Hello, I'm Bonny Snowdon, ex-corporate person and mother turned successful artist entrepreneur. It wasn't that long ago though that I lacked the confidence, vision, and support network to focus on growing my dream business. Fast forward past many life curve balls, waves of self-doubt, and so many lessons learned. And you'll see Ignite my thriving online coloured pencil artist community, a community that changes members' lives for the better, and gives me the freedom to live abundantly whilst doing what I love and spending quality time with my beloved family and dogs, all whilst creating my best artwork with coloured pencils and mentoring others to do the same. But this life wasn't always how it was for me. It used to only exist in my imagination. I've created the, it's a Bonny old life podcast to help increase people's confidence, share mine and my community's experience, and hope through fascinating personal stories, champion the other amazing humans in my personal, professional, and membership community, and create another channel through which I can support others to realize their dreams. If you're a passionate coloured pencil artist or an aspiring one who's looking to create their best work and a joyful life you love, you're in the right place. Grab a cup and a custard cream. Let's get cracking.
Hello. And gosh, welcome to another roundup. I, I can't believe we're nearly at the end of April already. It's, it's completely bonkers. And this month, my months are, are always busy, always busy. This month has been absolutely crazy. It's just been bannock. I've had, I've had some PR done. When you are building a business, growing a business, it's always a good idea to bring in people who are gonna help you. You know, experts who are really, really good at, at what they do. And I have found a PR lady in London who is amazing and she's been doing some work for me. And the work that she has done for me has consequently led to a whole raft of interviews with the BBC, different publications, the mail, the Express. It is just been just bonkers and actually really, really fun. Having a, a, a film crew in for the, oh, El be careful having a, a film crew in for the day and then seeing it on the telly the same night. It was just, just incredible. They were here, a camera lady and a, and a and a words lady, if you like, and they spent the whole day here. They sat on my drive and edited the video in the, their van. And then the piece went live at five to seven that same evening. And it was amazing. It was so nice. And they, and they did such a lovely job. So I'm hoping that, that the video is going to be in here somewhere here to have a look at, but it, it is, it's really, really fab. And then I've had other people coming around. I've had interviews with different magazines and yeah, it's been a full on month. Not only that, but also doing all of my live streams.
I've welcomed in a whole host of new members into the, into the Ignite membership, which is incredible. I've been using some different software to kind of help with different bits and pieces, which I've, I've actually really loved. Gosh, dog li dog lion there with her, with her face on the, on the tripod moving it. So yes, new, new software that I've been using, which enables me to actually respond to people via video, which I really, really love. And it's so much easier than sending a, an email. You just sort of sit there and you talk at the camera and you tell them what they need to know. It's wonderful. It's absolutely brilliant. So I've, I've incorporated that into what I'm doing as well. And I think it just makes it a little bit more personal as well.
We've been working really hard behind the scenes on getting the boxes ready for the scholarships that I'm giving out to people who are being supported by IDAs. So IDAs is the charity that I support, independent domestic abuse services. It's a local charity to me. Actually, we're going over there this afternoon to deliver the boxes, which is really exciting. And, and, and as the, you know, an awful lot here will know, the reason that I chose to support IDAs was because I was also a victim of, of mental abuse in a, in a, you know, the, the sort of latter, latter stages of my marriage. So I, I wanted to support a charity that meant something to me, really, really meant something to me. And I'm really happy to be able to do that. So I've, I'm giving five scholarships away, full membership access to my workshops. Not only that, they also get all of the materials. So they've got these gorgeous boxes and there's, there's everything in these boxes, which is just incredible. So here's, here's one of the boxes here. It's quite heavy actually. And this is full of, well, it's all beautifully wrapped, not by me. I, here some to add is wrapped the man really rubbish at wrapping, but you can see there, it's full to the brim with, with goody, with all of the pencils. Oops, Let's Put the lid on that. All of the pencils that they need, all of the surfaces, all of the, the, the pencil sharpeners, the razors, the sliced tools, all of that kind of stuff, that's what they've got in that box. And there's a little bit extra in there as well from me. So I'm, I'm really, really happy that I can do this. And you know, when you get to a stage where your business is doing well and mine is doing well, and I'm incredibly proud of that, of that fact, then it means that I can give back. So I'm, yeah, that's been a big part of this month, getting those boxes already. And, and we're off to meet Emma IDAs this afternoon to hand those over, which is brilliant.
