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 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 are in the right place. Grab a cup and a custard cream. Let's get cracking. Well, hello. This month has been pretty much like last month in that I've been to Norway.
Again, grab yourself an Earl Gray and your marks and Spencer's extra cream custard creams and yes, they are definitely a thing. And listen to what I've been getting up to and how I have a sauna that I can't use and how I've invested in watercolors. Yes, you heard it right? Hello everybody. I'm looking very disheveled. My hair is looking very wooly.
I've been swimming this morning and it is just, it's dried and I was gonna put loads of makeup on and look a little bit more presentable. And then I just thought, you know what? This is me on a Monday afternoon with my lovely butter yellow hoodie that I got from my lovely lady Beverly at the art party. And yeah, this is just me.
So, and I'm really happy. So yeah, coming to you from my kitchen, which I'm sure you can see all of the stuff in the background. The cat's happy because she's now got a window she can get out of. I've got, I've got Dora sitting here. Come here, Dora. Adorable. Dora sitting next to me. She's, yes,
very sweet, aren't you? And yeah, so I've come basically to, to give you an update on my month. And this month has been pretty much the same as last month in that I've been in Norway. And it was amazing. We saw the Northern Lights twice and I went on a cruise and yeah, we had a really lovely time. So this month haven't done a huge amount of drawing,
which is very strange for me because obviously I like to draw every day. I'm gonna show you something in a minute and you have to promise not to be shocked. I know some of you're probably gonna fall on the floor in absolute, you know, you're just not gonna, you're not gonna know what you're looking at basically. You're gonna be that shocked.
But yeah, what, what's happened in March? Well, what happened in March was we had the most amazing art party up in Edinburgh. It was utterly fantastic. I got to meet people who I know online, one person who is like the other side of the world, and the o another person who is the other side of a hill from where I live.
And another person who's the other side of, of the UK lot and lots and lots of people in between. But I have to have a special shout out for the fabulous Judy Wy Soki who came all the way from America to spend some time in Edinburgh and came to the the Great British Art Party. And it was just absolutely fantastic to finally give her an enormous great big hook and chat about stuff.
And honestly, this lady is so inspiring and it was just the biggest, biggest thing for me to meet her. It really, really was. And she was so tall. Do you know when you expect, when you meet somebody, you expect them to be, you have like a vision. She was so tall and my goodness, the most elegant lady.
I mean, she is just fantastic. So really lovely to meet her. And then Shirley Smith, lovely, Shirley Smith, who's always in my art club who lives just over the hill from me. So we have conversations sometimes in art club where Shirley, I'll hear an airplane from my side. She's like, oh, we just had that airplane, Bonny, we've just had that here.
And then I'll be like, oh, it's starting to rain. Oh, ours is cleared up now. And she's literally just over the hill from me. So it is, that's quite nice. And of course then also getting to meet Hilda, Hilda Smith from Scotland, who looks exactly like her. She does on Zoom, which that seems a little bit strange 'cause I think we all kind of look a little bit like we John,
but she really, she really does. And everyone was like, Hilda, Hilda just, oh, just so fantastic to meet people who I spend so much time with online and I get to spend time with them in real life, which was really, really fabulous. The hotel was amazing. I can't tell you how amazing the hotel were to the, the professionalism of the hotel was just second to none.
We got some fabulous little giveaways from Karen Dash, which was amazing. And of course, Emma from the color pencil shop, she supplied all of the, the pencils and everything, which was brilliant. And the goodie boxes. And we went a little bit tartan and, and it was just, it's, it's really strange because I am really quite introverted.
I love my own space. I have to, if I've been somewhere where there's lots of people, or even not even lots of people, maybe even three people, I then have to recover. And I, and I, I can be really quite peopled out, put me in a situation like in the art party where I'm sort of, you know,
I'm, I'm the kind of one hosting it. Everybody's there who's got similar interest to me. And it is the biggest, it's, it just gives me so much energy. It, it's, it was just amazing. And I had the best time. Came back on the Saturday, we drove up, came back on the Saturday and the drive ups really nice.
We went the A one and you've got that lovely coastal route. So you go through Northumberland, holy Island, Linda's van, and then you, and it's the most beautiful route. It was lovely. Got back on Saturday and then my lovely daughter had bought me afternoon tea from Mama Doreen's in Harrogate. I dunno whether Mama Dores is everywhere else, but she bought afternoon tea.
