shop owner. It's a foam rangoli (mandala) cutout shape with raised edges for each element of the design so that you pour the colored powder in each compartment and make no mess. I love making rangoli, but quite frankly sitting on the ground in our gloomy hallway sweating buckets and smearing powder all over was something I never liked, having the option to simplify that process is something I am not going to say no to. As Denise DT said, find ways to make everything keyless in your life. make a list of what matters and plan from there We often do things for festivals that we either don't care for, or downright hate doing just because we feel obligated to do them for all kind of reasons. It's time to put an end to it, NOW! Take a pen an paper and draw 2 columns and write everything you LOVE about a festival on one side and everything that you HATE. Be brutally honest, just write from your feelings, not what the society expect you to love or not. Love making beautiful gift wrapping and buying persents for everyone? In the love column it goes. Hate the stress of hosting a big party? In the Hate column! At this point don't look at it as "But I have to", just segregate things in a love and hate column. Once you have that done, look at the love, and check if realistically with your lifestyle and budget you can do all of these and incorporate them into your version of the holidays or if some of them can be altered, toned down a bit, or if you can delegate some of it. Personally I love baking Christmas cookies, but for the past 3 years I had such a hectic time around December, that I decided not to do it and order Christmas treats instead, I might bake some this year, but I haven't decided yet. I also love Diwali lights on my balconies, but I'm seriously scared of plummeting to my death falling off the ladder so this year I delegated it. Then repeat with the HATE column, but be a lot more brutal in purging it. Unless there is no way around it, what you hate about a festival HAS TO GO. And for everything that can't be chopped off that list, look at ways to make it less of a pain in the behind : hate cooking but love family meals? Order food from outside, or go to a restaurant. Hate gift shopping but can't wiggle out of it? Order online or check with small business owner around you if they have options that would keep you out of a crowded mall. Don't like the idea of buying anything material as gift? Why not look into gifting experiences like an art class voucher, a night out to see a concert, or a massage. Holidays are supposed to be fun and happy times and what worked for our parents and grand parents may not work for us, and it's more than ok to build new family traditions that work for you, nothing is set in stone so don't pigeon hole yourself into something rigid just because you feel there is only one right way to celebrate a festival, especially if you have kids. Kids don't know what is right or not right about Christmas, Diwali or New Year, they don't have expectations, adults do. Kids will only pick up on your emotions, so if you are snappy and tensed and drained around a festival, rest assured they will pick up on that. You owe them to be relaxed and happy, not tired and grumpy, that should be your only goal for any big celebration during the year. This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links, if you click on them and buy anything, I get paid a comission at no extra cost to you.

Bullet journals or BuJo for shorts have been the talk of the journaling world for a number of years now and for good reasons. They have revolutionised the way we plan and sort our lives. They also offer a lot of flexibility in terms of what goes in them, and they can be as messy or pretty as you want them to be. Elaborate or plain, practical or decorative? It's really entirely up to the journal keeper. But! Is the bullet journal method really a right fit for everyone? I'm writing this as I made the decision NOT to keep a BuJo in 2023 and go back to a most conventional, pre-printed planner after 5 years of bullet journalling. Many of you came to my website and blog looking for BuJoing tips over the years, including where to find supplies in India and here I am, telling you all I'm giving up on Bullet Journalling. I have my reasons, and I'll explain further down, first I want to walk you through what the whole BuJo method is all about. so, what is a bullet journal exactly? A BuJo is a notebook in which you plan your life and schedule in a flexible way that works for you. Ryder Caroll the creator of the method and author of the book "The Bullet Journal Method" (Amazon affiliate link) explained his method in a nutshell in this YouTube video. Of course his way is minimalist, basic and doesn't work for everyone, this is why many have gone further and Pinterest is now flooded with elaborate spreads and trackers and themes and ideas to make your BuJo work for you and reflect your personality. What it is though, no matter the look, is a flexible way to plan your life and track what is important to you. You might go through trials and errors trying to figure out what works and doesn't work, but all in all it's a great self discovery tool and cool way to keep track of your to-do list and habits your want to form. If the Swiss Army knife had a journal equivalent, it probably would be the Bullet Journal, because it can hold your appointment, tasks, help you track certain habits, reflect on your life and log things like things you are grateful for all in one place. Does it have to look pretty? Seeing all those super elaborate spreads on Pinterest and Instagram, you might be wondering if you are even cut out for it, or if it is worth your time at all, especially if you aren't artsy or creative enough to doodle and color pages of spreads to follow a theme. The good news, is you don't have to keep it visually pleasing, elaborate or intricate at all. The past 3 years I had less and less time to devote to doodling and relied on washi tape and stickers (which you can find free on the Freebie page). You also do not have to do all the trackers and logs you find online, this method is meant to be tailored for your needs. So if you don't care about tracking your mood, you don't need to include a mood tracker at all. the bullet journal method is a right fit if: - Conventional planners limit you in anyway and never seem to have all the space you need to log things that matter to you - If you want to have all the infos like expenses, personal growth and your daily schedule in one book - If you are tracking certain habits in order to make change - If you need something more visually appealing than a regular planner to remember things (some of us have a strong visual memory) - If you like the idea of spending a few hours each months planning and decorating your BuJo and like to play with stickers, markers and washi tape but don't have time to keep a separate art journal. here is why it no longer works for me I love journalling, I love pretty pages, and I am absolutely ADDICTED to all things notebooks, but this year, I found the BuJo is no longer the right fit for me. I got into so many different creative projects, that often, I feel like setting up visually appealing pages and weekly spreads that would help me plan my schedule is something I constantly postpone until the last minute and then I rush to get it done and it stresses the hell out of me. Over the years I also realised I don't care much about trackers, and I prefer writing my grateful moments, my successes and struggle in what I call my "life journal" and thanks to a busier schedule, I often myself find thrown between my BuJo and my other journal and I realised I'd much rather have time to write in said journal than work on my bullet journal, which has become more and more of a regular planner. Over the years, conventional planners have evolved a lot and there are now many options that are super cute, visually appealing, come with notes pages and trackers pre-printed and the idea of no longer have to write all the dates and make all the spreads from scratch is a a very appealing thing to me. I need the visual, the doodles, the stickers and stuff to remember things, but I don't need to be the one creating it all from scratch. I'm in a place right now where the way my Bujo would need to look to be useful to me is also no longer saving me time but consuming huge chunks of it I'd rather spend doing something else. Plus I can still use washi tape and stickers in both a conventional planner and my life journal so the part I still like doing can be done in other notebooks. All in all, I think it's entirely possible and acceptable to outgrow the bullet journal method and not feel like a failure or like you are missing out turning your back on it. It was fine while it worked for me, I grew a lot, had lots of fun, stayed on top of things, but now I have gone beyond and ready to try a different way to plan my daily tasks and log my appointment. If for any reasons the BuJo does not work for it, it's perfectly ok to move on to another system.

