Hello Creative Friends, When you exist inside an artwork, for better or worse, everything that gets added to that work gets compared to the original work as a reference point. If you're happily painting a pink canvas for 30 years, and then suddenly decide it's more in alignment for you to change it to blue, those first strokes of blue will look "wrong." They won't "fit." They might look "disordered." Even if those strokes are heading in the direction you want to go. In this episode I expound upon this metaphor as a way to reflect on our approach to disorders in society. Specifically in regards to my own diagnosis in 2007 of ADHD. Over the years, I began to revise my relationship with that label, and how knowledge of artistry related to those narratives. While not everyone listening to this episode has ADHD, we are increasingly living on a planet where everyone is experiencing being "disordered." In this episode I explore that story. Is that the most supportive way of explaining the challenges people feel with living and creating this earth artwork together? Is there possibly a more aligned way? Love, Becca LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator in Austin, Texas. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends, The crux of this podcast, my art, my business (and heck, my life) is making in tandem with something that is bigger. I first posted about this in 2022, and it was the most listened to episode of that year. I have talked about this on and off since, entirely in a positive way. In this episode I want to talk about the challenges that arise when you begin to prioritize creating in this way. We all are living in a world that still creates using external metrics. When you begin making art with something bigger, rather than making with the market or economy, with what your colleagues, friends, or family think, or with what institutions teach, you will (for better or worse) look "crazy" to them. In this episode I share a few ways I've navigated this, and continue to try to remain true to something bigger in the face of confusion from others. While I do believe this process is never-ending, I hope this episode helps you keep from doing the most insidious thing of all when making with something bigger: gaslighting and doubting yourself. Love, Becca LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com Links from episode: https://alyssamalehorn.com https://www.tarotforthewildsoul.com https://drjoedispenza.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator in Austin, Texas. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends, This podcast is about the "soup" of our world. The stuff between the stuff. So it's no surprise that episodes like to delve into the vague, mysterious and abstract. However we live on a planet that also has stuff. Sometimes as artists it can feel seductive to condemn that stuff outright. In today's episode I recorded about one of the earthly things i used to outright condemn... My Day Job. In the episode I reference work from artist Sean McCabe, who has also removed his work entirely from the internet for now. Here's a link to one of his last items: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgn7sr4PNrg. McCabe taught years ago via his YouTube channel about treating the day job as the most powerful ally an artist has. To me, this was almost blasphemous. The day job felt like something one day I wanted to damn. How could it possibly be my friend? I listened to his advice however, and it became one of the strongest roots of my business. In the absence of being able to access his wisdom online right now, I am sharing it with you. Love, Becca LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator in Austin, Texas. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends, This episode is a follow up to last week's Art as a Threshold, however as always it's also a standalone episode. In this episode I talk about one of the fundamental aspects of my work as an artist... My Art Kid. Not my human kid. Not an imaginary friend. The part of me that is a kid. The part that never leaves. The part that caretakes one of the most precious things I have as an artist... the gateway to 'something bigger.' She is the part of me that knows exactly what I'm here to do, and exactly how I want to do it. She is also the part of me that I told buzz off as a teenager, desperately trying to fit into the "responsible adult world." I think most of us dump on our Art Kids a lot as we grow older. Most of the struggles we have making things are rooted in a fractured relationship with our Kid. In this episode we talk about who an Art Kid is, what it's like to commune with them, what it's like not to commune with them, and why you Kid is one of the most threatening things to the toxic status quo in your life, as well as the world. Love, Becca LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator in Austin, Texas. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends, Happy New Year! As we cross the threshold from 2023 to 2024, I want to talk about another threshold we encounter… our art. This aspect of artistry is so rarely talked about, and even more seldomly acknowledged, that I wanted to begin The Secret Sauce year 2024 delving into it. Sources from the episode: YOUR ELUSIVE CREATIVE GENIUS https://youtu.be/86x-u-tz0MA?si=PoW6N87czV2xIF2j BIG MAGIC: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Magic-Elizabeth-Gilbert-audiobook/dp/B00U08ECQA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=64516392708&hvadid=617073578152&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9028310&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=1639435996263030543&hvtargid=kwd-299658545899&hydadcr=21128_13393252&keywords=big+magic&qid=1704838673&sr=8-1 Love, Becca Referenced in this episode: Creator of Princess Mononoke:

Hello Creative Friends, This episode is, in some ways, piggy backing off "Art Will Save Us" posted a few weeks back. But in other ways, it's a standalone episode. Creating is often a largely solitary act. Even those of us who create in groups, like perhaps a choir or theater, have a very solitary experience that can make us wonder: Does this even matter? Like, does my ability to paint a bowl of apples function in any larger system? Does it do anything outside of making a wall more colorful? In some ways, a bowl of apples might just be about apples. It might be purchased by a restaurant, and people will regard it simply as a a painting of food. But there are many times where the things we make go out into the world and enter the Secret Sauce. The Soup. And the soup is doing its own thing. And in those moments our work is part of something else. As we enter 2024, can our awareness of the Soup... even if it's amorphous and mysterious... help us feel less alone and more meaningful in the ways we make things. Love, Becca Referenced in this episode: Creator of Princess Mononoke: Hayao Miyazaki LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator in Austin, Texas. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends, This episode was recorded on July 4th, 2023. I LOVE this episode. It's one of my favorite recordings on this podcast. I also included an introduction explaining why I tabled it for 5 months. I can't speak for everyone listening to this, but I know a fair number of us feel decidedly unfree in many aspects of our lives. We also live in a culture that for better or worse, equates "freedom" with "lack of limits." It can leave many of us, especially artists with profound limitations on their work and lives, wondering why they should even bother taking creative risks, making wild new things, or stepping into artistic arenas at all. In this episode I unpack a new narrative in my own life and work around what it means to be free... even when we're buried under limitations. Obviously the words 'freedom' and 'limitation' will conjure up very different stories and experiences for each person listening. Can our greatest limitations be an inroad to our greatest freedom? Can we consider this idea without bypassing how truly unfair and toxic limitations can be? Can we embrace a new story that helps us create wildly expansive outcomes, without gaslighting ourselves into toxic positivity? If you've pondered these questions: I think the Art Freedom Paradox might have some nuggets just for you. Love, Becca Referenced in this episode: Jan Heaton: http://janheaton.com/ LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator in Austin, Texas. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends, This episode is a nod to a holiday episode I did in 2020 around the Christian Christmas Story. That said, this episode has something for EVERYONE. Especially folks who aren't Christian, don't recognize Christmas, or have been wounded by religion. Are there ways the Christmas Story might be expansive enough to include ideas about making and birthing ANYTHING to save us... not just a human baby? This episode was intentionally recorded to piggy back on the last episode: Art Will Save Us. The Christmas Story says a human baby will come save us. That very well may be true. This episode isn't an argument for or against the Christmas Story. Far from it. Instead I'm wondering if there's an expansion to the Christmas Story that includes more than a teenage girl in a stable. What if there's a story that includes you and me? LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator in Austin, Texas. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends, This episode is a call. The culture has narrowly defined artistry in the past, and has limited the ways we engage with making things. It has become downright brazen to suggest that art can save us. But is it? This idea has certainly has been trumpeted from artists across space and time. But like many beautiful ideas, the practical implications get "lost in the sauce." For example: How does art save? Often it feels like a nice platitude, but in the face of really tough stuff, also a little like frosting. Can art truly heal humanity? If you've found yourself contemplating even a morsel of this idea, this episode is for you. LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator in Austin, Texas. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends! This episode is about creative wounding... something we ALL know about. Why is art uniquely lovely and painful at the same time? How has the culture narrowly defined artistry in the past, and how has that limited the ways we engage with medicinal qualities of making things? Have you found yourself so drawn to making certain things, and simultaneously certain you have no business doing those thing? Can this kind of wounding have an artistic purpose in and of itself? This episode is for you. From the episode: Jan Heaton: http://janheaton.com/ Music at the end: https://open.spotify.com/track/4YeKAwFn69ehnciOfi7Sbf LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends! This episode is especially for ME this month. In fact, almost all of these episodes are for me... and by proxy YOU, because we're all doing this shit in the same sauce. Whether we know it directly or not, what we're contending with in our lives at this very moment is 100% relevant to what every other person on this blue and green planet is contending with... more or less. This episode is about a stage of every creative work, whether it's in life or art. THE UGLY MIDDLE. There's no way to avoid this stage, but our current predatory capitalist structure shouts the opposite at us daily. If what you're making is ugly, you have no business making that thing. The truth is however, the ugly middle happens to literally everyone. Including "master artists" (or whatever that means.) In this episode I unpack the ways this looks for one of my truly skilled painter friends, for myself, my students, and how it shows up in life. Are you making ugly stuff? You my friend, are doing it right. From the episode: Paula Nelson: http://www.whoanelson.com/ LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends! This episode is for everyone who feels like an imposter making things... So Everyone. Myself included. Especially myself. As we navigate a time of massive collective change, the stories we tell around artistry are changing too. One of those stories is about "who is an artist, and who isn't. Who should be making art, and who shouldn't." As old stories around these topics shift, so is the ground under our creative feet. How are new stories around artistry better prepared for helping us live better lives? How are we going to incorporate those better narratives into our creative practices? LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends! It's been over two months since the last episode. I've been in a period of great transition artistically, and as I navigate what that looks like, I've been asking myself a lot of questions about what being an artist means to me. For most of recorded post-Renaissance history, the Arts have been relegated to the entertainment section of society. When a Broadway actress steps out onto the stage, she's thinking about entertaining the audience... less commonly is she thinking about healing them. We know Art does so much more than entertain, and yet since we live in a culture that is deeply suspicious of things we can't quantify, the ways our Arts create healing is acknowledged sure, but rarely honored. In this episode I unpack the ways Art has created healing in my life, how making it can create healing for others, and how that collides with capitalist art structures. What does it mean for you as a maker to negotiate your art practice with healing and making money? LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

