NATURAL FLOWISM STUDIOS

Welcome to the House Blog Area

WARNING: THIS IS NOT A CONVENTIONAL LIFESTYLE BLOG AREA BUT IN SOMEWAYS IT PROBABLY IS. HERE IS WHERE YOU WILL GET TO KNOW THE MOST NERVOUS SALES PERSON POSSIBLY EVER!

@naturalflowismstudios Where Therapy is the Process, and always part of Progress!

Well, I knew I would need a place like this it has been ages since I had a good sit down and write session...and no this is not an already written and copy and pasted in blog at all!

So, what do you think of my purple theme? I love it! I found it and it completely chilled me out! I thought to myself yes I am taking back my purple. I tended to gravitate toward a lot of lilac in my early days because to me that is completely from the family of blues which I love!

I am not a sales person the truth I cannot sell you anything even though I have a ton of things for sale, I am not even going to bother to try the things are there pick and choose for your own needs I cannot help you with jack shit!

But, dear God. Thank God I got to this page because now I can write out all my insecurities about the shop, and of course everything I love and have learned which is really a big thing to me right now. It has become my serious cleansing. Like, it is one thing to heal but to cleanse also opens you, and helps you soar from everything you are not.

Plus, I felt really out-there not being able to gush about how scared I was feeling.

Oh, today is the 27th of December 2022 and it is....14:06 that means it just after 2 in the afternoon!

Yeah...so...anyway this whole thing...I mean shop...started again when I decided to paint the re-enforced grey face emoji style sculptures Farrow & Ball oval room blue. So, hear the cry about Farrow & Ball whether I should say this or not but believe it or not I was so blessed, and fortunate enough to have by some odd fluke been out of work looked in the newspaper found this job in 2005 who I contacted the employer and said hire me until you can find yourself a permanent replacement, that is always my thing and line even to this day. This job was such a relief and this is what I probably should not say but I actually  got see Farrow & Ball's place down in Dorset which is one of the most gorgeous places in the UK, and it was lovely. The Job was brilliant and just what I needed to help me heal at that time. I never forgotten that experience.

Maybe, this is a good time to re-confirm how this shop is possible. 

Hello, my name is Lavinia De Ayr I am the Owner and Director here at NATURAL FLOWISM STUDIOS, AND HERE IN THE HOUSE of FLOWISM SHOP!

The reason I can wax lyrical about Farrow & Ball is because I am a UK based nation lorry driver. To me, it is a privileged position that as a lone parent I invested everything in, and I do not regret it one bit...and it has been beyond challenging for me to just simply move on with my life, and do better for us as a family. Working for your living ought not to leave your children traumatised, or leave them living with the effects of constantly being traumatised but sadly enough it has done just that, and that is not something I intended at all. I wanted to become a lorry driver to earn better money, and because physically I can rest as I work so to speak. I dare to say without spite everything would have turned out just right!

I am telling you when you get to these blogs there will be nothing but the truth of how I feel in them.

So, being a driver was the best prospects I had. Especially, as someone who really struggle with attachment, and control. I do not mind working as part of a team, but admittedly whilst working in an environment that has issues, as someone with issues too, there were clashes. All I ever wanted to do is provide a good, and easy life for me and my daughter and that is exactly what I am still doing, and will always be doing. However, there have been struggles with work place abuses with things such as: possessiveness, obsessiveness, things held onto, revenge, unnecessary disturbances, random jealously and parasitic mic taking as though there is no employment law, or behavioural guidelines...and as I have always said and will said again...I am not perfect I have got my ways about me...and I make mistakes not deliberately either. I am challenged full stop and end of story.

But, anyway just to say I am a Self-Funded Artist who did not know she was an artist or understand anything about what it is to run an Art based business. So, of you stick on here or keep coming back here you may just learn a thing or two or even more than that about what not to do simply because I have already made that mistake so you do not have too. Anyway, I funded everything here at the HOUSE of FLOWISM SHOP by being a UK based CLASS ONE LORRY DRIVER. 

RE:Farrow & Ball if you are wondering what happened. I passed by Class One Test  in 2005. I had got the job after I came back from Spain, I think we went to Murcia I think that is the spelling, and worked on that job twice and loved it at the time because it was so different and laid back than what can be the bitchiness and intrusiveness at the time of transport offices to honest.