Redbubble is all out to cater to all our furry friends and is expanding their range of pet products by adding pet bowls to their offerings. Earlier this year they introduced 4 pet products : feeding mats, blankets and bandana, and now you can make your pet's feeding station even more stylish by matching the feeding mat with a feeding bowl. These bowls come in 2 sizes : 32 oz and 18 oz capacity and Redbubble states that they have an anti-slip base and are made of stainless steel. While they recommend people to handwash them to preserve the quality of the print, they are apparently dishwasher safe as well, provided that they are placed on the top drawer and without the rubber ring at its base. As of now, it seems Redbubble is not listing all my pet bowls in the pet category, probably a glitch due to the fact it's a newly launched product. So if you want to find them, you'll have to click on any of the designs and opt to view all products for that particular design. I enabled pet bowls on most of my designs that had a pattern option that would render well on those bowls. Simply visit my shop to know more. If you want to know more about all the Redbubble pet products available, go have a look at the blog post I wrote a few months back.

We might be in September, some of you might be looking forward to fall starting or already enjoying a slight nip in the air while sipping a pumpkin spice late and Halloween is more than a month away. BUT!!!!! If you are a surface designer, none of this matter, the time to get ready to launch new Christmas designs is NOW and if you haven't already, you need to start getting your portfolio and print on demand shop Holidays ready. If you are anything like me, chances are that the voices of your ancestors are screeching "But it's still 3 months away, stop rushing everything". But what your great - grand parents, grand parents and parents don't know is that when you are in business of creating patterns and artwork, you need to get in the mood and get ready to churn out those design a lot lot earlier than November and most professionals have been working quietly on designs for a few weeks nows (myself included). the way people buy changed a lot 20 years ago, online shopping was just really starting to catch on and people usually started buying things for the Holidays in October or November, and in fact, until the pandemic there still wasn't much variation on that theme, people seldom shopped Christmas stuff before Halloween was even in the picture. Fast forward to 2022 and I kid you not I already sold 4 Christmas themed cushions, and quite a few Christmas stickers...in September, no less. The same kind of shopping pattern happened in 2020 and 2021 so it's not a fluke, it's really starting to be a trend. The reason for all this early shopping probably lies in how disrupted the supply chain got since 2020 and people no longer want to gamble and risk getting their order late for the festive season. With the world going upside down, people also got a LOT more attached to the end of year festive season as a way to get a solid dose of comfort and familiarity in a world that has quite frankly gone mad. Heck I went all out in 2020 with Christmas, and last year after an even crazier year, I found myself sipping hot chocolate watching an insane amount of Christmas themed romantic movies just to feel better and more relaxed. Like a lot of people, I usually start decorating for Christmas on the 1st Advent Sunday, which is 4 Sundays before Christmas and will fall on November 27 this year. The cutout date to order things so that they get delivered on December 24th in the US usually falls around December 10th, this means that after this date, Holidays themed sales will be on the decline and adding new Christmas themed designs to your shop will not be the best idea. as a designer you need to think ahead With Christmas themed items starting to sell in September, you should be ready to publish new work by the last week of September or early October, and really ramp up the uploads and marketing for these by October end, until the end of November. By the time everyone is getting stuffed with Christmas cookies and Mariah Carey's Christmas song makes you want to run away, is the time you need to start planning your New Year and Winter content, including Valentines Day! Retailers plan their Christmas collection even earlier When Deny Designs first contacted me to add me to their wholesale catalogue, I think we were still in June and the shop went live in July, with you guessed it, Holidays themed designs. The reason being that big retailers start shopping around for the holidays months in advance to allow for not only the manufacturer to produce a bulk order, but have it in store long enough in advance of the festive season so people get to buy what they need without rushing everything at the last minute. our grand parents might argue we are rushing things, but really, who isn't completely swamped with events, gathering and fairs of all kind comes November? Kids recital, office Christmas party, the gym's end of year party, trying to squeeze in a few crafts sessions with family and friends, attend a few Christmas concerts. Comes November and the entire world wants a piece of us, and celebrate something with us, if you wait that long to start planning your Christmas shopping, you are going to find yourself burnt out before December 25th and resenting the actual day that is supposed to be all about family when it comes. Which is another reason why people shop a lot earlier now and why as a designer, you really need to key in on that shopping pattern trend right away, or else, you'll be a burnt out neurotic designer that not only went to too many weekends event like everybody else, you'll be overworked and stressed too. create when in the mood and then shelve those designs until it's time. If drawing Santas, Christmas trees and candy cane in July doesn't come easy to you, especially if you are living in a tropical area like I do, don't force it, instead take advantage of the fact that nobody will expect you to release anything new in December and draw those without the pressure to have them up for sale right away. I have a number of Christmas designs ready to go right now, and I created most of them in December last year. While following trends is paramount the rest of the year, for Christmas, it matters a lot less, people don't necessarily want trendy Christmas designs, they want comforting ones. It doesn't mean sticking to red, green and gold designs, but it takes the pressure off trying to figure out what is going to be the IT thing of the festive season. I have a number of Christmas designs in my portfolio and without a fail, every year, the ones I sell the most are my pink Christmas ones. Pink Christmas is not a new trend at all, it's been there a while, and people still buy it because it's fun, it's comforting and that's exactly what people want out of a holiday.