'cause of course Sunday was going away. So we, yeah, so we had that on the Saturday and then on the Sunday off, I went back again to Norway. So this time it was on a cruise ship. I sound very swanky, don't I? I pro, I promise you I'm really not. I went with my mom and dad and my younger sister.
So my mum and dad are, have not great mobility. So they're both in wheelchairs. My dad's in a wheelchair and a walker. And yes, we spent the next nine days traveling from Newcastle to Norway. And my sister and I had the most fantastic time. She is very similar to me. She likes her own space, she likes quiet time,
you know, she's got a great sense of humor. She's really, she's really fabulous to be with. And we had a really good time. We did some really fantastic trips. We saw the Northern Lights on like a frozen lake, which was very exciting. We got woken up at two o'clock in the morning on the boat, on the ship, not the boat.
Apparently they don't like it when you call it a boat on the ship. And yes, they play music and, and luckily I'd read about this music and sat bolt upright at two o'clock thinking, what on earth is that? And I was like, it's music isn't the Northern Lights, the Northern Lights are here. So we shot out onto our balcony and there they were,
which was, heck, hang on. Oh gosh, dogs are barking. They'll probably start barking again in a minute. The flipping neighbors are out with it and they, their dogs yapping. So my dogs are yapping. Yeah. So we, we, we dashed out and we, the Northern Lights, we luckily we were on the right side and saying right side,
we were on the right side rather than the wrong side. But I think we were on the port side rather than starboard side, I dunno. Anyway, but we were on the right side of the ship to see the Northern Lights, which was very exciting at two o'clock in the morning, I think there was, you know, it was a really nice clear night,
which was, which was fab. And then we did another one from, I can't remember where we were, where we did our, I can't remember what the place we were, but we went out again on like a northern lights hunt. And we ended up on this frozen lake actually in Sweden rather than Norway. We just crossed over the border. And,
and they were absolutely incredible. They were, so, it is, I think it's very, very rare that you see the Northern lights in their amazing bright glory. And certainly I didn't see that. And I don't think there have been any, I think, I think you, we see a lot, a lot of pictures, but a lot of pictures that have come from,
from a photograph rather than what we see through our eyes. But when we were looking from the, from the frozen lake, you could see a gl, you could see the color. It wasn't vibrant, but you could see the color. And they were like, you could see them moving around and like spotlights. And it was just the most fantastic experience.
It was really, really good. We did husky sledging again, which was fantastic. We did that one last time. We were on these sledges that were sort of the like, almost like canvas that you sat in them and you were sitting on the ground. These ones were like toboggans and they were wooden, so you felt every, so if you went over a bump,
you kind of lifted up and bang down. And last time I was too scared to drive the Huskies. This time I drove the Huskies and it was just, it was brilliant. The, the, the countryside just, oh, it was amazing. So we had a really fabulous time. We got back on Tuesday the first night. Oh my goodness.
So the first night from Newcastle to our first, I think we'd have two days at sea. First night it was really, really wavy. It was really rough seas. And I'd got these little things from Amazon, you know, that you put on your wrists. Oh, these will stop me from sickness motion bands or whatever. They did not work.
They might work for something. They did not work for me. Oh my goodness. I was so sick. I was so sick. And then I was kind of, they, they made me stay in my, in my cabin, which, you know, obviously because they don't want any sickness, bugs or anything. Mine was purely through motion sickness.
So I'm laid there in my cabin, like I could not even sit up. It was that bad. Goodness knows what's gonna happen on Burgs Cruise next year. I'm just gonna have to be, I think I'm gonna have to go on a boat like three weeks before and just get used to it, but, or just feed myself sickness tablets. It was really rough.
To be fair. I couldn't even sit up. I knew the nurse came up and she was, my sister was there with me and she was feeling a bit queasy and the nurse was like, do you want to have the sickness injection? And I'd already refused it once. And I was like, yes, let, let's have the sickness ingestion injection.
And my sister, my sister jokes went, oh, you're gonna have to have it in your bottom. I was like, oh, don't be so silly. And the nurse was like, yeah, in, in, in your bottom, in your, in your bottom cheek, I was like, anyway, you know, I won't go into details.
