I never thought I’d be the type to map out an entire year.
For decades I lived from launch to launch, reacting to opportunities and scrambling to meet deadlines.
But as 2025 draws to a close and my Foundations students wrap up their projects, I find myself sitting at my old table with an iPad, a mug of coffee and a sense of calm I haven’t felt in years.
In this reflective solo episode of Creative Juggle Joy, I share how planning all of 2026 has given me breathing space and renewed energy.
It wasn’t always like this.
Last year, I tried to sketch out six months ahead, but life happened, collaborations popped up, and my outline gathered dust. I did keep track of what I did, for the most part, in my planner. That helped me with this year's planning immensely.
Yet that little bit of planning was gold: it showed me where students had energy, when I needed rest, and what rhythms flowed naturally.
Rhythm over reinvention
That rhythm is the gift of experience.
We now know our cornerstones: Procreate Foundations, Affinity Designer Foundtions, Mastering Surface Pattern Design, Bloom & Repeat, our two 5‑card challenges, Template Club releases and Thrive Sessions. Instead of reinventing the wheel, my team and I refine and polish.
Kaylie can plan marketing months in advance; I can batch six months of content in December/January and still have room to explore art licensing, craft new collections and take afternoons to sketch for joy.
Courage to Let Go and Try Something New
Planning has also given me courage.
I recently left one art licensing agent and decided to pitch my own portfolio in the near future.
With coaching from Vanessa’s Ness Art Business Bootcamp, I’m building new collections and preparing for a fresh round of outreach.
It feels like coming full circle—returning to the artist who landed a Hallmark contract by chance at an art market, but this time with intention and experience.
I’m equally excited about upgrades coming to Procreate and Affinity Designer.
I’ve set aside time to learn version 3 on the desktop, so that when the iPad update arrives I can guide my students through the changes. This flexibility is only possible because I’ve scheduled breathing room.
An invitation to you
If you’re listening and thinking, “I don’t have time to plan an entire year,” I hear you. Start small. Grab a notebook or download my Free Goal Planner from the show notes.
Jot down the seasons you love to create, the projects you dream about, the breaks you need. Planning isn’t about perfection; it’s about direction. When you see your year on paper it stops feeling like chaos and starts feeling like design.
Experience has taught me that laying a good foundation pays off. The Affinity Designer course I created with Colleen Underwood two years ago is now at the core of our advanced classes and Template Club.
That early groundwork allows us to refine rather than reinvent. I hope this inspires you to give yourself the gift of a plan—for your art, your business and your joy.
You can support the show here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2397445/support
Can’t see the episode player above? Click here to listen to the full episode.
Resources or businesses mentioned in this episode
· Bloom & Repeat (surface pattern design Workshop)
· Procreate App & Procreate Foundations course
· Affinity Designer version 3 & Affinity Designer Foundations course
· Ness’s Art Business Bootcamp (Vanessa’s program)
· Free Goal Planner download (link to be added or confirm if free or paid)
· Thrive Sessions:
Thrive is a one-hour creative business meetup open to all—whether you're part of my membership or just stopping by to grow alongside like-minded creatives.
It’s a supportive space to dive deep into the highs and lows of running a creative business, share ideas, tackle challenges, and hold each other accountable.
We talk about everything under the sun, from setting clear goals to boosting motivation, all while offering fresh perspectives and genuine support. It’s not just about business—it’s about building a community where creativity thrives.
Meeting Link for every Tuesday: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85243451725?pwd=8AtwJS5HGhqgOnwfRSGbdqLbXXdY1Y.1
Passcode: Thrive
Affiliate disclaimer
Some links in this post may be affiliate links, which means either Kaylie or Delores may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you). We only share tools or products we genuinely love and use ourselves.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hello my lovely. It's Delores here, coming to you from Sunny, Manitoba, Canada. You're listening to Creative Juggle Joy, where we talk about the real behind the scenes of running a creative business and still finding joy in the process. Today's episode is all about planning ahead. Not the stressful kind, but the kind that actually feels really, really good because for the first time ever, I have the entire year, all of 2026 mapped out, and it feels amazing.
Last year I made a real effort to plan ahead. I remember sitting down with my iPad, a big mug of coffee and thinking, okay, let's just try to see six months ahead, but. Of course life happened. Everything kind of got mixed up. Launches shifted. [00:01:00] Collaborations popped up, and before I knew it, I was back in reaction mode and I remember.
Looking back at that outline that I had written, and I hadn't even looked at it for two months. So still that partial plan actually helped me because in my mind I knew exactly how I wanted the year to pan out. So it turned out to be gold because this year I could look back and actually see a rhythm.
