Living He(art)fully: Guest Post and Giveaway
I’m delighted today to have a giveaway for you kindly shared by Emma Kate Codrington of Emma Kate Creative. I have known Emma Kate for a number of years and love her passion, energy and enthusiasm for life – not to mention her considerable talents as a designer, photographer and artist. Emma Kate has some beautiful words to share with you today on what she considers to be living he{art}fully and a chance for you to win some of her divine new greeting card range.
He{art}work.
Photography: Mary Librino
Living he{art}fully is nurturing a heart brimming with love and passion. It is a place of authenticity and trusting in the process.
Living he{art}fully is being curious and present; a graceful and grateful approach.
Living he{art}fully is frolicking in sunshine and chasing rainbows.
It is doing what you love, and loving what you do. For me, living he{artfully} is not a conscious decision, it’s instinct. It is the only way I know.
Here are my tips for living he{art}fully:
Send love
In these days of tweets and wall writing, letters in the mail are a lost treasure. Receiving a handwritten note in the mail is one of the nicest possible ways to have your day brightened. Whenever you receive handwritten love in the mail, send this same love on to someone you haven’t been in contact with in a while. Your message may come at just the right time.
By hand
Stir, stitch, paint, dig, grasp, hold. Tighter. Your hands directly embed energy into your creations. Use them more.
Greatful(l)
We want so much, but how often do we stop to think about how amazing we’ve actually got it right now? Continue to strive towards the new and challenging, but make equal effort to reflect on the beautiful abundance in your life – as it is right now.
Emma Kate and Friend Elise Thompson
Photography: Benjamin Liew
Quotable
Pick a quote as your mantra for each day. If you’re on Pinterest, find a beautiful design/artwork of that quote and save it to your phone’s home screen for a constant reminder. Think of how you will actively live what you have gleaned from those words.
Snap happy
Instagrammers can get some slack for the compulsion to document every brunch, coffee or inspired moment, but I think there’s something really beautiful about having a camera so accessible to capture these moments in your day. When I look back on my instagram feed from this year, I can tangibly see and reflect on how colourful and he{art}full my year has been. Play along, and start tagging your happy snaps with #liveheartfully. I’d love to see what living he{art}fully means to you.
Honour
Giving your he{art} to others is so much more fruitful when you first honour your own heart.
Thank you Emma Kate. I love your tips and hope that everyone reading will be inspired how to think about bringing more heart and creativity into their every day. Now to the giveaway! Emma Kate has kindly given beautiful you readers the chance to win a selection of her divine new greeting card range – The He{art}full range.
He{art}full is an eclectic fusion of simple, handwritten messages inspiring wild romance, candid emotion, creative abandon and happy wanderers. Using watercolours from Italy and inspiration collected the world over, thirty six messages adorn shapes in a palette of apricot, olive, strawberry, periwinkle and the colours of a whimsy rainbow. All greeting cards come with pattern-lined envelopes in coordinating colours. All gift tags are tied with natural jute string. Printed in South Australia on responsibly sourced & carbon neutral stock… from one tree hugger heart to another x.
Just share in a comment below which of her living heartfully tips resonates with you most, and why to win a beautiful pack of cards valued at $50.00. Have your comment in by 5pm, AEST, Monday 30th July for your chance to win. Open to Australian residents. For all beautiful you readers Emma Kate is also offering a 20% discount code for her online store until the same date. Just use the code beautifulyoulove at the checkout!
Emma Kate Codrington is a free spirit with a five-year plan. She explores the world with an unbridled curiosity and lives from the heart. With a penchant for anything French or polka dot, she loves to design, photograph and string together words while travelling, connecting with kindred spirits and colouring the world with sparkle. When not with her beloved Mac, you can find her seeking a perfect soy latte, in a bookshop’s travel section, drinking wine, using Instagram or chasing rainbows. Emma Kate grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. With equal loves for artistic and academic endeavours, she followed her creative heart after secondary school and graduated as dux of Visual Communication (Graphic Design) at the University of South Australia in 2009.
The Emma Kate Creative label is a love story between words, images and play. Whimsical writings and imagery spills onto greeting cards, exhibition walls, bookshelves and just occasionally, somewhere more exotic. Emma Kate loves being invited to speak about her mission to live a he{art}ful, passionate, colourful life and inspiring others to do the same. She dually works as a freelance graphic designer, offering bespoke branding, publication and website design, wedding stationery and event styling, photography and art direction. She loves to share coffee with her clients and establish long term, happy collaborations.
Love this card collection. I so love the reminder to send love. I have a basket on my desk full of cards ready for me to write out to someone that I think needs a lovely card. I much prefer mail than emails in my life and always appreciate it when someone takes the time to write a nice note. N x
I absolutely love the ‘snap happy’ because I am forever looking at my life and wanting to take photographs so that I can recall those moments and be grateful for them. I simply must begin to start using your hashtag!
As you already know; I simply love your cards from when I spoke about them on fb! xx
I will send some love today! I had somehow ‘forgotten’ how lovely it is to receive a card or note out of the blue <3 Thank you Emma Kate for the reminder. Love all your tips btw <3
The tip I like most from Emma Kate is the one about being grateful. Every day I remind myself how grateful I am for being healthy, having a loving family and a good job. We should never take things as grated! Being grateful helps you appreciate even more what you have –it’s part of positive thinking.
