The Art Box

03/06/2026

💛 Mindfulness doesn't have to mean sitting still and being quiet.

For children especially, mindfulness through movement and making is often far more powerful than any traditional meditation.

When a child is absorbed in drawing, painting or creating — they are completely present. Their nervous system is calm. Their mind is focused.

That IS mindfulness. And it's available to every child, regardless of ability or experience.

02/06/2026

We don't lack time. We lack permission.

Coming Back to Myself 🎨

This week the book asked me to sit for twenty minutes and do absolutely nothing. No phone, no book, no meditation. Just nothing.

It was genuinely one of the most uncomfortable things I've done in a long time.

Five minutes felt like twenty. I kept looking at the clock. I couldn't settle. And I say that as someone who teaches meditation — because there's a world of difference between meditating and doing truly nothing. No anchor. No purpose. Just sitting.

But here's what struck me: I've sat on my sofa staring out of the window contentedly for twenty minutes before. The moment I was told to, it became unbearable.

We do the same thing with creativity. We say we don't have time — but we find time for the scroll, the inbox check, the quick five minutes that becomes thirty. Time isn't the problem. Permission is.

Giving yourself permission to create — to call it important, to protect it, to show up for it — that's where it starts. Not with more hours in the day. With deciding that this hour counts. 🌿

01/06/2026

🎨 This week's creative challenge:

Get a piece of paper and fill it entirely with colour. No shapes, no drawing, no plan — just colour, any colour, all colours. Use whatever you've got. Felt tips, watercolour, coloured pencils, crayons.

Cover every single bit of the page.

Notice how you feel when it's full.

Share yours in the comments — I want to see ALL the colour 🌈

29/05/2026

💛 Something I'm really excited about is coming this summer — and it's for children heading into secondary school in September.

If you've been with The Art Box for a while, you might already know about the Creative Mindfulness Course. It's back. And this time the timing couldn't be more perfect.

More details coming very soon. Drop a 🎨 in the comments if your child is making that big move to secondary school this September — I'd love to know you're out there.

28/05/2026

Coming Back to Myself 🎨

This week's exercise was to create a small daily ceremony — something that keeps the dream alive without demanding anything of me.

Mine is this: a glass jar wrapped in cream ribbon, sitting in the kitchen window with paintbrushes standing in it. Beside a plant cutting, in the morning light.

Every morning I make my coffee and sit with it at the window. I look at the brushes. I look out at the garden. I don't plan anything or make it practical. I just let myself remember: I am creative. This matters to me. I'm coming back to it.

In the evenings I come back to the same room — the armchair, the low lamp, the quiet. The brushes still there in the window. A small, daily act of saying: I haven't forgotten.

This is what creativity for wellbeing actually looks like — not grand gestures, but small repeated acts of intention. Keeping the door open. Tending the flame.

What small thing could you put in place to keep your creativity alive this week? 🌿

27/05/2026

🧠 Three things that happen when children practise creative mindfulness regularly:

1. They get better at naming their emotions — which means they can manage them more effectively

2. They develop focus and patience in a world that constantly pulls their attention away

3. They build confidence — because creativity is a place where there's no wrong answer

These are life skills. And they start with a paintbrush.

26/05/2026

I know some people are here for emotional wellbeing support so I am sharing this from my grief coaching work incase anyone would like to join…

21 day nervous system reset for grief

I remember the feeling.

The exhaustion that sleep didn’t touch. The fog. The physical ache of missing someone so much it felt like something in my body was broken. The absolute certainty that I would feel that way forever.

I had no idea grief does that to a nervous system. Nobody explained why my body felt the way it did, or gave me anything real to do with it.

That’s why I made this.

The 21-Day Nervous System Reset for Grief is a self-paced programme I’ve created for people navigating loss. Daily practices of 2–10 minutes, grounded in real bereavement science, designed for the body that is carrying someone it loves.

Before I launch it properly, I want to gift six places to six people who are willing to walk through it with me in a small private Facebook group — beginning Monday the 1st of June and finishing on the 21st of June, the summer solstice.

It’s free. All I ask in return is that you genuinely engage with the practices and share a written testimonial at the end.

Six places. That’s it.

If you’re grieving, or if you know someone who is — comment below or send me a message. Tell me a little about where you are right now. I’ll be in touch. 🌿

25/05/2026

✨ "Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating." — John Cleese

You don't need to be an artist. You don't need to be good at art. You just need to pick up a pencil and begin.

That's it. That's the whole secret.

What have you made recently? 🎨

24/05/2026

Coming Back to Myself 🎨

That was the sentence that came up this week, working through the first exercise in The Creativity Book.

Complete this sentence: I have always dreamed of... and see what arrives.

For me, it wasn't something new. It was something old. Something I'd carried since I was a girl in an art room at school — the quiet, steady dream of calling myself an artist. Properly. Without qualifying it.

I studied art. I trained at London College of Fashion. Creativity has been a thread running through my whole life. And somewhere along the way, in the business of living, I stopped saying it out loud.

I didn't stop being an artist. I just stopped claiming it.

The exercise doesn't ask you to plan the dream or make it happen. Just to sit with it. Morning and evening, for three days. To let it brew.

It's such a simple thing. And it's already working.

What would your sentence be? I have always dreamed of... 🎨

22/05/2026

I've been following along with a creative book recently and it's reminded me just how much I've missed this.

The mess. The colours. The way everything else just quiets down when you're making something.

I'm bringing The Art Box back — slowly, joyfully, in a slightly different way and with so much excitement about what's coming.

Watch this space. 🎨✨