I've been busy drawing. I've got a couple of new tutorials out this month. I've got the gorgeous tulips. I was trying to find the picture to show you, and it's disappeared. I think it may well be down in the studio with Lucy and Amy. I think they've been taking some photos of it, so I'll try and I'll try and pop a, a picture of that up for you. But yeah, so I've done the tulips. Now the tulips are going out also as well. One part of the tulips is going out as a freebie. So one of my challenges, which I'm really excited about as well, quite enjoying drawing the flowers. I have to say, I had a bit of a play around with, in fact, I can show you this one, a paper that I'm not a big fan of. I have to say. The, the Strathmore Bristol, this is the plate 500. It's a very smooth paper. And I had a bit of a play around at the weekend and did a, started to do another little flower piece. I don't know if you can see that. Some little bluebells there, which I have to say I quite enjoyed doing. I enjoyed the colours and I quite enjoyed sort of like working on the, working on the surface. However, it is really hard work because it's so hard on that. You've got to use much harder pressure, really sharp pencils. And of course, you know what I'm like about sharpening my pencils really sharp pencils, harder pressure. And I found that my arm was beginning to wake and I just don't think that I can, it's something that I want to do. I'm very, very much used to using incredibly light pressure in my work. And I, I enjoyed it, but I don't think it's something that I could do for a prolonged period of time. I have done this one, however, finished this one did this one over the weekend. Hopefully you can see that little guy there. I started this one as a, a draw along sort of end of March, beginning of April. And we did the eyes and we did the ear, one of the ears together, which was really lovely as a, as a couple of free sessions. And I promise that I would create the whole piece as a, as a tutorial. So you can see there's a little face there. It's a bit of a shadow on there. So I've, I redid, I actually restarted it on Saturday and had a really great couple of days drawing and managed to finish him. I think it's about nine hours that it's taken me to do it. And it's the, the, I've concentrated on bringing detail in, but the illusion of detail. So not trying to get everything absolutely perfect, but doing something that is nine hours obviously is not, is not speedy, but it's an awful lot speedier than 30 hours. So, so this is gonna be going into the Academy membership, the Ignite membership this week. And then it's also going to be available as a tutorial to purchase, which I haven't really done very much of. You know, for people who aren't a member of the, the membership, they can purchase they'll or they're going to be able to purchase this as well. Hopefully from this week we'll have to see how, how that all goes.
And oh, I've, I've, I've read a couple of brilliant books. I'm, I'm looking around trying to find the book that I've read and I can't find it. I think someone's, someone's pinched it. Oh heck, what's it called? It was such a good book that I just can't remember the name of it. Buy Back Your Time. That's it. Buy Back Your Time. Amazing book. I started to read it when I was in South Africa and I finished it. An amazing book, absolutely amazing book. And I've also, my daughter has introduced me to a new podcast, which I'm absolutely flipping loving. And it, I'm sure all of you already know all about her, but it's the Mel Robbins podcast. She is blooming brilliant. I absolutely love her. She's so down to earth. She is just, you know, say how it is. Spades are spade bit sweary, which I really like and it's brilliant. She's got some fantastic episodes. Confidence, procrastination, motivation. The one that I've just been listening to the minute is relationships. How you can better your relationships, you know, with friends and all of that kind of stuff. And what was the one that I was listening to? Oh, manifestation. What a brilliant episode. She is a fabulous, fabulous woman. And I've, I've fallen, I've got a proper, a proper crush on her. She's, she's just brilliant, you know, and I love that she shows up as she is. I love that she talks about her, her the things that have gone wrong as well as the things that have gone right.