Where things worked, where students had energy and where I actually needed more breathing room. I tried to record things in my planner, so things that happened, anything that popped up, what I was working on on specific days, and that kind of hindsight when I was doing this planning this week, gave me the confidence to map out everything for 2026 every class.
Every [00:02:00] challenge, every workshop. Putting that all down on paper for the first time felt like exhaling. After holding my breath for two years, one of the best parts has been realizing our programming is finally solid. We've got this great cadence now our. Big Cornerstone offers like Bloom and repeat for mastering surface pattern design.
The two five card challenges that we do, the template club releases the Thrive Sessions. My three major courses, they all flow naturally now through the year. We've nailed the rhythm instead of constantly. Reinventing and trying to work it out. We're now at the stage where we're refining, this'll be the second full year of running this schedule, which we kind of had started the year before that.
And so I think, I really think we've got it worked out [00:03:00] and gosh, it just feels so peaceful. It also helps my team, especially Kaylie now, she can plan all of the marketing calendar. Months ahead so she knows exactly what's coming up and she can now fit in new clients because she knows when I'll need her the most.
So this is really fun for both of us to see, and for us, it is just less chaos and more clarity. That predictability is something every creative entrepreneur dreams about. Trust me, I have been chasing that carrot for years. You know, when we've run creative businesses for a while, we realized planning isn't about restriction.
Honestly, at first, I was. Really kind of hesitant to do it. 'cause I felt like, ugh, that feels like work. Like I really, I'm gonna have to, you know, work around a schedule. But in the end, that [00:04:00] routine to me is all about freedom. It gives me breathing space. It helps me create with a rhythm. It helps me create without panic.
It helps me serve my students the way I want to and not just react to what's next. That's what I'm most excited about for 2026, honestly. And right now I'm in full recording mode, to probably most of January, I'm gonna batch at least six months worth of content. I can't go too far ahead because I know my two main programs, procreate and Affinity Designer are planning major updates, especially on the iPad.
So I'm kind of not getting too far ahead, but I think that will. Really help me open up more time later in the year and also give me time for the art licensing and portfolio work that I've been wanting [00:05:00] to do and working on for the last few months, and even give me some slow afternoons of sketching or drawing or creating projects just for fun.
I have even scheduled to in a week of holiday, if you can believe it. This kind of creative play I have to do when I am in the mood and I think that the way I have things scheduled, I can do some of those things. All the things I've been dreaming about, I can start to put into play because I've got everything else kind of worked out.
Of course. No plan is perfect. I'm sure, especially with the tech involved. And especially with those two major upgrades to procreate an affinity designer, I know that those are things that could throw me a curve ball, but you know what? At least I've kind of got it in the back of the mind that it could be something and I'm more mentally prepared for it than if it just came up without me [00:06:00] knowing about it.
You know what I mean? It makes recording tricky, but I can still record with the old version. And I can then do just little updates possibly to show things that have changed. But I think in a way, it makes it really exciting for the students as well, because everybody's waiting. I'm not the only one waiting for this new software to come out, so I can be helping them prepare and.
It's exciting that I can work on Affinity three on the desktop, which I haven't really taken a lot of time to do in Affinity Designer in general. So because I can work on the desktop, I'm thinking that's gonna give me a whole new outlook and I'll be really prepared when it comes to the iPad. It's gonna be really awesome.
From what I can see and what has changed in it on the desktop, I think it really is going to become an industry leader. Millions of people have downloaded it. I heard that last week, 3 million people or something. [00:07:00] So I think there's a few people coming over to the dark side, and I'm excited. I'm actually really proud to be teaching it.
So glad that I did all the work with Colleen Underwood two years ago then. Together, we created the Affinity Designers Foundations course, and I don't think we realized at the time how central it would become. Now everything from advanced classes that I'm doing, alumni classes that I did for foundations and the Template Club, all of that ties back to that early work.
It's proof. Proof for me. I know that good groundwork really pays off. So this new level of organization doesn't mean that I'm busier. So that's one of the things about a schedule and having it all mapped out that I'm really loving. It helps me to just be more strategic. There's a lot less anxiety for me [00:08:00] moving into this year and.
I am really excited, like pumped. I can look at this year and think I know what's coming up. I know what's happening in March. I know what's happening in June. I know what's happening in October, and that gives me space to breathe again, and I, I'm not just randomly filling time with projects that I think I might need.
I'm not chasing deadlines anymore. I am walking towards them at a comfortable pace and for both me and Kaylie, since we're still. In the growing stages of our businesses, this structure will really help us serve our people better. We can plan the launches successfully and thoughtfully. We can deliver consistent content and we'll still have time for.