But I didn't even feel it. I didn't even feel the injection in my bottom. Oh, I must have. Yeah. Anyway, so, but that made me sleep. So I then basically slept 12 hours and then got up and I was fine. So that was really funny. Food was amazing. Cocktail of the day, every day, a different cocktail that you could have on your drinks package.
But every day the cocktail was exactly the same, just with a different name. So it was basically orange. It was an orange, orange cocktail, whether it's a tequila sunrise or whether it's a Northern Lights or even the Northern Lights aren't usually yellow. So that was funny. It was just basically orange with a cocktail stick and a cherry in it. So we had,
But every day the cocktail was exactly the same, just with a different name. So it was basically orange. It was an orange, orange cocktail, whether it's a tequila sunrise or whether it's a Northern Lights or even the Northern Lights aren't usually yellow. So that was funny. It was just basically orange with a cocktail stick and a cherry in it. So we had,
we had a really nice time. The last day was at sea again coming from Norway back to Newcastle. And that was really wavy. So I just spent the whole day in bed again. Honestly, I've had so much rest. And then back to it on Tuesday, oh no, Wednesday, got back on Tuesday, back to it on Wednesday, catching up with loads of stuff.
And it's only since yesterday, so Sunday that I've actually stopped moving around and going up and down. So basically I was like, like this swaying around all week because it felt like I was still on the blooming ship. But yeah, so, and then I've done a few bits of drawing. So I've got a drawing on the go for myself at the moment,
which is sort of like lots of tonal values, which I'm really enjoying. And then I've just started a new commission, which I can't share to the public until after the 5th of April when it's going to be gifted. But it's a really lovely commission and I've taken my own photos for it. And I've got another commission to do another commission. I think I've got two to do in April.
Three to do in April. Oh, I can't remember how many to do in April. And then of course, start my, my next tutorial piece. But what I wanted to share is I, so you, you know how much I love TikTok. I really love TikTok and the tiktoks that I love are dogs and cats and sort of people doing silly dancing.
And I, I, there's a, there's an Irish guy. Oh, what's he called? Is he Wayne Garrick or something like that? I, he swears a lot. I absolutely love him. And I came across watercolor talk watercolor, TikTok. And it's really funny because I have never been pulled to any medium really. I dabbled a little bit in oil and,
you know, it was, it was fine. And, and actually probably if I stuck to it, I'd, I'd be probably okay. But I didn't really have the bug for doing anything anyway, I stumbled on this watercolor account and oh, I'm just gonna have to cough. Hang on a sec. So I struggle, struggled. I stumbled across this watercolor account and you know,
when you, when you hit something on TikTok, then that's all you start to get. And when I've looked at taking up a medium, I've taken it up or I've looked at doing it to create basically what I'm creating now with my coloured pencils, like realism. And I started watching some of these videos that this woman was doing. She was working in a sketch pad and she was just splurging color around and just creating non things,
just pl in color and just being creative and just having a nice time. And I was like, wow, that's really weird because I've always thought about taking something up to create, I had a specific idea about how I would create, I could never do watercolor because I, I could never do trees or I could never do, you know, a,
a full landscape or I could never draw an animal in watercolors 'cause I just don't have the, you know, the talent for it or the whatever. I'd never actually thought about just doing something just to play around with color and sp SLS and just, and I find that quite strange. Anyway, look what I've bought and, and I've actually used them watercolors only a little tiny one,
but watercolors took me flipping ages to get all of these out of their little packets. They all come in a separate packet. I'm sure you can get ones that don't, but these all, and I'm like ripping them out. It took me about an hour. It's a good job. I didn't do a unboxing, I bought a load of brushes. I've got some of them still in the,
I I'll have loads of artists telling me do that. I've still got some sat in the water actually, but I've got look watercolor brushes, there's a whole packet. I don't think they're very good ones because they, they ended up leaving little bits of hairs. That's the other thing, isn't it, by quality. Otherwise you get quality brushes. Otherwise they dr they,
they shed hair all over your drawings. And then I bought a little sketchbook and in my little sketchbook I did, dunno, you can see that, oh, it's, I think it might have gone slowmo. I dunno, they looked like little, I dunno what they look like, but they're basically little sp sls of color. So they're like orange and yellow and red.