It's 2023, Art Friends! We are opening the new year with a sweet episode about January, the year ahead, and making change. I believe artists are being called to expand into new ways of thinking about creative change. Rather than big sweeping swing for the fence that leave us exhausted and poised to fail, how can we lean into the power of change that "simply happens on it's own" in small bits over time? This is a big deal for artists in 2023. We've been taught a lot of unsustainable things about creative change that leave us burnt out and dis-regulated. In this episode we dive into the ways Pop Artist Andy Warhol's screen prints can provide us with a helpful framework for embracing new modalities of creative change in 2023. LINKS: Website: http://beccajborrelli.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/ Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband, son, and their super-pups Layla and Rose.

Hello Creative Friends, Is Art Making and Life Making always active? When we think of an artist, we think of someone painting, composing or dancing. When we think of someone living we think of them out and about, working, running errands, and traveling. The truth however, is that massive creative aspects of our art and lives are not active. They are quiet, internal... pregnant with something. The culture does a poor job of educating us on this aspect of making life and art. Whole societies of people completely skim over the quiet, internal creative work that is so important to making new things. This sounds inconsequential, until you consider it in other terms. Imagine going into active labor with a human child and then once it was over, going into labor again. And again. It sounds silly, and yet look around at the planet. There is evidence of human, social and systemic breakdown that absolutely results from unsustainable creative cycles such as perpetual labor without pause. How would our lives change irrevocably for the better as we learned to honor and tend to pregnancy periods in our lives and art? ABOUT THIS PODCAST Welcome to Secret Sauce, a podcast about the secret ingredients in life and work, hosted by Becca Borrelli.Secret Sauce explores artistry as a helpful framework for inspiring meaning and understanding in our everyday lives. ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband and their super-pups Layla and Rose. Website: beccajborrelli.com

It's election season! In this episode I take on the beastly challenge of using Art to expand our perspective on voting, considering candidates, issues, and politics in general. Disclaimer, this episode offers far more questions than answers, however they are questions that are largely absent from our shared political discourse. They are also questions that (if we can hold them) might serve us tremendously as we make decisions about how we vote. Art can be a fantastic anchor for reframing how we live our lives, and that includes voting. ABOUT THIS PODCAST Welcome to Secret Sauce, a podcast about the secret ingredients in life and work, hosted by Becca Borrelli.Secret Sauce explores artistry as a helpful framework for inspiring meaning and understanding in our everyday lives. ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband and their super-pups Layla and Rose. Website: beccajborrelli.com