And goodness me, honestly, we, I have had so many sort of little things go wrong this, this month and it's all been technology and it's really frustrating. And I think I am getting to be a woman of a certain age who needs a younger person to come and help me with technology because if it's something that's new to me, I'm really struggling. I bought a, and I'm not using it at the moment, but I've bought a teleprompter. So the, for certain things that I want to video doing, I want to get a message out and a really clear message out with the stuff that I want to say. I bought a teleprompter and oh my goodness, could I set this flipping thing up? No I couldn't. And I'm like, it's broken, I've bought the wrong thing. Oh, I'm so stupid, you know, getting, just getting angry with it. And then lovely, Lucy comes up who's 25, you know, so she comes up, she goes, well if you just kinda screw this bit and then it does work, Bonnie, I was like, ah, okay, so it's not broken, it's me that's broken. So we got that working and then I've been having no end of problems with my internet service, which is so, so, so frustrating. It's been absolutely perfect for a long period of time. And then all of a sudden it's gone really slow and it kind of intermittent and it drops out and it's really frustrating. So I've had BT round, I've been on BT, you know, when you're sitting there for like three hours on chat trying to get to the bottom of something. Had a an engineer come out last week who was, I mean, to be fair, it was Saturday, but he was really grumpy and I tried to make him a cup of tea and no, I tried to talk, no, it was just really grumpy. And he was like, there's nothing wrong with this, it's absolutely fine, blah, blah, blah. He said, but I think you, you know, put a, a hard wire it, get an ethernet cable. Well, I mean, I haven't had anything hardwired since. Oh, that sounds a bit, sounds a bit dodgy, doesn't it? I haven't had anything hardwired for a very long time. And anyway, so if I went Mr. Amazon, I'm thinking he, he's told me I need a cat five cable. I'm looking at the cable's, cat five, cat eight, the cable I want, the, the length I want. No, they're only gonna do it in three meters. I'm thinking three meters isn't gonna reach. So I bought a three meter cat five and I bought a f a five meter cat eight, they arrived and I'm like, right, okay, this cat eight, this is gonna, this is gonna fit, you know, the lengthwise is perfect, go to fit it in the back of my Mac. And I'm like, well, you know, and I even Googled it, what is the difference between cat five and Cat eight? Oh, it's just the speed. I'm like, brilliant, so that'll be fine. So trying to stuff this flipping cable into the back of my Mac and I'm like, it's too big. I'm like, goodness sake, you know, I Googled it and I got really annoyed and it was in the morning, it was quite warm and I was all hot and sweaty cuz I've been kind of moving stuff around and trying to, you know, jam wires into the back of stuff and I'm like, oh, for goodness sake, lovely. Lucy whilst is in and I'm like, I'm, I'm trying to get this sorted out and basically I can't get these cables to go in. They're too wide and I'm just so frustrated, so I'm gonna have to go and get another one, blah, blah, blah. I'm just like, what? I think we might have some like little plastic caps on the end. I'm like, no, no, they haven't, they haven't. You've gotta have those little pressy things to be able to put them in, blah blah. So she's like, no, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure that you're gonna have to have that little metal bit in and the, these plastic caps are covering them. And I was like, oh. So I had a quick look and, and obviously there were plastic caps on both of the ends and they fitted perfectly. So another sweaty morning of getting really frustrated because I'm getting to that age where technology just seems to not want to work for me or I have a brain that can't compute properly, so I'm gonna stick with what I know in future, try not to do any more new technological things. But yeah, it has been a, a really, really super, super, super busy month. You know what other thing, oh, I ti my studio you'll be able to see in the background here. That is all my own handy work at the back there. I've put this structure together, you know, you know when you get something from Amazon Amazon and it says, you know, easily put together and then you spend like five hours with a little hammer trying to put it all to, but actually it was pretty easy to put together and it's quite nice. I've got my pencils up there. I had to do a major tidy up, I have to say in the studio because the BBC were coming and I could not have let them into my studio. It was covered in, it was just full of boxes and stuff. Just put in places. I'm one of those people, if there's a surface, I will put something on it and then one of my children will put something on it and then another child will put something on top of that. So I'm much better off when, when I have my new living room done, we didn't get any surfaces. There's one table, that's it. And a foot stall not having any surfaces because it just gets completely covered. The kitchen table completely covered, you know, although I've had to, I had to uncover it all yesterday cause I got a very poorly cat and she'd been, oh gosh. So that was a really funny thing.