Trends and styles come and go, what was in decades ago, went out of style only to come back in with a twist. One of those trend you need to watch for if you are surface designer and commercial artist is the "Mod" trend because it's been making a big comeback as of late. Probably as an extension or followup to another big design trend : Mid century modern. For a few years now, the late Millennials and Gen Z have been on a retro kick, probably trying to get a feel of a "simpler" time through the style and fashion trends of their parents and grand parents, this is the reason why the 50's, 60s and 70s aesthetic has seen a massive revival. Plus, all the vintage stores and thrift stores are now full of gems belonging to those decades in just the same way antique shops were filled with stuff from my great grand parents' time when I was a teenager. But what is mod? Mod is described as a subculture that started in London in the late 50's and early 60's, in term of fashion and style, it's the era of psychedelic patterns, and colorful geometric designs. Think mini dresses with stripes or checkered pattern in contrasting bold colors, bold geometric designs in every colors imaginable, swirls, circles and more. If you are above the age of 35 at the least, and definitely if you are a child of the late 70's and early 80's, I bet you had at least one grand parent, or even your parents having some decor elements from that period into their home, and you probably saw your parents pack away swirly pattern mini dresses, and checkered pants away. I myself remember an accent wall at my paternal grand parent's place that had a wallpaper with intertwined circles in a color palette similar to the one I used to create that Mod inspired pattern on this Society 6 credenza. While it was definitely not the style of my grand parent's era and the rest of the house was done in a more mid century style, that accent wall was in the bedroom my uncles shared and this was totally a type of style in vogue with the baby boomers when they were kids. My bedroom growing up was more of 70's style but had some of those geometric elements from the mod era still very much present : avocado green geometric wallpaper and orange carpet anyone? key elements to remember as a designer today In terms of colors, that style era was pretty much "anything goes" the pastel tones from the 50's still existed but got replaced by bolder tones in those same colors and as a surface designer and artist today, you need to pay attention because these colors are coming back in force. Just look at the bold yellows, pink, orange and green making a comeback in the fashion world and take your cue from it. If you have a teenage girl either as your daughter or as a relative, watch how they shop for clothes, or simply visit the teenager and young adult section in a clothing store, you are bound to see a rainbow of colors in those bold hues, paired with classic Mod patterns. Just this weekend, my daughter bought a bunch of Mod style sweaters, and bell bottom pants. The sweaters are a 60's colors and pattern meet the 90's cropped cut and as a 13 years old, she qualifies as late Gen Z, this is the generation that is just now getting their purchase power and you definitely want to pay attention to what they are into if you are in commercial art and design. Their lot is really into exploring what they perceive as "simpler times" through the aesthetic of that time, be it with the cottagecore trend or the Mod one. If you ask me, the Mod trend is an easy one to adapt to our time and as a color lover myself, I totally see the appeal. Working with geometric patterns and elements is actually a lot of fun, and because the 60's color trends are so wide, you are bound to find a couple of colors that are a match made in heaven with your own branding and style. So, if you haven't yet keyed on that trend yet, now is really the time to start exploring it because it's really starting to peak and will probably be around for a few years with it's bold checkered patterns and psychedelic swirls. If bold colors are not entirely your thing, just explore the 70's aesthetic instead which still has many of the geometric elements but with a more muted palette than the one from the early 60's

Home Cyn Home is proud to announce that it now has a membership that give you access to a member only zone where you get access to cool freebies, including the welcome stickers set that originally went to my newsletter subscribers. Joining as a member is FREE, it just replaces the newsletter that I felt was loosing steam and quite frankly became a bit tedious for me to write every Sundays. If you are an old timer follower, you probably know that before Home Cyn Home had this new website back in April, the domain name and URL was linked to an old Blogger blog which I have now killed to start afresh. The Mailchimp newsletter was something that felt a lot more at home back on blogger and made more sense there, but when I took the very risky and scary jump to kill all my old content, I needed to have that one bit, and the mailing list I built there come with me to the new website. I knew though that I wanted my website to have room to grow, and that was exactly why I moved away from Blogger and got on Wix. I wanted the option of having members only pages, and more importantly have everything integrated on one platform. The thing that ended up pushing me to start a membership area on my website was that for the past 5-6 weeks, there had be zero changes in my mailing list, and the weekly Mailchimps reports also showed that very few of my subscribers ever opened my emails, or clicked on anything, which meant that all the printables I created over the last year have not reached people at all. I knew it was time to move on, and quite frankly, I have to let you in on a little secret here, I never quite understood the concept of newsletter and my intuition always told me that it was probably not the best move for me. BUT! marketing experts all tell us that building a mailing list is crucial to building an audience, and I agree with them here. What I didn't know, and I now know, is that there is more than one way to build your own audience, and you don't necessarily have to write newsletters every weeks to keep them in the loop. To make sure I was doing the right thing, I informally polled my followers on Instagram to know who was subscribed to my newsletter, who wasn't and more importantly, WHY they weren't subscribed. Many answered "I hate emails" and a few answered "I don't know how". The "I hate emails" group was the biggest, and the one that I really needed to address. Because, I LOVE giving my audience freebies, and it made me a bit sad that people would either forgo getting access to these because they hate emails, or forget to download them because the newsletter they subscribed to was something they didn't have the time to open. To be honest, I don't read most of the newsletter content I subscribed to myself, I get it, we have busy lives, and we are solicited entirely too much these days. Enters the Member Area and the Freebies page! You now have the option to sign up as a member on the site, it's free and all you need is to enter your email address. I can GUARANTEE that this address will stay private, and that I won't share it with anybody, so you will not get unwanted spam from me or anyone after signing up. Once signed up, you should normally be subscribed by default to blog post updates and these will be the emails you get each time I publish a new post. BUT! You will also have the option to not recieve these emails if you don't want them by changing your preferences on your "account settings". Aside from getting notified about new blog posts via emails, you get access to Home Cyn Home's freebies page, it's a member only page where all the printable will go, including the calendar page of the month, and the printable stickers set of the month along with any extra freebies I might chose to give at random. Some of these will stay in the list permanently and the page will grow, other will get available only for a short time (Like the calendar pages). For these, there will be no notifications, so you will have to check the page regularly to know what's new. There will still be announcement emails from time to time I plan on sending out one email a month to let you know when the printables of the months hit the page, and those emails will ONLY go to Home Cyn Home's members, the old email list I built on Mailchimp will ceased to be used at the end of August 2022. Aside from that one monthly email, there is the chance I will share a hot sales announcement if any of my shop partners offer a killer deal or if there is a particularly big website announcement and that will be about it. There will be room to grow The whole point of creating a member only area on Home Cyn Home is so that it can expand and grow as the brand grows. For now we will stick to just a Freebie page, but there is no telling where we'll go next, and I am thrilled to have you all part of the journey.