And then I put little green bits on them and then I've, I've kind, I've let it dry and I did some paint splatters, you know, on the, I was like, oh, I'm a proper artist now. And then I let it dry and then I started discovering all of these little shapes and everything. So this one here, there's like a little,
that one, that one there like a little dog. And I didn't have any markers. So cue Mr. Amazon bringing me some markers and yeah, I've been having quite a nice time just sort of messing around. Yeah, so I think the video's gone a bit funny. I don't think it's working very well on my laptop, but, so now what I've done is I've gone and I've bought all of the stuff that I need to make in watercolor.
So I bought a dryer. I could have just used my hair dryer, but I bought a special dryer for it and I bought the marker things for it. But my, my thinking is that it's not something that I want to do as a, you know, paint realistic stuff because I'm really happy drawing realistic things with my pencils. And I, I really love it and I get a huge amount of love and joy from doing that.
But actually just to sit down for 10 minutes in a morning, just to be a little bit creative, splashing color around is really quite nice. And I don't need to create anything that looks perfect or looks realistic or looks anything. I can literally just splash color around, you know, I can make mud if I wanna make mud or I can use my complimentary colors if I want to use my,
oh, hopefully it'll show you. But look, look at this one here. Oh, I think it stopped again, but that is blues and oranges, complimentary colors, so, oh yeah, I dunno what's going on with this. It's, it keeps freezing. But yeah, so that's, that's what I've done and it, it's really, really nice.
I'm really liking it and I, I don't know what, I dunno what I was thinking before, I have to do a medium and I have to do this particular kind of drawing with it and it's, it's rubbish. I don't have to do anything. I can do whatever I want. If I wanna splash colors around and make shapes and put, you know,
find shapes in them afterwards and draw little things with black marker pens. I can do that. And that's being creative and that's, you know, kind of expressing myself a little bit. And yeah, so I'm actually, I'm actually really happy I've done that, but it's not, it is not something that I want to sit and do courses on and,
and, you know, get better at it and learn all of the, the different techniques. I'm not actually interested in that and that's why I love that I've just sort of seen a TikTok and gone, yeah, all I wanna do is splash color around and that's brilliant. And that's faff that's really good with me. So, but yeah, I,
I get lots of inspiration from TikTok from different things like, you know, meal ideas to oh the new marks and Spencer's peanut butter and banana. Saw that on TikTok. We got some of it yesterday and it lives up to the hype, absolutely delicious. So yeah, I need to get off social media, I really do. Anyway, that's kind of it.
Sorry if it's very similar to the last one. Hmm. Oh, and the other exciting thing is this similar, this is kind of how my life goes. I get something really super and then I can't get it to work for ages because it doesn't have the right connection or it doesn't have this. So I have invested in a, a, an infrared sauna,
an outside one and it's really pretty and it looks absolutely gorgeous, but when it's wintery and weathery and windy and rainy, it'ss gotta have a big taral in over it. So it sitting in my garden and it just looks like this thing in a tarpaulin, it doesn't look pretty at all and I can't switch it on because me being me was told, do you have this kind of a socket outside?
And I didn't realize there were different kinds of sockets that I had to have. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I've got an outside socket all fine. Well I haven't got the right sort of socket, it needs one of those caravan 16 volt something or others. So I need a whole day of an electrician here sorting me out a new socket so I can use my flipping sauna.
Anyway, once it's done, it'll be lovely. And it's not just one of those little things that you can, it's like a building. It's really exciting and I know that I'll use it and you know, I've got it basically for arthritis and joint pain and all of that kind of stuff. My daughter's really excited because, you know, she's like,
oh, I'm gonna use it for my skin. And it's really, it's supposed to be ultra infrared is supposed to be amazing therapy. So, so that's all really exciting as well. So that, yeah, that's it. That's it. That's me, that's my march. Hopefully April I'll have way more art to talk about. I'm not going back to Norway just yet.
I have to say it is the most beautiful country, you know, if you ever consider going regardless of the time of year, it's absolutely stunning. It really, really is. Everything works like clockwork. It's absolutely gorgeous, you know, and we had such a lovely time. So yeah, so signing off, hopefully next time I'm having my hair done straightened properly.
The old Brazilian, but, but the Brazilian blow dryer, not the other Brazilian having that done on Friday. So my hair will look a little bit better. It's naturally frizzy, so I need to, I need to tame it. But that's me. I will, I will sign off my waffling for now and I'll see you all soon. 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 and order to make it happen. Till next time,