I read something the other day, or was watching a short on instagram the other day which basically said this is not a direct quote but the gist of the advise was when God Blesses You the Devil is somewhere in the back or for running alongside that blessing. Well, bwoy mek me tell you dat true! Because eventually getting through my Class One was expensive in more ways than one. Once me done, it was like I could not be forgiven for trying my hardest to gain immediate experience and leaving behind that job. Dem people run behind me almost everywhere I went "she shouldn't of left" it all felt like coercion, and pure revenge. That is what I meant when I was referring to possessiveness. Now I am not saying the employer was behind what had happened but it upset someone, or something. Which leads me to remark that despite the many opportunities out there, or staff shortages some industries are a really difficult negotiation. Not everybody who employs employs to get a job done or position filled...and that is a concept I never had until I experienced what I experienced so that remark is a given thing, for real!

Thanks be to God for all challenges because there is surely a reason behind all of them, and I have been able to heal plenty because of them. So, I can only ever be grateful. I have loved my years a lorry driver, and I hope I have many more years within me. Right now, after working so hard to fund these stores and and studios. I am currently in receipt of Universal Credit which I am working to change hopefully sooner rather than later. Business is not seen as such under Universal Credit until the business actually makes money despite the many hours you put into it. I suffered a specific injury in early 2022 which I had no idea was as bad as it was. Had no idea it would take me a good 6 months to have x-rays, and have physio to heal the injury, there were other traumas than the one to my right shoulder. Being out on the road almost 12 to 18 hours a day at times which includes about 1.5 hour commute time was rough on me, so maybe the injury which led me to being physically incapacitated, and to unemployment so to speak must have been divine intervention. Because to be honest, I did not know how I was going to get all the work that needed to be done, done!

Nothing, goes immediately the retail market place these days as far as I am aware, can perceive and see is a very different place, and a very difficult place depending on what you are trying to shift for money. Presentation remains top of the agenda. It would seem, and that can be more than frustrating to someone entering the market place possibly with a vision but possibly without the organisation of resources, or know how to make things look good!

Yes! me ah talk about me!

The area from my empire waste down felt like the weight of the size of an entire country. The fear that rip through my soul because my store and products do not look remotely like boutique glamour online parlours. The feeling of disappoint and dissolution swept through me like having continual a continual irritation of having dust in your eyes. I had done it again, and it is still dank!

 I taped a 2 hour radio show the thing would not upload mind you the storage is still trying to transfer about 6,000 + items. "Don't you know that you never open a laptop or Pc with external storage attached?" "Evidently, not!"

Anyhow, the only way I could refer to the store is having a museum type aesthetic because that is all the styling I have right now. But, I hear a conversion in my ear...I suppose it is referring to the wax lyrical side of me, and the chatter is referring to my ability to write up, or write out anything as...writing fraud. Really? Who said that? Come on...fess up! How dare you? 

[Me deh yah...mmm...mmm...mmm...me dey ah back ah village...hmmm...mmm sorry one tune just lick me head]

Even though, it felt so good to be back in the store re-imaging everything the apprehension of the unknown and this dank arse critics voice on at me it doesn't look normal, it doesn't look boutique, it is too maximalist...excuse me isn't that just thing there years I have spent pinned to house tours, and odd finds doesn't that fit a shop like mine?

I realise what I want is glossy headers, but I have not set up a dedicated photography station as yet, and anyway not everything is out yet so what is this invisible dappy satan chatting about any how?

Anyhow so nearly everybody turn up blue nah not really. I do not know what it is with me and these faces, instead of me making a cute little cup I come out with these sculptures...but if you know or have understood me as an artist through me books you know I love a good face, I love to draw faces I see them everywhere even when people are not there I think even since I was a kid, you know. How I never put myself out as a portrait artist, I don't know it is because I never want to disappoint a person or get the translation of a person wrong, or translate their face in a shocking or disturbing way. But, I love still life and portraiture. You never know, also though I am an expressionist I still struggle with expressionism in portraiture. I do as I do, which is evidently not about being commercially viable but is about my truth. As self-centred as I am or come across being a solo artist with a multifaceted discipline is still kind of lost on me.

The sculpting just came naturally to me. I am always amazed at starting from nothing, and blankness and allowing Faith, Spirit, God, channel through. That is literally how I feel about it. I did not pick up Black Clay knowing that was the collection I was going to make at all. Because I am always looking at interior magazines, and thought they would make good tiles! Can you imagine. But they won't even though they are a resin finish!