Despite living in a world that is more and more visual and relies more and more on artists, photographers and designer's work, the concept of copyrights is still a topic that many do not fully understand or think doesn't apply to them, or can be bended with ease, which has lead to many myths about them still persisting. Chances are that if you are over a certain age like yours truely, you saw the birth of VHS tapes, and later DVDs. These always came with a disclaimer at the beginning that nobody read, but really was the first copyrights disclaimer you probably been exposed to. The one that said you were not allowed to reproduce the content of the tape, redistribute it, or even play that tape to a wide audience. Things haven't changed at all regarding intellectual property and copyrights, yet, people still don't have a good grasp of what it means, and what is allowed and not allowed to do. As an artist who's been victim of art theft more than once, I wished people would be a lot more educated about it and stop spreading the same old boring myths about the very notion of copyrights. Here are eight of them I'm debunking for you today. You need to apply for a copyright certificate license in order for your work to really be copyrighted. Copyrights aren't the same as applying for a patent, an artist, musician or author's work is considered an intellectual property and it's copyrighted by default the instant the work is created. This is why in the past (and probably still to this day) photographers, and writers used to mail themselves the negatives or the original manuscript by post and kept it in a sealed envelope with the postage date acting as the date of first publication. They did so BEFORE sending the work to any publishing house. Why? Because in the case of a court trial, whoever is in procession of the work with the earliest date on it, is going to be the original rights holder. In the digital world, the timestamp appear when you first save your file, and also when you publish it anywhere on the internet, replacing the postage stamp proof. Creators do not have to apply for any certificates to copyright their work, so assume everything you find online is copyrighted unless specifically stated otherwise. If i use a picture or artwork another artist created and change the colors it no longer is copyrighted to them and I can sell that work. NOPE! Changing the colors or anything about someone else's artwork or photo only creates what we call a DERIVATIVE, and derivative work is still the property of the original author. They have the right to decide who is authorised to create derivative work and profit from it and they are still entitled to demand their share of that profit. Imagine this scenario in term of physical property if you struggle to see the logic above : You see a bicycle in the street you really love, so you take it home, spray paint it pink and add ribbons to it. It doesn't stop the fact you stole it and the new paint job doesn't make it your own. Same thing with art! fan art is 100% my work so i can't be sued for copyrights infringement. No, it's not 100% your work, even if the whole drawing/painting is yours, the characters belong to the original author, and in many cases are also trademarked (different from copyrights), which means the rights remains with the authors, and owners of the franchise. Fan art counts as a kind of derivative work, this means you should apply for a license to create and sell that type of fan art directly with the owners of the right. Usually you will need to provide some sample work and they will decide if they want that kind of work to be associated with them and commercialised. There are many artists that got caught selling fan art on sites like Etsy, Society6 and Redbubble without having the rights to do so. Marvel/Disney has an army of lawyers on their payroll to serve copyrights infringement notices, so it you are selling fan art without the license to do so, you are taking a HUGE risk. if caught i can always claim "fair use" and get away with it Fair use! The mythical "get out of jail free" card of the creative world! if it were that easy! First fair use is a US legal doctrine so applying it outside of the US might not work. Then it only applies to very specific situations and is always debated in court and is pronounced by a judge. There is absolutely ZERO guarantee that your intellectual property theft will be covered by fair use. What can possibly fall under fair use is parody work of an original, using the original IP as part of an educational manual or text and in the context of research. But again, it can and will be contested in court and the "fair use ruling" comes from a judge. everything on the internet is free to use This myth also has a little brother : "But I found it on Google image search!" Nothing on the internet is free unless stated otherwise, so you can just google an image, take it and decide you can use it as you please and profit from it. Google is a search engine, it crawls and index URLs of pictures and will pop them in a search if the keywords you input matches the keywords associated to that picture. The URL where it appears isn't even a proof of ownership sadly, I had several of my former's blog picture stolen and used on other people's websites. In the case of social medias like Facebook and Instagram, the content belongs to the creator again, despite the popular and quite wrong belief, Facebook/Meta does not own the material posted on their platforms, and if prompted, can remove infringing content and ban repeat offenders. creative commons and public domains are the same thing Though there are similarities, they aren't the same thing at all and there are different type of creative commons to begin with. Creative commons is a license deal in which the author of the work agrees to make it available for other to use for free under specific terms. The owner still owns the rights to the intellectual property, and nobody can claim exclusivity over that content. Usually creative commons like stock photos are free to use at personal and commercial ends but they are not free of clauses, and you must always read the fine prints, sometimes attribution to the original author is required and sometimes commercial use is restricted to some uses. Want to know more about Creative Commons? This website lists all the different types. Public domain means the copyrights on the intellectual property expired, this usually happens about 70 years after the author/artist's death. Longer or shorter depending the country. This means that for example the work of Picasso despite being around 100 years old is still NOT in the public domain because Picasso passed away in 1973, it's been 49 years so far, so his work is not due to go into the public domain for another 21 years. The Mona Lisa is in the public domain and you can use her at commercial ends and do all the derivative work you want on her, because Da Vinci died in 1519, but there might still be restrictions in place as to how you can commercially profit from creating art prints for example. The Louvre museum might have the exclusive rights to sell reproductions on certain support out of their gift shop, so always make sure you are not infringing on those rights Exclusive rights means I own the work I bought those right for Exlcusive rights isn't the same as giving up all rights to an intellectual property, so