So Peggy's not, not very well, she hasn't been very well for quite a while. She has liver disease and I think it's coming to a point where we're gonna have to make a decision, but we're sort of holding off cause it's really sad. Anyway, she, she does, she's sick quite a lot. She's on medication and she's sick quite a lot, which, you know, it's fine. You kind of get used to it. And she's decided she doesn't, this is, I'm so sorry if you're eating food well, but she's decided she doesn't want to use her literary for number twos. And do you know what, it's fine, as long as the dogs don't get in and get it before I can clean it up is absolutely fine. And we can sort it and it's not a problem. Anyway, the ladies came from the BBC last week and they left me to get on with my art club, which was great. And, and then they, they shot off for a bit of lunch and they did some editing and then they came back and I'd finished my art club and then they said, oh, we want to do some shots outside with you. And then lovely, I think it was Kathy was like, oh gosh, I think your cat was a bit poorly on the table. And I was like, oh no. And she was like, yeah. So she said, but don't worry, I've cleaned it up for you and I've, I've used the disinfectant and I've just, I've, I used some toilet roll. I was like, oh my god. The BBC came around to film me and then ended up cleaning up after my cat, which I was, it was very embarrassing, but thank you Kathy for that. It was very much appreciated. Poor woman. So yeah, so my, so my kitchen table is, I work half of my day there. I tend to do the majority of my admin in the kitchen cause it looks out onto the garden and it's, it's just nice in there and, but yeah, we have to be sort of quite careful what we put on there at the moment with poor Peggy not being very well. But yeah, my studio's lovely now. It's, it's bright. It's, it's all tidy, it's all clean. It's, it's fabulous. And it's, it's a really nice space to be as well, which is good.
So I've done some nice commissions this month as well. That's, that's all worked out really well. I finished one, I finished one. Oh, I finished a, a quickie for my, for my daughter. She wanted, she wanted something doing for a friend of hers. So we did one of those that, that was last week. I did that in a couple of days as well, which was good. If I can get really good long days drawing in, I can be incredibly productive. It's fabulous. And I've done this little tutorial, the one of the dog. And I'm about to start a, a fabulous commission of a lovely dog called Rupert, who I've taken the photos of. So I'm about to start a lovely commission of him. Got a couple of cats to do, I think, and a horse. And then I'm starting my biggest tutorial yet incredibly excited about this. And it's gonna be a full tutorial, so start to finish. I think it's gonna take quite a long time. I want to really take my time with it. So I think it is gonna be a very long one. There are no animals in sight. There is a background, there are flowers, there's grass for heaven's sake. And there's a little, I think it's a little girl toddler. And there's so much texture. So the clothing that she's wearing, denim dunes, there's a top, there's buttons, there's shoes, there is, and there's hair. And did I mention there's grass. So many different lessons. And what I want to do with this particular, I'm never very good at planning and what I want to do with this particular tutorial is do the whole thing, but make sure that I properly plan it so that each area, like the bit of the background, like a bit of grass can be used as a separate tutorial. So you can just go to that tutorial, right? We're gonna draw some grass now, blah, blah, blah. So I'm quite, quite excited about that. Quite excited. I've been doing a lot of visualization around how I'm gonna be doing it. I've already looked at the photograph, I've done a lot of sort of cropping all of that kind of thing. Yeah, so that's, that's really exciting.
