be more creative

I really want to be more creative. I’m not sure where to focus quite yet but I hope to adopt a creative project or two soon and find out!

...getting into the swing of things. I have an entire room set up as a studio, and I barely ever use it. Sometimes I’ll go up there with the intention of working on something, and I find myself just searching aimlessly around the room, unable to come up with any ideas of what to do.

So I’ve decided in order to get my creative juices flowing, I’m just going to work on some super simple no-brainer projects. Tonight I made a brooch. I just took a little whale cutout that I had lying around from an unfinished project, covered it in a scrap of pretty printed paper, and hot-glued a pin back to it. Done. It’s not the most amazing thing in the world, and I totally stole the idea from a blog I read, but it’s cute, and it’s something. I’m never going to get anywhere if I don’t start somewhere. And I’m thinking that even if I just start out copying other people’s ideas, eventually I’ll start to develop more ideas of my own. For now I just need to get my hands working, and hopefully soon enough my brain will follow.

I think this keyboard is starting to make me a little more creative :) check out my latest tune! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nPxh_C54-o

I enrolled in a jewelry silversmith class. I love it! So far I’ve learned to use a lot of different tools – soldering iron, flex shaft, saws, punches, and hammers. I’ve cut out the heads in pennies and made charms from them as practice and last night I made a ring! Now I’m brainstorming for my class project – should it be a ring or a bracelet?

take some autumn photos. Meant to last year and didn’t get round to it. Will help me get out and about too.

Just bought a new keyboard to create music. Check out the new song that I made from scrap :P http://bit.ly/HJyy7

I ended up ordering “Living Out Loud” to accompany “Wreck This Journal” and was pleased with both when they came last week. I flicked through WTJ and did a couple pages, testing out my new watercolour pencils set on one.

I really like the idea of defining myself as an ‘arty person’ and having a journal to carry around with me everywhere to doodle in or even to deface, just to get me over that perfectionist restriction of having to have the perfect sketchbook (which leads to nothing being in it and plenty of pages ripped out!)

However…

Although I started WTJ and am enthusiastic about it, I’m right smack bang in the middle of an important art project that has an official deadline. That one os working out great and I’m pleased with what I have produced so far- in fact, so much so that it makes some of the activities in WTJ seem too simple or basic, or lacking structure. I noticed myself falling into the trap of saying “see…I don’t need to start from the beginning- I can go right in with the complicated stuff!” In a way, that’s true, but then I had to remind myself that that project is being created along a specific design for someone else and is not a personal sketchbook, which is where I have the issues.

Geez, sometimes I can be a slow learner: I have to just ACCEPT that I can’t run before I can walk!

I have always tended to think of creativity as a permanent and definite characteristic, like height or eye color. The sort of thing where you either got it or you don’t. But I’m realizing lately that maybe that’s not the case.

I work with a lot of artistic people, and I read a lot of blogs written by and about artistic people, and I spend all my time thinking, “I wish I was creative…” But I’m beginning to realize that maybe a big difference between myself and these people is that they actually think of themselves as creative and devote time to fostering that creativity. I’m reading this great book “Craft, Inc.” about how to turn your hobby into a business, and the author had this great line, something like, “If you think you’re creative, then you are! If you don’t think you’re creative, then you never will be.” And I think maybe that’s true. I’m trying my damndest to pry open my mind and let ideas flow through more easily, but it’s hard when I’ve spent most of my life putting creative thinking and artistic endeavors second to more important priorities, like school, work, everyday life, etc. I guess I always thought of creative time more as “playtime”, and the older you get the less time there is for play.

Nowadays I’m realizing just how happy I am when I’m making things with my hands, and I’m beginning to take that more seriously and treat it as a priority, since it affects my happiness. It feels good, but it still feels a bit like a secret fantasy that I have to keep to myself so no one makes fun of me. When I talk about things I’m working on, even when I’m telling my husband, it still feels like I’m a dumb kid bragging to their parents about some sort of macrame Christmas tree ornament they made. Ultimately it’s still hard for me to believe in myself enough to be comfortable in owning my creativity, and I pretty much assume that no one will take me seriously, because I don’t really even take myself seriously. So I feel like a wallflower that’s very slowly and shyly making her way out onto the dance floor.

But part of the issue is that I’m mostly full of good creative intentions, with not a lot of finished products to show. So maybe I just need to shut up and put my money where my mouth is and MAKE STUFF.

Reading other peoples stories has made me really inspired! I’ve got the day off work today and was feeling reluctant at the prospect of having nothing to do all day except the washing and an early night, but now I’m feeling all buzzy and excited! I’m going to dig out my “box of stuff” (c’mon, we ALL have one of those! Bits of ribbon…old wrapping paper…an interesting bit of shell etc…!) from the dusty garage and go make something, even if it’s just a badly constructed collage, lol! It’s a start! Thankyou everyone :D

I work as an art director at an ad agency. Sounds like I get plenty of opportunities to be creative, but I don’t exercise my creative skills much outside of work anymore.

When I was in school I was constantly working on some painting or a photography project. After I found a job, I kinda slowed down from burnout. But now I find that I’m losing my ability to express myself creatively, and it’s effecting my performance at work.

I’ve always loved photography – so I think that may be a good place to start.