if the artist gave the exclusive rights to a company, or individual over a piece, it usually means that under specific terms, the licensee enjoys exclusivity to commercialise it...kewords : UNDER SPECIFIC TERMS. This means that in an exclusive contract, the ownership to the work is still with the artist, and they are granting you a specific license to use said work under very specific condition, and usually for a limited duration. Those terms are always included into a contract that binds both parties. For example, the artist might give you the exclusive right to sell their work on a coffee mug or cushion cover for a duration of 5 years. During that time, the artist can't sell coffee mugs or cushion with the exact same design elsewhere or license it to other parties to be sold on coffee mugs on cushions. But they are free to license it to another licensee to sell as bedsheets and art prints. If you obtained the exclusive rights for coffee mugs, you can't sell it as an art print without negotiating another contract with the artist. In an exclusive or non-exclusive rights contract for that matter, the licensee also usually owe royalties on each pieces sold for the duration of the contract, because again, the artist still OWNS the work. I commissioned an art piece so it means I own all rights to it No you don't, unless you specifically asked for the work to belong entirely to you and the artist to release ownership to you. When you commission a piece, you need to be specific about what you will use it for and if you want FULL ownership, you need to request it and have it put in a contract in written form. Know that your asking for ownership of the intellectual property rights will come at a price, because in letting those rights go, the artist agrees to let go of all rights to further profit from said piece. Similarly, when you buy an original painting, you only get the right to hang it in your home or office, and the right to resell it if you don't want it anymore. It doesn't give you the right to create art prints and sell them. The only person authorised to do so is the artist, unless they sold the reproduction rights to someone or sold the property rights (two different things). Copyright laws applie to any creative work, analog or digital, so always make sure you check the fine prints of everything if you plan on using something you didn't create yourself. We artist spend hours creating work, and we don't take lightly to someone stealing it and profiting from said work in our place. Just take the time to contact us to ask us what our terms are, if we are open to licensing the work, or open to work on a commission, state your terms clearly, and in the end if you can't agree to the price or terms of a contract, just move on, don't go behind an artist's back and steal their work anyway.

Creative blocks are as old as time and every artists have had one at one point or another. They can be pretty annoying when your livelihood relies on your ability to be creative. It comes as no surprise that to attempt to solve the creative rut problem, the ancient greek deployed a battalion of goddesses dedicated to the arts and science : the muses. The muses were the ones you would go pay a tribute to when you struggled to find the words for your next play, the moves for your next dance or the inspiration for your next poem or song. There were 9 of them to cover all performing arts, literature, history and astronomy. Oddly enough none dedicated to rescue a sculptor or painter out of their creative block misery. So if the greek needed 9 muses to inspire artists, it's safe to say that creativity playing hide and seek with people has pretty much existed all throughout history and with all the tech and science we have, we haven't solved that existential problem yet. Probably because it isn't as big a problem as we thought. Science seems to support the idea that creativity comes in wave and that the phases we call "creative block" are simply a phase during which the brain is catching a breather to regenerate and these period of calm are needed to tackle the next big creative wave. I'm sure you all have had one of those creative surge where you want to do all the things at once and you usually get more ideas than you have waking hours at your disposal to execute them. Those periods of high creativity can be energy draining and once your brain says " no more" it will shut down to being receptive to any idea until it got its energy back. If you are an introvert, you are probably already familiar with that "recharge your batteries" concept. You might enjoy an evening out with friends and be bubbly and talkative, only to want to see absolutely no one for a few days afterwards because being social drained you completely. The same goes with creativity, when it comes it can deplete your energy levels and push you into needing a break. it becomes a problem only when your livelihood depends on it In a world obsessed with productivity at the cost of health, suddenly having an urge to crawl under the covers and munch on chips while watching Netflix isn't going to bode well. But, forcing yourself out of a creative rut is probably not the best idea either. The day I finally made peace with the fact those periods of low creativity were actually healthy was the day I started getting over them quicker. Sounds weird, but you are better off fully embracing the rut than trying to fight it and push through it. Just like the way out of a Chinese finger trap is to push deeper inwards rather than try to yank your fingers free, the way out of a creative rut is to embrace it and give in to the "laziness" to be able to rebound. Once you fully accept that your creativity will wax and wane, you can plan your work life around it and still be productive without creating new work. This is actually the beauty of working as a creative entrepreneur. Chances are that if you are freelancing, you are also a lot more flexible with your time, and have several streams of income, some of them passive, and some requiring a bit more of your time. Here is how I go about having a waning creative phase these days : If I'm feeling like I could use some downtime, I take it. I only keep the tasks I really can't push around like the art classes I teach, but everything else takes a backseat until I feel energised enough to take on new tasks. Usually my creative blocks have one or 2 days of really not wanting to do anything at all, followed by a few days of me not wanting to do new work, but feeling up to the task of uploading work I had sitting on my computer to my shops, I might even have the energy to revisit an older design and tweak it a bit to create a new version I usually bounce back to a creative phase within a week or so, sometimes it can drag for 2-3 weeks, especially in the hot Summer months when the heat becomes debilitating in Mumbai. Every year without a fail, creativity leaves the building around April and doesn't come back until June when the monsoon comes. This period of creative block is the easiest for me to anticipate, so I usually take full advantage of the fact I am super creative in January and February to create a lot of new things that I save for that period. You can also strongly reduce the amount of time you spend stuck in a rut by reminding yourself to take frequent breaks in your work. We are not machines, and it's important to have a good work/life balance, EVEN