I head into Amsterdam in May, which again is really exciting. I am going with my younger sister. We are going Friday, coming back a Saturday and we are going to see Esther Hicks. And I can't tell you how excited I am. I'm so excited. There's gonna be a lot of people there. I think the place that she's booked out has a, has capacity for about 3000. So really excited about that. Esther Hicks is the asking, it's given Abraham Hicks law of attraction, that kind of thing, which I'm just, I just absolutely love. So I'm really excited about that. And then I've also booked tickets for Denise Duffield Thomas in Bristol. I'm not sure why she's going to Bristol, but anyway, Bristol in November. So I'm gonna be doing quite a bit of travelling this year, which is really great. And she's doing sort of like a two-day workshop, which I'm very, very excited about. Denise Duffield Thomas is Money Mindset. She has a, she's a business coach, she's an amazing lady. She, I had her on my podcast, which she's incredible as well. And then I'm hoping to get to the US in October and possibly August as well for, I'm a member of a couple of business masterminds and I'm incredibly passionate about my art, but I'm also incredibly passionate about my business.It's something that I really love. I really love looking into new, dare I say it, technology, new softwares, new ways of doing things. I'm really, really kind of open and very much, very much into my, you know, developing me and developing my team as well. You know, so Lucy and Amy who work for me, I'm always buying them courses, how to, I mean, we bought a course for Pinterest so that Lucy can start a Pinterest. We're now getting, you know, sort of 2 million views a month, which is incredible. She's created a really fantastic Pinterest and I really, I, I believe in that. I believe in helping people, you know, to progress and to help them and all of that kind of stuff, which is amazing. I had a couple of incredible viral videos this month as well, which has been a, a, a bit eye-opening and a bit like, whoa, goodness me, where's that come from? TikTok, I've always found really difficult to get into, I think because we haven't really had a clear strategy to be honest, I think because we haven't really gone, oh gosh, you know, what are we actually wanting to do here? Anyway, I put, I put a video up a couple of weeks ago, or Amy put a video up a couple of weeks ago where I was doing like, some people like, oh my goodness, that's so old-fashioned. I'm like, oh, I am old-fashioned. Just kind of swiping bits of paper across, you know, going, oh, you know, I picked up coloured pencils. Oh no, started back in 1987, I was told I was no good at art and I got job as a tea girl, which I did in an advertising agency I couldn't get into. I wanted to do, I wanted to go on and do a foundations course somewhere. And I, I was told I wasn't good enough, my portfolio wasn't good enough, so I had, you know, anyway, and then didn't do any art for nearly 30 years and then picked on my pencils in 26. Now I was just kind of swiping these things across and then at the end I held this one up and I, and, and I've always, I've always kind of worried about talking about money, you know, because you don't want people to think that you're being really big-headed or anything like that. But honestly, I think it's incredibly important for people to understand you can make an incredible success from doing something that you love. Whether it, you know, know, regardless of whether it's art or drawing or crochet or, you know, whatever that you want to do. You can make an amazing success in living if, if you put the work in, you know, you believe in yourself, you pick up on opportunities and you ask for help. And I really, really believe that. And it's got to the point now where my business is about to turn over 1 million annual revenue, which is crazy, utterly crazy. Anyway, so I, I made this video and I, I kind of put that at the end. So my TikTok kind of went from, I think I had about 3000, something like that. And it's over 10,000 now, which is great in sort of like a matter of days, which is absolutely brilliant. And then Instagram has been absolutely bonkers. I was down at, I was around sort of 90,000, 93,000, something like that. And I've built, you know, I've built my tea, my Instagram up, and I, and I, you know, I, I try to post regularly and I, I try not to get bogged down with, oh my goodness, I've gotta do this. And I, I I, what I try to do is I try to create videos that excite me and I'm excited to talk about anyway. So I've got a, a cat ear video if you want anything to go viral, put a cat up there cuz it's gonna go mad. A cat video that's had like 1.1 million views on it. My Instagram over the last 30 days has had 2.2 million reach, which is mad. And then from last week, I've gone from about 93,000 followers on Instagram to just over 110,000 followers on Instagram. I put this video of me with the sheets of paper on and it's, it's, it's gone crazy. And, you know, I was sitting there, I wasn't wearing any makeup, I was wearing my old fluffy blue jumper and I thought, oh, you know, I'm just gonna do this. I hate putting makeup on. I put makeup on for you today to make an effort, but I don't like putting makeup on cause it makes my eyes run. I get, I I'm a bit allergic with stuff like that. Anyway, so I just did it. No makeup, just pop my glasses on, wrote these things out and put the, the biggest pen I could find was like a purple chunky highlighter. Wrote them all out and just kind of whacked it off on a, on the, on the, you know, on my iPhone. And, and it's had a massive, you know, it's, it's been really successful and I do think it's because it is just a rough and ready video, me looking rough and ready and just being really, really being me. And, and I would say if anybody's out there wanting to, you know, grow their social media, one of the biggest things that you can do is be yourself, you know, authentically, you Watson, all you know, don't try and, and be something that you're not. And you know, because I mean, if you, if if you are the sort of person who loves to dancing and all of that kind of thing, great. If you're not like me, you know, do, do do the thing that you love to do. You know, for me it's waffling front of a camera.
