Month: March 2020

In times of distress, art helps me.

Andrea Casals

Some good days with extra energy, I like to draw just outlining with black marker or a pencil in my sketchbook so whenever I have a bad day that blocks my creativity, I still have something creative to do: coloring, it helps me tons to carry on through a difficult day.

With that same idea, I want to share today 3 free illustrations for you to print at home and just color on them.

DOWNLOAD PDF FILES HERE.

DOWNLOAD JPEG FILESHERE.

These are two illustrations of some Bay Area signs that I love and one of the shop window from one of my favorite Bay Area shops: A Work Of Heart Art Studio.

Talking about AWOH, I wanted to let you know that even though they had to close right now, you can still shop art supplies from them and they’d deliver for free to your home in the Bay Area (15 miles distance).

So if you need any art supplies, contact them at aworkofheart@gmail.com -It’s a good way to help a local small biz through these difficult times.

Don’t forget to share your colored pages! Use the hashtag #ColorTheBayArea so we can all see it!

Last. Are you a Bay Area Artist that would like to join this #ColorTheBayArea movement? Get in touch! Send me a message with your links to share so we can all see them and start coloring the Bay.

Art heals, art helps.

Stay safe, friends! ❤️

PS: What do you think of doing a live online coloring session?

Moving with kids in school age is not an easy task, it’s in fact a big change in their life, and even though kids are very resilient and they adapt better than a lot of grown ups I know (ehem, hello ? that is for me, I know!) I think it’s always a huge and fabulous help to guide them in that process.

We’ve done a lot of work helping our oldest to feel he’s part of the team making this decision for our family, thinking what we’d win, making list of “pros” (we try to focus more on the things he’d gain, on the positive side of things and let him to come with the “cons” so it’s more about this feelings and not putting ours on that list). I think it really helps to know what to expect and more.

Part of that process is watching videos, pictures, movies. Like when we were moving to NYC, we watched many movies that showed the city and we also watch “NYC tour guides” for kids (we found some on Prime videos). We also showed him other kids living in the city (so many mom bloggers post this kind of content).

This time that we are moving to a place where we already lived, we looked back on our iPhones for all the videos of our ordinary life there. That made easy to bring back lovely memories of friends, things and places we no longer had in NYC. And brought a warm idea of moving as an exciting new adventure.

After telling the teachers and them sharing that our kid was moving we organized a little farewell treat for everyone with our family email address so they could give it to their parents and keep in touch.

I also created this illustration that, unfortunately, I couldn’t have it printed in time for the last day. But it was an idea of a brownstone (a very NYC thing) illustration where each kid could leave a stamp with their fingerprint as a balloon. The phrase is from the beautiful movie UP from Pixar.

So I wanted to share this printable for free with you in case you want to use it.

Here’s the FREE PRINTABLE to download.

SEE YOU SOON FRIENDS!

LIFE UPDATE! ?

I enjoyed New York City practically every day of these 14 months here. 
Now, we’ve received an invitation to change our lives once again and after we did what we do every time we are confronted with a situation like this (lots of thinking, spreadsheets, lists of pros and cons and of course, a bit of listening to our hearts) we decided to accept this new change and…
WE ARE MOVING TO THE BAY AREA (again)!!! ???

As a family, we leave New York very happy with our time here: we made new friends, found great doctors when we needed, we did many activities in the city, visited lots of inspiring places and ate too many delicious meals (more details in my NYC Instagram highlights stories).

In my particular case, I leave NYC with an *almost* ready Children’s Picture Book! ?

This city inspired me to create a rhyming story that came to my mind while trapped underneath my baby napping during one of many complicated nap times.

Once the dust settles after this move, I need to re-do one paragraph and send it again to my editor (hence the blank area on this pic) and after his review then… it will be ready for publishing? Yes, please! ? 

In the meantime, here’s a little sneak peek of one if its pages and YES, it has some Modern Calligraphy in it! ? I hope to finish it soon! 

And to my Cali friends: CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU! ❤️ ? Pic of me at the Oak Bridge in Central Park with an illustration of the Oak Bridge ? for my upcoming Children’s Book.
Thanks @tanrenzu for the pic! It was so windy and cold last weekend ?