Welcome to The Opaque Elephant: a space for mindful living, self-reflection, and nature-inspired growth.
I’m Kirstin: a creative workshop facilitator based in the East Midlands.
What is The Opaque Elephant?
The Opaque Elephant is my little corner of the internet, where I explore finding happiness, balance, and purpose in your 30s through wellness practices, creativity, and connection to nature. Mostly, it’s about finding the magic in the everyday.
With a background in education and years of experience teaching around the world, I’ve seen first-hand how gentle encouragement, self-reflection, and simple creative tools can help people cultivate more joy, self-awareness, and fulfilment in everyday life. It’s what inspired this venture – to bring that to people in a more tangible way, through sharing art, resources, and creative workshops.
The Face Behind The Opaque Elephant
As mentioned, I’m Kirstin. I have over ten years of experience in teaching in different contexts, where I developed a range of skills in facilitating learning around the world. I’ve always loved guiding people to learn something new, but found myself desiring a life that celebrated creativity more than solely prepared people to sit examinations, and so The Opaque Elephant was born!
Starting off with just a blog, I now offer a range of free resources on this website, physical products, and creative workshops in Nottinghamshire.
As a creative wellness facilitator based in the East Midlands, I bring together my skills in writing, photography, symbolism, and reflective practice to support others in cultivating self-awareness, joy, and purpose, rooted in my own experiences on a mindful and spiritual journey.
My Mission: Why I Create Mindful Art Workshops & Reflective Spaces
The Opaque Elephant was born from a simple idea: that we can all benefit from moments of mindful living. My mission is to help people create those moments – through journaling, meditative art, symbolic reflection, or community connection.
I believe mindful living is not about perfection, but about presence. It’s about meeting yourself where you are, and gently nurturing growth, curiosity, and creativity. As I embarked on my own journey, I started creating resources and activities for myself to embrace it, and decided to share these with the world.
My Approach & Values
When you join a workshop or use one of my resources, you can expect a space that is:
- Accessible & welcoming: no artistic experience required, just curiosity.
- Reflective & supportive: encouraging you to slow down and explore your own thoughts.
- Creative & playful: making room for experimentation without pressure.
- Nature-inspired: drawing lessons and metaphors from the world around us.
Wellness Resources on the Blog
On the blog, you’ll find a plethora of different resources that explore:
- Wellness practices for self-compassion and balance
- Creative exercises to reconnect with your imagination and spark inspiration
- Reflective journaling prompts to help you explore your thoughts and emotions
- Nature-inspired activities to slow down and find beauty in the world around you.
It has always been my intention to provide accessible and well-researched resources to anyone who might need them. I hope you find them useful!
Physical Products & Premium Resources
Eventually, the blog expanded into a decision to create a range of wellness resources. Starting with handmade trinkets and supplies inspired by symbolism and nature, I embarked on creating a little Etsy store.
Eventually, I developed prints of some of my favourite magic in the mundane moments, and finally settled on creating structured mindfulness workbooks that draw upon a range of psychology, pedagogy, and productivity methods.
From spell jars to photography prints and mindfulness exercises, there are lots of different resources for everyone!
Creative Events, Art Workshops & Crafting
I currently offer a range of three flagship workshops in the Ashfield area of Nottinghamshire. You can learn more about the events by visiting the dedicated event page.
- Lessons from Nature: Creative Writing workshops
- Crafting the Seasons: Seasonal Crafting workshops
- Connect in Colour: Mindful Art sessions for everyone
These online offerings grew out of a desire to create meaningful community spaces that provided opportunities for people to connect – both to themselves and others.
Collaboration With Other Creators
For a long time, I made this journey on my own. I’ve realised, however, that we’re all stronger together. I’m always searching for new venues to host my workshops in, festivals in the United Kingdom to take my workshops to, or other mindfulness and wellbeing practitioners to collaborate with.
If you have a yoga studio, cafe, or other venue – I’d love to hear about the potential for collaborating. If you host soundbaths or other holistic healing services, I’d be very keen to chat with you about the potential for combining efforts on a mini-retreat.
If you’re involved with small festivals that celebrate arts, wellbeing, holistic living, connection to nature, mindfulness, or a gentler life – I’d love to talk to you about bringing my workshops to your festival.
I’m really excited about the opportunities I’m creating with the workshops and resources I offer, and I’m excited to hear about yours, too! If you want to chat about potential collaboration, feel free to get in touch on social media, or use the form below to send me an email.
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Want to support the work I do?
As a small creator, there are so many things you can do to support my work if you find it helpful!
Sharing events, joining me on social media, or commenting on blog posts can make a huge difference in me being able to reach more people.
You can also enable this work by purchasing from my Etsy store if you feel called to any of the products or services there.
If you’re not in need of any of those products and still want to support in a monetary way, you might also consider donating a small amount if you’ve found my resources useful. You can donate using Ko-Fi.
Supporting my work where you can enables me to make more affordable resources to support those most in need and is hugely appreciated.
The Opaque Elephant 
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