Hello Creative Friends, We are living through some doozie of times. I suppose every generation has said this, but WOO what a few years we've navigated. Art can be fantastically supportive at how we look at things. In this episode I deep dive into Impressionist painter Claude Monet and his art as an anchor for how we can look at our own art, our lives, and the world. Full disclosure, I'm a trained artist, art educator, and business owner. I am not the beefiest when it comes to art history. This episode does it's best to unpack certain aspects of Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism and the portions of the 19th and 20th centuries they spanned, but for those of you history geeks, I might have messed on some details. Let me know! Lastly, this episode contains triggering topics. The content references: politics, religion, sexuality and discrimination. Please consider your needs and listen if it is right for you. ABOUT THIS PODCAST Welcome to Secret Sauce, a podcast about the secret ingredients in life and work, hosted by Becca Borrelli.Secret Sauce explores artistry as a helpful framework for inspiring meaning and understanding in our everyday lives. ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband and their super-pups Layla and Rose. Website: beccajborrelli.com

Hello Creative Friends, In 2016 when I launched my illustration business I posted a light comparison to "what I imagined" was a similarity between birthing a business and birthing a baby on social media. Woo! Was that a touchy subject! A lot of parent friends had an opinion on that one... and they were spicy. Interestingly however, parents who also worked for themselves all agreed: Business and Babies were similar. This episode is about one of the similarities I've noticed now that I have firsthand experience with and Babies: They are catalysts for healing. The culture doesn't talk about this very often. In this episode I want to unpack the way that the crunchiness, discomfort, and downright pain of creating with our children/ creating with our art is in fact an entrance point into re-creating fresh new versions of ourselves. ABOUT THIS PODCAST Welcome to Secret Sauce, a podcast about the secret ingredients in life and work, hosted by Becca Borrelli.Secret Sauce explores artistry as a helpful framework for inspiring meaning and understanding in our everyday lives. ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband and their super-pups Layla and Rose. Website: beccajborrelli.com

Hello Creative Friends, I'm excited to back for this episode. It's been a minute. In this episode I talk about a topic that's near and dear to my heart: Using art making as a model for making tough decisions. In April of this year I shuttered most of my art business, even at the height of its success, to focus on my new son. No one was more surprised than me, to make that decision. Big decisions often bring up a lot of turmoil. There have been large decisions in my life that have absolutely wrecked my quality of life. Over the years I've learned a lot about navigating those decisions in ways that preserves my well-being. Over time I realized those ways had a lot in common with being an artist. Artists have so much in their arsenal that they don't realize. We're all taught to focus on the things we lack and improve upon them. In this episode I made the case that certain parts of the artistic mindset can be a tremendous ally to us as we make large life choices. ABOUT THIS PODCAST Welcome to Secret Sauce, a podcast about the secret ingredients in life and work, hosted by Becca Borrelli.Secret Sauce explores artistry as a helpful framework for inspiring meaning and understanding in our everyday lives. ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband and their super-pups Layla and Rose. Website: beccajborrelli.com

Hello Creative Friends, I'm excited to back for this episode. It's been a minute, and I'm hoping by late 2021, Secret Sauce will be getting a new facelift and more regular content for YOU. In this episode we talk about how "THE HOW" in our art-making is just as artistic as the WHAT. I tell some stories about how I've seen this play out in my own life and career, however as always the stories are about YOU. I'd like to make a case that when artists focus on how they make things, it's a game changer for art, work and life. In many ways, the HOW is the X-Factor in creative industries. It's the thing that differentiates some artists from the many. It's hard to quantify, and our culture still struggles with the invisible things. Thankfully artists have a leg up here. Listen as we talk about ways you can incorporate conscious use of process and "how" in your own art... and of course work and life. SPONSOR: This episode was sponsored by The HeART School: The Art isn't what we MAKE. The Art is YOU. Join to see how making things with others creates more calm, peace and presence in your life. Discover the joy of being embraced by others on your creative adventures. ABOUT THIS PODCAST Welcome to Secret Sauce, a podcast about the secret ingredients in life and work, hosted by Becca Borrelli.Secret Sauce explores artistry as a helpful framework for inspiring meaning and understanding in our everyday lives. ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing adult coloring books, interactive murals, and speaking to organizations about mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of art-making. Clients include Visa, Dell Children’s Hospital, Austin Independent School District, University Hospital- Cleveland, the Austin Downtown Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League. Becca is most inspired by the invisible connections between all things. Her work aims to be a playful, bright, and hopeful interpretation of the world's whimsical and magical sides. She has fallen in love with her hometown in Austin, where she spends free time exploring nature and hunting for breakfast tacos with her husband and their super-pups Layla and Rose. Website: beccajborrelli.com Instagram: @beccaborrelliart