if you love what you do. I don't see doodling or painting as work or as something unpleasant, and I could do it for hours on no end not realising that my mind still would need a break, and that is when the risk of getting sucked in a waning phase strikes. I usually limit the amount of time I work on weekends and make sure I pepper my week with breaks where I go out, meet friends, go for a walk or a swim, or as it is going to be the case later this morning, go get my nails done. Believe it or not, I plan my work period AROUND my needs for break rather than squeeze my breaks into a work schedule, and doing it that way has been a game changer. Right about now, I'm actually in a "rest phase" I spend 3-4 weeks feeling very creative, and now my body and mind is naturally entering a regenerating phase which it really needs in order to start creating more for the upcoming festive season. It pays to know what your personal cycles feel like, mine are fairly predictable at this point so I know how to work with them. If you have not yet noticed your own pattern, I urge you to just embrace the phase you are on, possibly journal about it, and let the whole cycle run its course a few times to see how long each of your phases last and what factors might play a role. As I said, my longest rest phase comes between April and mid-June when the heat is at its worst in Mumbai and I have the energy for NOTHING leave alone creating things. I also tend to have a creative block phase right around Christmas until New Year because it's time I want to spend reflecting on myself and spending it with family. The rest of the time I tend to fall in a 3-4 weeks creative phase followed by a 7-10 days phase of rest, with at least 2-3 days of really not wanting to do anything. You don't have to look for inspiration, let inspiration find you If you are rested and in the right mindset, ideas will keep flowing from the most unlikely sources at time, like it was the case for my Groovy Rickshaw . Chasing an idea rarely work and you might end up feeling quite frustrated doing so. Ideas tend to come to you when you are receptive to them, once you make peace with that fact, you feel more relaxed and being more relaxed allows ideas to come back to you quicker after a creative block phase. One thing I often do is write ideas down when they strike and wait until I feel ready to give them any attention, it might be an option when I am not yet in a high inspiration and creativity phase, but am out of a highly unmotivated rut period. When you are a creative person, it greatly help to see yourself as a medium through which ideas can manifest, and it's hard work. So like everyone, you need your rest between work periods, that's ultimately how you should approach a creative block, which isn't really a block at all.

In today's art story, let's talk about how inspiration can strike you like lightening and get you to jump off the sofa and straight to your desk and iPad to create right away. This is exactly how this bird of paradise illustration and matching pattern came to exist in the first place after mindlessly scrolling on Instagram. It all started in June 2021, back then birds of paradise flowers aka heliconia were starting to pop in my Instagram feed more regularly, fo some reason, all the artists I follow were having a serious case of tropical vibe fever and in the world of tropical flowers, the two that stand out the most are hibiscus flowers and heliconias/lobster claws/bird of paradise. Living in a tropical region myself, I probably wasn't as "struck" as most artists living under colder latitudes and those flowers are pretty common all around me and I didn't particularly felt compelled to draw them. That changed when on a lazy evening, while enjoying the monsoon rain, lounging on my sofa, feet up on the coffee table, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and came across this picture from the ModCloth account (yes I follow them). It was a pretty abstract pattern that kind of looked like birds of paradise, and had all the colors you usually find on that stunning tropical flower and for some reason it gave me a jolt of instant creativity. Suddenly I had to get off the sofa, get out of lazy evening mode, grab my iPad and start creating a bird of paradise design right away! I knew right away that it had to be a pattern, so I drew all the elements separately. To assemble them later in not only the pattern you see on the right, but also created the "bouquet" you see in the sticker picture above. I normally don't draw anything past 6pm, I leave evenings for either conducting my art classes or do something relaxing for myself, but that day, the compulsion to draw was way too intense. If I hadn't read "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert (it's an Amazon affiliate link), I would have found it weird. But, I knew better, that book has introduced me to the notion that ideas are body-less entities that roam the earth in search of a creative person that can give them a physical form. In her book Elizabeth Gilbert explains how an idea for a book stuck with her for a while, then left her, only to find out while casually chatting with Ann Patchett that the novel's idea that left her found it's way to Ann without them knowing each other before, or having shared notes. She also mentioned that sometimes ideas need to visit several persons all at once and that it's probably how trends come to be and how big discoveries that advance the human race are made. To me it was clear that the Bird of paradise art/pattern idea had made the round in the artist and surface designer community around that time, and that it probably wanted me to join but that it hadn't found the right trigger until that Mod Cloth picture. It was the point at wich I went for "Ohhh bird of paradises are everywhere" to "I MUST draw a bird of paradise pattern...RIGHT AWAY" That evening I spent a couple of hours getting it drawn and ready to turn into a pattern and went straight to bed, knowing that the instant I would wake up the next morning I would export all my made in Procreate elements straight into Photoshop to turn it into the pattern it was meant to me. And this is exactly what I did, I woke up at my usual 5-ish am and went straight to my laptop to continue working on it. And then, it was straight to my Society6 shop. If I remember well, I couldn't eat breakfast or do anything else until that was done. Some body-less ideas are oddly persistent and determined to come to life aren't they? This one was in a hurry to be born and out in the world like no other ideas that visited me, including the groovy rickshaw. The bird of paradise pattern isn't as widely popular as the rickshaw in terms of sales, but ultimately, that is not what ideas really aim at, an idea just want to get into the physical world, what happens afterward is not in anybody's control. What is clear is that this tropical flower idea really wanted my attention and really wanted me to commit to bringing it to life, for what reason? I'll never know, but I know it needed me to give it a form. That's what we artists and designers do. Did you like this art story? make sure you subscribe to my newsletter so that you never miss a blog post. Simply click on the image below to sign up :

