01. Big Magic Series: Living Your Most Creative Life – Introduction

Hey, ya’ll! I’ve got something that I am so excited to share with you – something that has greatly impacted my life in an immensely positive way! Check it out…

A Bit of Background

Over the past few months (okay, like 7 months), I’ve been taking great strides to change my life for the better. I wasn’t living a life that was true to who I knew I could be. I wasn’t honoring my true self, in many aspects.  I knew I needed to make change and lots of it, but at first I wasn’t sure how. Then I just kind of jumped into it without looking. Since then, it’s been an interesting and life-changing journey. I’ve done a lot of hard work to get to know myself better, and to do more things to make my soul happy. I’ve had to make some terrifying decisions – like applying to graduate school and starting a business – but my life has dramatically improved since I started seeking out things that made me happy – since I started actively pursuing creative living.

Big Magic

Okay, enough about me. The point of this post is actually to introduce a new blog series I have been working on and am so excited to share with you. This is the first installment of the Big Magic Series: Living Your Most Creative Life.

Big Magic is an incredibly inspiring and motivational book by Elizabeth Gilbert (you probably know her as the author of Eat, Pray, Love). In this book, Gilbert shares her opinions of the process of creativity, inspiration, and how to really make the most of the talents we all have hidden inside of us. She gives reasons why and ways to push past the innate fear we all have in order to pursue creative living.

What I hope to do with this series is to break down the book by section and give you key insights and strategies to breaking through fear and discovering creative living, a la Elizabeth Gilbert.

So what will I get from this series?

This series is for anybody with an interest in creating. Whether you want to write a book, paint a picture, build a website, or start a business – those are all methods of creation! All lives are inherently creative, you just have to know how and where to look for inspiration.

With this series, I will be posting a couple times per week. Each post will delve into one of the sections of Gilbert’s book – Courage, Enchantment, Permission, Persistence, Trust, and Divinity. With each section, I’ll provide a worksheet to go along with it for free!

My goal for this series is for you to get strategies and motivation to live a more inspired, mindful life. I want to help you find that passion and develop a habit of mindfulness in order to actively pursue a creative life.

All lives are inherently creative, you just have to know how and where to look for inspiration.  –click to tweet

First Things First

Before we get started with this series, you definitely want to sign up by clicking the link below. When you subscribe, you’re allowing yourself to get the free, downloadable worksheets I’ll be sending out with each post of this series. The worksheets will include key points from the section I discussed in that entry, as well as tips and guidelines for how to implement that section into your life to help you live your most creative life!
Subscribe now!

Another thing I suggest is to go ahead and get yourself a copy of this amazingly inspirational book. You can get a copy on Amazon for $12 (just click the picture of the book at the top of the post). I promise, it’s money well-spent.

Be on the look out for the next post, soon!!

Saturday Spotlight – Lemon Chiffon Candle

This week’s Saturday Spotlight is this amazing triple-wick Lemon Chiffon scented soy candle. I can’t say enough good things about this candle I have available in my shop!

I absolutely love lemon-flavored and scented things! Lemon Heads have been one of my favorite candies since I was a kid, and I love loooooove lemon bars!! So, obviously I would jump at the chance to make a Lemon Chiffon scented candle!

The mouth-watering scent is light but thoroughly citrusy-sweet! It smells just like a lemon bar. I am seriously obsessed with this one. It’s definitely my current favorite!

 

So now I want to know, what’s your go-to scent or flavor?

Have we met?

Hey there, I’m Rachel! During the weekday I teach high school theatre, but my true passion is what happens after the workday. I am a budding creative entrepreneur, owner of Moon Dust Soul, my handcrafted candle business. On top of all of that, I’m also beginning my graduate studies very soon to earn my Masters of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Teaching is rewarding but exhausting, and I feel I can offer my skills and talents in other ways more beneficial to people. I know that I am not currently where I want to end up, but I take steps every day to build my dream life and I am really enjoying the journey.

When I’m not teaching teenagers how to be even more dramatic than they already are or getting covered in wax while making my newest candle collection, you can probably find me watching a true crime documentary, reading any type of book I can get my hands on, obsessively working on my planner, or snuggling up on the couch with my boyfriend, Josh…while probably doing one of the three aforementioned things.

Oh hey, that’s me!

I decided to start Moon Dust Soul at a chaotic point in my life. I actually didn’t *decide* to start anything, but one thing turned into another and before I knew it, I had a candle business. Let me back up. The summer of 2017 was a really big turning point in my life. I had recently gotten out of an unsatisfying, long-term relationship and was living on my own for the first time in my life. I was suddenly faced with this task that I had been avoiding my entire life – getting to know myself. I met that challenge and did everything I could that summer to really figure out who I am. I learned a lot about myself, grew more confident and independent, and learned that life is really about your passions. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t passionate about anything in my life. That had to change.

I’ve always loved crafting, and I’ve always been a creative person. Candle making was something I had never tried before, so in October of 2017 when I was looking for new hobbies, I figured I’d give candles a shot. I ordered my first basic supplies from Amazon, made my first candle (citronella, to fight the summer mosquitoes of Florida), and absolutely fell in love.

Below is the first candle I ever made, using a really refined and sophisticated process, clearly! (I’ve come a long way, folks.)

The process of candle making is cathartic for me. I find each action therapeutic and calming. When I’m making candles, that’s all I have to focus on and everything else just melts away. And also, I’m damn good at it. My boyfriend was the first person to encourage me to make something bigger out of this little hobby. Josh was so impressed with how easily I picked up the craft and made it my own, that he suggested I try to sell the candles. So I opened an Etsy shop, did three craft fairs in my first two months, and haven’t looked back!

He’s pretty much the greatest.

I have loved every bit of the adventure into creative entrepreneurship so far, and I know it’s only going to get more intense from here! Bring it on – I’m ready for it.