Well, let me tell you about these finishes!

To bumba....to rass...why is it so difficult. Someone, namely me seemingly forgot that the whole concept of resin is that it hardens...woman just pours out the resin like gravy and almost mash up everything! !

That happened just as I got a brilliant set of block bookings which meant the full 18 hours out ah road, then many nights away from home. So, I still kept stocking the business in-between picking up kallax on the way home dumping everything and sleeping heading back to work with about just enough space left to access the microwave, cooker, and washing machine with absolutely no organisation by the time that job was done or was said to be done I had mash up my arm, was in  so much pain and going down hill fast. I couldn't get the shop out the way I imagined it. Plus, I couldn't lift anything for a while. I was on medication at the time due to diabetes every dose made me feel worse. All of that began happening from June 2022 it took me until really November 2022 to begin feeling myself again, I tell you that was some serious Divine Intervention!

 Going forward I would learning how to make the best of this websites, web pages features, and changing up the photography. It is amazing to me how easy it is to get completely lost if something does not turn out how you visualised it. Presentation is its own complete field of expertise which I now seriously appreciate. But, I thank every God that I could be re-inspired by my own works. I figured I would start behind this store because it is too big a gamble at present the way the things are to give each shop its own website. Even though given what I sell there are better orientated dedicated e-commerce website providers. But for now I will let these works be part of the extension to my music, and my lyrics because that is exactly what is happening here, and now.

This shop is an extension of Lavinia's Own Designs which was established 2021

 taking on the wackier side of home or office or wherever decor which gives me room to concentrate on Costume, and probably more closely fashion and textile design, God Willing of Course!

I am really self-conscious about some of my things being out dated even though I have no intention to be on trend. What really floats my boat is shabby chic. Scrubbed in and washed out whites I have loved that aesthetic since childhood. Fulham which backs on to Chelsea's antique shopping area has always been a great area for Interior Designers and suppliers to flourish, make no mistake about where my inspiration comes from to this day. Though, I do not know any of this proprietors but yet all their ability to be successful and maintain physical stores is more than just an amazing feat and is definitely not just down to a stroke of luck. It takes really hard work, clear vision, or the strength and courage it takes to have no vision but just to go with the flow. Retail is enormously hard work even though loveable, and thoroughly enjoyable and if very successful financially rewarding and beneficial but this all can take years of experience, or a very well organised healthy brain to me made easy, and get right that balance between offering your customer what they want whilst introducing what they may have never realised they could want, or may want in the future.

To me, having multiple businesses which began simply because I liked what is now my Mantra: NATURAL FLOWISM A FREEDOM OF BEING! it is has grown from there. 

How I think about business, and the business I have is first really about being truthful about myself. If I am deeply Honest. I want you to see me flaws and all.

But, secondly from the education I have had which began with taking a commerce class in I think it was 1982 whilst attending South Thames College in SW15 Putney area. How I see business is a product being created within a product. Regardless, whether a business if about service, or retail. Both are products which can both be sold. The Products within in business as itemised, bulk, or wholesale selling, and the business itself as a complete product with all the little or big itemised sales within it. For those who are learning I do believe the latter area of business is possibly also know as an acquisition if attractive enough. How I came to understand and begin to think about that as a possibility was I kept being sent letters by acquisition claiming there, maybe people interested in buying your business, there was no one. But the idea just spoke volumes to me about the possibilities out there which is good to know they are. 

I struggled emotionally, mentally, and even neurologically with abuses, and the effects of assault my whole life, like so many other survivors. Therefore, I have no problem stating or showing where or when I am challenged, or by who or what.

Well, I think this is the end of this throw down session. I am so grateful to be here I do not even care if you do or don't like what I do...for true...but I mean that in the best way possible. It just means I am finally surrendering to who I am in this process, and I have no control over when the powers that be are going to take me to within  this journey. All I know to do is to be Thankful, and Grateful to be here!

Thank You for Joining me and Supporting on my Journey into the Unknowing. I pray that you are blessed, and that I am too!

Take Care 

Until, you hear from me again!

Thank You for Shopping at the

HOUSE of FLOWISM SHOP

This is Lavinia De Ayr Reporting from Behind the Scenes of Freedom of the Shop

NATURAL FLOWISM

A FREEDOM OF BEING!