Bullet Journalling, or the art of flexible planning has been around for quite a few years now, and I've been keeping one since 2017 on top of keeping a personal journal on the side. Journalling in India had had its challenge in the early days because there wasn't a whole lot of options when it came to notebooks, and my first BuJo was a basic ruled notebook, at the default of anything else being available in a price range I could then afford. India took a bit of time to wake up to the dotted grid notebook concept that makes keeping a bullet journal a whole lot easier, especially if you are into making cute spreads and trackers. The first Dotted Grid Journal I had was one from the brand "MyPaperclip" (affiliate link) which doesn't seem to exist anymore. Back then that notebook set me about 800 rupees and it was actually quite expensive for what it was. The cover wasn't really sturdy, the paper was your average paper, but it was the first dotted grid notebook that wasn't imported and sold at a king's ransom price on Amazon. Over the years, the bullet journal options multiplied in India and I've tried quite a few. Here are 5 popular brands/type available in India, for all budget, out of which I tried 3 for multiple purposes and heard nothing but good things about the other two. Some of the links below are Amazon affiliate links, if you click on them and buy anything, I get paid a commission at no extra costs to you. If you read this blog from outside India, Leuchtturm and Archer & Olive are available worldwide, so the review can still help you make your choice for your next journal. Matrikas Signature This notebook made in India comes in two covers style : Signature Marvel with a rough paper texture and Signature Elite with a smooth vegan leather, both are hard cover journals and they have the exact same number of page and quality of paper inside. Both come in a variety of colors and are by far the most budget friendly and value for money dotted grid journals on the market. If you are a beginner, this is the BuJo you've been looking for! It has 248 NUMBERED dotted pages, and 3 pages of Index at the beginning of the journal which is quite impressive as far as number of pages go in any notebook. You can really go nuts with BuJo spreads and trackers without fear of running out of space too quickly. I used mine to fit a whole year the both time I used these. It also come with a few pages of stickers to use in your journal, and a folio pocket at the back. The stickers are pretty basic and not really to my taste but I used a few of them, so not a total loss. The Matrikas Marvel which you can see in the picture above went through a LOT of abuse in 2020 (pretty much like all of us) and it was the year I did the most complex spread with half pages, and folds and used tons of stickers and washi tape, by the end of the year, the cover had bends and creases and a lot of stains because of it's rough paper texture but the binding held. The paper in it is 80gsm and it doesn't bleed with most pens, except Stabilo Highlighter and a few blue, purple and red brush pens, those are pigmented to bleed through a lot of different papers, no matter the brand of pens. The favourite thing I had about those 2 journals was the fact they had 3 bookmarks, that's the highest number I've ever seen in a journal. leuchtturm 1917 Chances are you've heard of this brand and have been looking at them on Amazon but been repelled by the high price tag. That is because for some reasons, the sellers on Amazon pumped up the price a great deal. If you want to get your hand on a Leuchtturm, and you totally should, the best way to do so in India is also a way that support a great small business entirely dedicated to BuJo supplies : Bigger Dreams Co. There is a reason why Leuchtturms have been popular for years. They have 251 pages of silky smooth 80gsm paper with a finish that prevents the ink from your pens to sink through and bleed, which most 80gsm paper doesn't do. This one can even take some light watercolor as long as you don't use too much water. It has more pages than the Matrikas, with the same paper thickness but the book looks a lot less bulky and it's glossy cover can be wiped clean easily and seems a bit less bendable than the Matrikas Marvel in particular. I haven't used Leuchtturm for my Bullet Journal, but have one for my personal self-growth journal and I LOVE it, so much so I bought another one to keep track of my earnings and spendings. Leuchtturms are also available with thicker 120gsm paper for those who prefer using a lot of paint in their journal, again, available with Bigger Dreams Co. in India. archer & olive The Rolls Royces of the Bujo world! These notebooks need no introduction to those in the journalling world, they are best known for their super thick 160 gsm paper whcih can take a LOT of "abuse" without bleeding. From experience only 2 types of markers will bleed through that paper : Stabilo Boss highlighters (go figure) and Copic markers, but then alcohol based markers bleed through ANY paper and they are definitely not your standard BuJo supplies anyway. In India, those are available only in two places : Bigger Dreams Co. Though they have not restocked the brand in over a year. And Paper Planning and More which is another small business dedicated to bring you the best bullet journal supplies from around the world in India. There is no way to soften the blow, Archer & Olive notebooks are expensive, so I would never recommend it to a newbie or someone that is having a more utilitarian approach to bullet journalling. These are meant for those who like their journal to be artsy and creative and use a lot of mediums, including paint. I've used them as a self-growth journal in 2020, a BuJo in 2021 and this year I'm keeping it in their Blackout book. I might not use an A&O as a BuJo again, but might definitely use them as art journals, they are pretty much meant for that type of heavy duty journaling with their strong binding and quality thick paper. dingbats This is one brand that the bullet journal community raves about but I am yet to try, I thought I'd add it to the list because they are widely available on Amazon, on Bigger Dreams and Paper Planning and More. They are marketed as an eco-friendly brand of journal that are all vegan, recyclable and degradable. The journals have 100gsm acid-free paper and 192 pages. The notebook is designed for bullet journalling with index pages, and future log pages at the beginning. the jotting dots This is the latest brand on the block, made in India and one I am yet to try and probably will try as an art journal soon. They have a wide range of notebooks with think paper : 120, 160 and 190 gsm, and they are available in several sizes including square, B5, and A5. Right now they are available on their own website : The Jotting Dots or at Bigger Dreams Co. These could be an excellent alternative to Archer & Olive in India because they have the same thickness of paper, and are a lot more budget friendly. On their website, they also sell watercolors and washi tape that are worth checking. If you liked this blog post, please take a minute to share it with your friends, and sign up for the Home Cyn Home newsletter to never miss an update and get cool printables every months. Simply click on the picture below :

