I had a very cute Coptic stitched journal. It was a small one, just a bit bigger than a passport. During that time I was travelling, so I really needed something portable and easy to work in.

I decided to focus on using gouache for the background, two/three colors maximum. Then I would draw something with a sharpie and add the statement. The front of the book would be the ‘Kind’ section and the back of it the ‘Unkind’ one. I would simply flip the book over when working in each section.

I would start with the Kind statement and then flip the book over to do the corresponding Unkind one. I will share them side by side here.

This was a good way to work through some difficult emotions relating to a toxic situation that was unfolding in my life. It also allowed me to feel better about my drawing skills and learning about gouache.

It was a really intense period of time and being able to address these emotions like this was helpful. It’s kind of crazy how easy it is to see both sides of a same idea. Documenting or working through these notions in this way was very interesting and helped change my perspective.

The fact that the journal was small made it quite portable and easy for me to work in, even though I was travelling in that time. Minimal supplies, maximal impact.

Revisiting this work has reminded me of what it means to have a cohesive, immersive project that truly becomes a healing force outside of the art journal. That is, after all, what I want my art practice to be all about.

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I am so excited to share this with you today: It’s the 10th anniversary of Make Create Express!! This is a free online mixed media event that has been bringing artists and art lovers together every year for a decade. I have been a teacher with Art is Magic for four years now and this year, I get to be one of the 37 artists teaching in this special edition.

The way it is usually set up is there is a free creative weekend full of Tempter lessons. This year, to celebrate 10 years, the Tempter lessons are shared during 9 days! That is 37 artists bringing you 37 free lessons, 9 days of pure creative joy — completely free, watch at your own pace, no strings attached. It’s called the Tempter Sessions, part of Make Create Express 2026, and it runs 11–19 July.

My lesson: Color Queens

My lesson is all about painting a color queen, but qith a twist. If you know me, you know I love the tarot so we will be creating a color queen based off of our card for the year. I am in a Sun year so that is what guided my queen.

During my Tempter lesson, I will guide you in chosing colors and symbols to help you connect with your archetype card. I have prepared a tarot cheat sheet all about the Major Arcana to make it simple to figure out what each card represents. I also give alternatives if you don’t want to use the tarot.

And of course it’s not just my lesson! There are 36 other artists sharing their favourite techniques, approaches and materials. I am always surprised by what comes out of participating in these sessions.

It’s free to join right now — register here.

Tempter Sessions: 11–19 July 2026

If You Would Like To Go Deeper

If you’d love to go deeper — and keep everything — there’s also a year-long classroom opening on 20 July — Make Create Express 2026. You’ll have instant access to all 37 Tempter lessons, then two more lessons from each artist released throughout the year — 111 lessons in total. A year of weekly new content, a VIP Goodie Bag, and the most genuinely lovely creative community.

The Early Bird price is US$120. It goes up to US$147 after the Tempter Sessions close on 19 July.

More here: https://tinyurl.com/makecreateexpress26

I hope to see you there. It’s going to be a beautiful ten years’ worth of celebrating.

V x

For this first lesson in the Iconic class, we will look at self-portraiture. I will show you what kind of self-portraits to take for the class, how to change them and how to print them.

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It’s been a little quiet around here as I was focused on other spaces that needed my attention. I have been considering how I want to use Substack now that I have shared most of the pieces from the body of work I created in 2024-2025. I had a few classes that were on Teachable. This was great until it became so expensive for me to have them on there: it was actually costing me more than what I was making.

So I closed my Teachable in 2025 after warning the students for 6 months that this was going to happen. I still want that content to have a home though. So I’ve decided to start sharing them here.

We will start with the Iconic class.

Be Iconic

Iconic is a class that blends self-portraiture, different mixed media techniques like collage, painting and fabric and self-documenting. I will walk you through the process of creating icons about yourself, using these different techniques.

The class is set up as follows:

• introduction: a very brief history of the icon

• lesson 1: self-portraiture

• lesson 2: symbols

• lesson 3: collage

• lesson 4: paint

• lesson 5: fabric

• conclusion: altar

Each of theses lessons walk you through 3 or 4 different self-icons that you can make. Some of them are serious and some are self-deprecating.

I’m very excited for us to get started. I will be releasing the content every week, starting Monday May 4th. Anyone who is a subscriber will get access to the Iconic class.

Thank you very much, as ever, for your support.

A big part of what makes me love this project is the props that I made along the way. that was fun and really brings together the handmade part of it.

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If you don’t need convincing, you can find these here.

The crux of this Art Witch mail is a tarot card pulled from one of my many decks. This physical card will come with journaling prompts written just for you, as well as a double sheet of yummy Clairefontaine paper for you to journal your heart out on. This isn’t a tarot reading, it is a card to jumpstart your (art) journaling practice.