So the last couple of things that I just want to talk about very quickly are having guest speakers into my Ignite membership. And it's not, I've had a couple of guest speakers in art club before. I've had my framer, I've had lovely Emma from the coloured pencils shop and I was speaking to my coach Susie, and we came up with, I invested in some of her time that she is now giving to my students. And the first session was last week in the confidence session that I run every month. And she and I kind of did a, a conversation. We were just chatting basically and talking about things and then we took some questions completely blown away with the amount of people who joined and the, the feedback that we had back from it, I mean, incredible. She's an incredible lady, I have to say. She's a TEDx talker. She's an author of bestselling, she bestselling book. She's amazing. And she's my coach and she's helped me through a huge amount. And now I'm, I'm kind of introducing her to my community and I'm investing in her so that my community can get the benefit of what she does. And it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. And then in my, cause I run a business drop in every month as well, and we talk about businessy things or you know, social media, all that kind of thing. And I brought my brother-in-law Charlie in to do a session on this last Thursday. He is the man who helped me set up my business. You know, when I, when I decided I wanted to be a full-time artist, he supported me, he helped me kind of put everything together, business plan together, forecast, all of that kind of stuff. And he came in on Thursday and held, did a, a webinar all around what he calls the business beehive. And he likens the a beehive how all of the bees in a beehive work. And he likens how when you're running a business, it's very much the same. You know, you have to have certain, certain characteristics, you know, so that you can run a, a, a successful business. And it was, and again, blown away by the amount of people that joined and then the feedback absolutely incredible. So I hoping he's gonna come back in and do a bit of a branding workshop for us as well. And that's what I'm wanting to do, bring in people who specialize in certain areas that are gonna gonna really, really help my students. And it just brings an extra dimension really to, to the membership, which is brilliant. And then the, the drawing side of stuff that will always be me, you know, because I love it.
So that's kind of about it. Really, really, really busy, really busy month, incredible month coming up to May now, which oh gosh, honestly, I can't believe, well we always say this, don't we? Oh my goodness, the year's gone so fast. But it really has, and lots of lovely drawings to do. This big big tutorial I'm going to be working on, which I am very, very excited about. So yeah, exciting month ahead. We've had a busy month past and all good, all good. So I'll see you all next month. I really hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of my, it's a Bunny Old Life podcast. If you did, I'd be so grateful to you for emailing me or texting a link to the show or sharing it on social media with those you know, who might like it too. My mission with this podcast is all about sharing mine and my community's experience and hope by telling your fascinating personal stories, championing the other amazing humans in my personal, professional, and membership community. And to create another channel through which I can support you to realize your coloured pencil and life dreams. If you haven't done so yet, please help me on my mission to spread positivity and joy throughout the Coloured pencil world by following me on my socials at Bonny Snowdon Academy or by getting on my list at Bonny Snowdon academy.com. And remember, I truly believe if I can live the life of my dreams doing what I love, then you can too. We just need to keep championing and supporting each other along the way in order to make it happen. Till next time.