It's official! Several of my designs are now featured on Deny Designs and I could not be more excited for this! Deny Design is Society6's sister site, but exclusively deal in whole sale with wholesale partners signed up with them so this is not somewhere the general public can by from directly, but chances are you've hear from some of their partners : Urban Outfitters, Target, Nordstrom and Anthropologie to name just a few of the big names. So being part of the Deny Design family is really a big deal for me as you can imagine. My artist gallery there will keep on growing, and for now, they curated all of my Diwali designs, because the festive season is fast approaching and I'm stoked to report they also chose to feature two of my favourite designs in the initial gallery: This Scandinavian style spiky Christmas tree in a minimalist black, white and gold palette which I created last December and instantly fell in love with. One of the reason I love it so much is that unlike many of my other Christmas designs it's timeless, can be added to any Christmas decor because it's neutral enough to not clash with a bolder and more colorful Holidays theme decor, and last but not least, you can easily keep it around in your post Holidays decor. You know, that time when it becomes embarrassing (or rather frowned upon by certain people) to have a Christmas tree still standing in your living room. You can still keep some Christmas alive well into February with this cute pattern, because it has a log cabin kind of vibe about it. The other design that has been my favourite for a while is the pink flamingo pattern : It's pink, it's tropical, it's fun...enough said and that was the design I picked as my Apple watch band back in January, so seeing it being picked among hundreds of designs by Deny, is super special to me really. Fun fact about it, I painted those flamingoes in 2017 or 2018 when I just started selling on Society, and I revisited it in January this year by combining it with a digitally drawn bird of paradise flower and green leaves. If you look close enough, you will see the flower elements appearing as light pink on the pink background. Layering elements in a pattern is something I enjoy doing. Since Deny Design exclusively does wholesale, they only deal with partners registered with them, if you are a retailer, or know someone who would be interested in selling those designs on Deny's product in their shop, you must fill their form first to register with them. If you are an individual customer interested in buying one product just for yourself, Deny Design has those on Society6 and all of the designs above and more, are available out of my own Society6 shop.

As an avid self-help book reader, and a strong believer in changing your mindset to change your life, I thought of creating a new blog post series about the self-help books I read and loved. Home Cyn Home being not just a design brand, but also about living your best life, sharing the books that inspired me to kept me going and aiming for the stars just seemed about fitting. I could have started with any books, I read a lot of them, all teaching me valuable lessons along the way (even the ones I didn't finish), but to kickstart the series, I chose the one I read the most recently. The links below are all Amazon Affiliate links by the way, if you click on them and make a purchase, I get paid a commission at no extra cost to you. rich as f*ck - By amanda frances This is the only book that I bought twice...yup...TWICE. I first decided to buy it in the Kindle format, because I was eager to dive in. As soon as I started reading it though, it became clear that it was a book I would need a hard copy of, just so I could go back to the homework pages easily and find highlighted paragraphs faster, so I bought the paperback version a week or so later. Amanda Frances is apparently known as the Money Queen but I never heard of her before that book. The reason I bought this one, is that I have been working really hard for the past 3 years to get to the root of childhood traumas around money and what I am starting to realise now is also a phobia around money and finance. Chrometophobia is the name and it's apparently a common enough phobia. In my case, I know the root of most of it, and I am dedicated to the idea of getting over it. Cue in the self-help books and journaling! Being an entrepreneur and having a fear that goes around money isn't exactly a match made in heaven and I'm more in love with the idea of building my own business and brand and painting the world in bold and colorful tones than I am giving a phobia some rent free space in my life. This book is not the first one I read on the topic of money and changing your mindset around it, but so far I think it's the most impactful. Like all books I tend to read, this one does speak of the law of attraction, but in the more practical and rational way, which would make it a good read for anyone who isn't totally sold on the "woo woo" factor of the LoA. Amanda's message is clear : You are responsible for creating your own reality and how you think affects your life. She drives the point home in each chapters with actionable steps to work toward shifting your mindset and force you to dive deep into your past to uncover self limiting beliefs and change them. Each chapter ends with some homeworks where she asks you to take your journal and answer some of the homework questions, which really are just journaling prompts to get you started. Remember that blog post about journaling for self-growth I wrote a few months back? This book is great book to get you started on working on some self-limiting beliefs you might have about earning or spending money. Her prompts really push you to go deep into introspecting about the beliefs you grew up with and how they still affect you today. Two of the most impactful things in this book which I realised I have to work on are : Getting over the self-limiting mindset of "Either/Or" and move toward a mindset of "Both/and". Interestingly a year before starting to read this book I had written about my needing to stop thinking in terms of "This OR That" and embrace a mindset of "This AND That". A year ago I already realised that I was falling for this pattern out of habit, often settling for things deeply believing I couldn't possibly have both of anything. Reading it in this book was just a shock to my system and a motivation to keep on working on it. We all have minimums and maximums when it comes to money. That one blew my mind big time because I realised that I had been limiting myself big time, thanks to old childhood beliefs, and now I finally have the insight to start healing and set new standards on that front. True to the concept of the law of attraction that says that you can't attract something into your life unless you start raising your frequency to that level, the whole book is explaining it in a more rational way for the skeptics. If you don't believe something is possible, you won't work toward achieving it, so again, it all boils down to changing your mindset and then get working on achieving that goal...KNOWING you can. This book is obviously about money, but the same principle applies to everything else in your life you want to start shifting around All in all, it's a book that makes it to my "Must read list" which is exactly why I'm sharing it here. Loved this blog post and eager to see what book I'll write about next? Subscribe to the Home Cyn Home newsletter, that way you'll never miss an update, and you get cool printable stickers for your journal every months. Simply click on the image below :