Each Letter sized envelope will come with lots of paper ephemera for you to work with. Think vintage book pages, black and white photos, chiyogami paper, doilies, tissue paper, stickers (only from mass produced sticker books), labels, stamped images (only from stamps created by me), punched circles, vintage magazine images, gel plate prints, wallpaper, scrapbooking paper cutouts, etc. The photos give you an idea of the contents.

I am selling these on my Patreon page in the Shop section because I don’t want to have to create a new shop just for these! These are not recurring mail, just one off treat yourself collage fodder packs, with the added tarot card and prompts.

To purchase, please go to my Patreon Shop page here and purchase the Art Witch Mail Collection (this is the only post in this collection). A reminder that if you purchase through your desktop and not through IOS, it is cheaper! Once you have purchased this, please send your postal address to the email included in the post and I will be mailing your envelope within 48 hours.

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Unlike all of the Archaeology of Self series, this post isn’t public. It’s because the type of art journaling I was doing in this one included a lot of writing out my feelings and was more of a visual diary (emphasis on the diary). So I do want to keep this one for my subscribers.

This is my very first art journal. Here is a recap of my story. I was always creative and would make what I called ‘Nothing Books’ - these held song lyrics, magazine image collage, quotes and any feelings I wanted to express. They were basically art journals before I knew what that was.

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This is not the case in Canada. Here winter stays until about the end of April and we even sometimes get snow at the start of May. In any case, the biggest change has been snow. Beijing is a very dry place, it doesn’t snow often and when it does, it’s not a lot and it doesn’t stay long.

All this to say that this winter has been very snowy and I personally love it. I love how it transforms the landscape into a fantastical one, I love how blue the sky looks on sunny days, I love how it’s not so cold when it’s snowing, I love how the world becomes a snow globe when the big snowflakes fall, I love driving in snow, I love the chaos of it, I love seeing it glitter under the lamplights, I love when the full moon makes the snow a very particular shade of blue at night, I love the crunch underfoot.

I even saw a sun dog one morning! And it was a rare morning when I wasn’t driving so I was able to take a picture. That was a very cool experience to me.

Winter Count

The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa has an exhibit centered around winter. The Winter Count was how Indigenous communities would document things that had happened from the first snow of one year to the first snow of the next one. The exhibit features Indigenous works as well as pieces grouped under themes like ‘the light on snow’, ‘snow at night’, etc.

Some pieces, like Kent Monkman’s work above are tongue in cheek (note the Louis Vuitton sled and Monkman’s altar ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle) and recontextualize these often stereotypical renderings of life during winter. I loved seeing the northern lights represented and how colorsful snow can be, especially when it is interpreted as full of light.

All sorts of techniques were represented, from oil paintings in ornate frames, to videos to screenprints to drawings to clothing, dolls, ceramics. It was so cool to see the vibrancy of the clothing being mirrored in the vibrancy of the light in the paintings. Some pieces were also pushing the viewers to challenge some of their preconceptions about who is part of a Northern Country and how we perceive that.

I was fascinated by how these artists were able to represent snow as more than just white stuff on the ground, playing with shadow and painting the light. That was really interesting to me.

Not all the paintings were from or of Canada, although there were quite a few from the Group of Seven and Lawren Harris whose work I love. All in all, it was lovely to be able to appreciate these pieces showcasing the cold season.

We were even invited to create our own northern lights with gorgeous iridescent papers. There were no scissors so you had to tear everything and they even had some frame on the wall that you could slot your work into. You know I would never pass up that chance!

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This includes using real petals which is something I enjoy very much. I may not paint flowers so they don’t die like Frida did, but do love to I press them and add them to my spreads.

I filled this journals with song lyrics, half-formed thoughts, bits of poetry and all manner of drawings of bones and anatomy. As mentioned, these are elements that are still a big part of my art today. I also used calendar pages and scrapbooking paper for the base pages.

The next journal also takes up similar themes. I believe it was for Get Messy’s Season of Nature. I used an art joural bound by a friend who had given it to me years before. I absolutely love that cover!

In it you can see a lot of the things that I saill work with: theme or archetypes, florals as blessings, bones as metaphors for how strong we are, appreciating things around us and…noticing.

And cats…don’t forget cats! I liked revisiting the seasons within these pages and playing with texture and different materials.

I had forgotten all about this little journal but how I loved getting lost in its pages again. This is what has been so revealing about this series: the joy of re-finding one’s self and recognising ourselves!

You’ll notice that throughout this project, I have mirroring cards. For example, the Fool/Tower, Lover/Devil, Wheel /World and Justice/Judgement is part of these. I tend to use similar visual cues for these pairings.

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That said, I am so happy that we are moving into the Year of the Horse. 2025 was the year of the Snake, which felt so apt, especially paired with the Hermit card. A year of taking stock, looking inward and shedding shedding shedding.

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Let’s dig in.

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