Being grateful is something I embrace the most, especially with the fact Im deaf. I used to have very difficult time accepting who I am. But eventually as I grow older with life experiences, Im grateful that deafness is being given to me, because it made me feel more unique and different perspective in life and opened some “special” doors of opportunities. I use my deafness as an advantage to help others in many different ways. It is such a rewarding… of course, Im grateful for that! It would be great to have those great cards to send out to send surprise positive notes to my boyfriend in Washington D.C. while he attends a deaf university to finish his degrees and long distance relatives, especially my mom who lives 8 hrs away, she put up so much stuff with me when it came to my deafness. Im grateful for her patience and believing in me.
I love the card collection – and all of Emma’s designs. The one I love the most and connect with is “Dream Big Little One”. It really speaks to my inner child who at times is frightened of the world and frightened of stepping out of the ‘comfort zone.’ It reminds me to keep going and dreaming those dreams and visions. Thanks Emma – and thank you Julie for sharing such inspirational work.
For me, it’s ‘send love’. In a world dominated by social media, we often feel as though we’ve connected and engaged with the people we love when really it’s more of a one-sided conversation. In good times and in bad, there is nothing more special than having a tangible message of love to read, gaze at and hold on to — particularly if it has arrived in your mailbox as a surprise. I feel this is so important and it’s something so simply that’s so easily forgotten. I lost a dear friend recently and will forever wish I’d taken the time to send love to her before she left this world. Perhaps it could have changed her mind … I now pledge that I will send love as often as I can so the people who brighten my world each day know how much they mean to me.
Being grateful is something I need to remind myself of. Life is busy with so much happening, and plans for more adventures and busy-ness that i sometimes (often?) forget to sit and just be in the moment, to look around as appreciate all that fills my world with love and colour, to be present and grateful.
I love Dream Big Little One. It really taps into the innocence of childhood and how we should teach our kids that anything is possible. So inspiring!
Definitely the one that resonates so well with me is “send love”. I have a wonderful friend who every now and then will send a lovely card inscribed with her own precious thoughts. It can also be noted that she has gorgeous handwriting. I think I owe her a card, and would love to win this set so she can be the first to benefit!
Oh these living he(art)fully tips are so SO good!! I love the Send Love tip- but I already do that whenever I can because I enjoy receiving handwritten mail myself. My favourite tip is By Hand… Aside from writing letters I spend so little time doing REAL things that I love like cooking, crafting, scrapbooking, even just a gentle touch on my husbands arm. Sadly my hands are too often occupied by my iPhone (case in point!!)
Great post and LOVELY blog!
I really identified with ‘by hand’, in the last year or so I’ve started doing up furniture (just painting but still!) and sewing lovely things for my house and it’s great! I smile looking around at the things I’ve made, remembering what went into them and just generally being pleased that I’m creating my own environment.
kate1485 at hotmail dot com
I love the ‘you are my happy place’ card, I love the sentiment.
These are wonderful cards, it is great to find something meaningful and original. IMy favorite is ‘Dream Big Little One’ something we should all remember and practice
Snap Happy! I can’t control myself, I have to photograph and post up everything I eat!
For me its the being grateful line – we all spend too much time trying to do more and more and get more and more and dont recognise or appreciate what we have. Having recently lost a precious someone I try to be grateful everyday for what we did have together and for what I and my family have now.
Beautiful cards! I am making more of an effort to “send love” and help my children to take the time to also send some love. My six year old recently sent my brother-in-law a drawing and little story about spending time with his cousins in the holidays. They LOVED it and phoned to thank him (again sharing the love)
Def “oh how i miss your pretty face” my best friends (s once high school) lives 40 minutes away and we jsut can get it together to see other. I miss her. life is so busy with the kids now
I am forever doing something ‘by hand’. From a little girl i have braided my dolls hair, made furniture for my Barbie dolls, cross stiched beautiful pictures, made cards and stirred many a pot!! Using my hands grounds me, almost taking me to a mediatative state. I love creating something, it fulfills my soul and makes ME happy which follows thru to the family.
Such excellent living heartfully tips and such a beautiful card collection!
“Send love” resonates with me the most because it’s pricked my conscious and it’s something I appreciate so much when others send it to me. In recent years I’ve experienced some major life changes/challenges and some family and friends have been sorely neglected. Time to address the imbalance.
I really like the “oh how i miss your pretty face” one as that is very true at the moment my daughter has just left home this week. She is just 20 and so excited about moving out but the house is so quite without her.
How simple and how beautiful are these cards? I’m a hopeless romantic and my favourite is “You bring pink to my cheeks, red to my heart and colour to my soul”.
[...] Two of my very favorites, Julie Parker of Beautiful You and Emma Kate Creative are teaming up for a deliciously he{art}felt giveaway + shop discount. Skidaddle on over and check it out. [...]
Greatful is my favorite, I believe there is so much to be grateful for on good days and challenging days.
I love those tips. Thankyou Emma Kate and Julie for sharing them. My favourite at this moment would be “Send Love”. My sister recently moved three hours away, and one of my closest friends lives in the US, so keeping in contact is really important. I admit to having lost touch with the art of letter writing, and lately I have had the urge to create something delightful and personal to send to those that I love but can’t always be near. I have scoured for gorgeous Eco-friendly notecards, and these are just gorgeous! Thankyou again for a beautiful and inspiring post!
Thank you so much to everyone who entered this lovely giveaway. Emma Kate herself has chosen the winner to be Del. Congratulations!
Love the one about writing letters- it´s hard to find a way to communicate with people that´s convenient time-wise but also personal, and letters are both. writing letters has let me stay in touch with the people i care about most since getting to college, and getting one in the mail is so much fun!