The rest of our lives, our family, and our rest. And for me, I know it's, I need time for the projects, for the creation, for really digging deep [00:09:00] into the illustration work that I do and selling it myself, you know, doing my own thing, my art licensing. That has really been the core of everything that I teach.
That is definitely a big focus for me for 2026, the art licensing. That's something I've been quietly building behind the scenes. I have left the services of one agent behind and I am going to pursue pitching on my own. So I have been working on a fresh portfolio, new collections. And getting everything together so that I can do that pitching on my own.
I've been getting some wonderful coaching through Vanessa's art business with Ness Bootcamp, which is a year long mentorship for people who are moving into art licensing or. [00:10:00] Reigniting their art licensing. It has been a really great way to just keep me on track and to me it feels like coming full circle.
It's like back to the artist part of me, I started in art licensing without having an agent and without ever knowing. Or understanding anything about pitching. It was dropped in my lap, honestly. Just a chance. Meeting with some people at a craft sale, an art market I was in, those people owned some Hallmark stores and I got my first art licensing contract without even knowing what art licensing was all about.
And now having taught for years and having built a school and supported thousands of students, now I can finally get some time to pour some energy back into my own thing. I think it makes me feel [00:11:00] more. Legitimate and I like the validation of being able to sell my own work. I do have another agent that sells my large abstract work, and I also do sell direct through a couple of places.
Card Isle being one of my favorites, but I think. Pitching to new clients is going to be super fun and will put me in the same shoes as all of you out there who are trying to make a living selling your art. And I think every creative deserves that. Every creative deserves to have a plan that supports both their businesses that they're running and their art practice.
Not one or the other, but. For me, it's both. If you're listening and you're thinking, well, I don't have time to plan my whole year. That's me last year and that year before I totally get it. I mean, really you can start [00:12:00] small. And I think when I look back now, I did start and I started small, so I didn't have a color coded spreadsheet.
I didn't have anything even on paper in most cases. I just kind of had rough dates of when I was going to be doing particular things. But if you were to take just an hour and grab a notebook or grab a calendar. Write down what you already know. Write down things like the seasons you love to create in write down projects that you definitely wanna do.
Write down some times that you know you'll need a break. I think that was one of my big mistakes too, was not. Putting in those periods when I should have planned for time to go to the lake or time to take a trip. I hadn't planned those in, so then sometimes they just didn't [00:13:00] happen because I felt too pressured at the time to take the time.
So just put in some of the things that you know, and that's a bit of a plan, right? Even a rough one helps. I actually have a free goal planner that you can download, and I was looking at it the other day because I'm kind of looking ahead to procreate foundations that's coming up in the spring, and this is one of the things that I give as part of the course and.
I have within it all the spaces where you can do this planning and also there's a calendar there and you can download additional pages for it if you want to do your whole year up. So I'm gonna put the link for the free goal planner. It's something I usually just give away through procreate Foundations, but I'd love for you to take a look at it.
I think it's a pretty simple one. It's a great starting point for you. If you fill it out even roughly, you're [00:14:00] gonna start to see your year take shape and you know, put in things like training or classes you might be considering taking. Put those things in there so that you feel as though you're allowing yourself that time for development.
Remember that these are not New Year's resolutions. They're not written in stone. They're not about perfection, they're about direction. Plans evolve and they should evolve, but writing them down is the first act of committing to yourself. This time, for me, always feels like a clean slate. I love that I'm wrapping up my foundation's course.
I don't really have anything other than making projects and recording, and so this is a good time for me to just sort of feel like the load has been lifted off my shoulders. It's about building on what's already working.
That's what experience gives you. Granted, I have had years of [00:15:00] this, but what this gives me is. I'll look back at finding patterns and proof and just general peacefulness, that feeling of, you know what? This is working. So if you've been putting off your planning, take it from me. It's really, really worth it.
It changes how you work, it changes how you rest, and it changes how you feel about moving forward with your business. And I know some of you may not even be planning a business. Per se, but maybe just in the back of your mind, there's that little spark there and you want to explore it. Why not just take the time to, even if it's your dreams, and your dreams and plans for something that could happen, why not put those down on paper?
I think you'll start to see how everything connects, how anything that you're doing, all of your creative energy, maybe your marketing rhythm, your joy, if you're [00:16:00] doing things like launches, it'll help you. When you see it on paper, it stops feeling like chaos, and it starts feeling like. A design, and that to me is the best part.
Thanks so much for listening today. If you'd like that free goal planner I mentioned, you can find it in the show notes. And as always, keep creating, keep juggling, and most importantly, keep finding joy in the process.