One creative thing - Day 16

Today's creative thing: A mortar and pestle.

It's a little scary how much I am enjoying these mini watercolour experiments. I love mixing the colours and swirling them around on glistening paper. I love wandering around my house, trying to decide which object to select. It has been delightful. I will have to get back to journaling at some point, possibly next week. I have several revised pages ready and waiting to be launched, but I want to make a few changes before I do. Change is in the air.

For now though, we're on the cusp of a holiday weekend around here. My girls have arrived home from school for the day and aren't due back until Tuesday, so one creative thing will break for a short intermission.

Happy weekend, friends. See you on Tuesday.

One creative thing - Day 15

Today's creative thing: A hole punch.

One creative thing - Day 14

Today's creative thing: An old-fashioned cake server.

Years ago, my grandmother gave me one of her silver cake servers. We use it all the time around here. (Mmm, cake.) This morning, while I was fishing through the utensil drawer in the kitchen looking for something to paint today, it was the first thing that caught my eye.

One creative thing - Day 13

Today's creative thing: A cookie cutter.

The original cookie cutter is a shiny tin one from my cupboard, but I've found that it's such fun to paint things in alternate colours.

It feels like there's a theme emerging here. It feels wonderfully familiar, I think, because it resembles the themes that are at the core of my journal pages: celebrating the little things, noticing the overlooked things, and finding beauty in the ordinary things.

I'd really like to turn the idea of these tiny paintings into a new journal project. I think I know how, but it's going to be a little unconventional. Possibly, it's a bit too unconventional, but I'll never know if I don't try.

One creative thing: Day 12

Today's creative thing: Still knitting. Can't help myself. Back to watercolour tomorrow, I think.

One creative thing - Day 11

Today's creative thing: Knitting up the Purl Bee's lovely leaf lace.

One creative thing - Day 10

Today's creative thing: A honeycomb. I was looking at photos of honeycombs this morning and noticing the individual cells. Some were rounder than others. Some a little rough around the edges. None of them quite perfect, but nonetheless creating an amazing structure.

I thought they might make a neat watercolour experiment, with a colourful twist.

One creative thing - Day 9

Today's creative thing: A clothespin. It didn't turn out exactly as I envisioned it, but it was fun to play around with dots of colour.

One creative thing - Day 8

Today's creative thing: a colourful chair. And a new journal idea, surprisingly. I'll have to do a little research, but I can't wait to give it a try.

One creative thing - Day 7

Today's creative thing:  a bit of hand lettering. In the form of a prompt!

This is one of my favourite early prompts. A variation even appears on the back of my business cards.  How 'bout this?  I'll tell you my one reason to smile today and if you feel like sharing, add yours in the comments!

My reason to smile:  With a lot of hard work on her part, my oldest daughter left for school today totally caught up on her homework. Recently, academic interests have begun to emerge where previously there was mostly disinterest. It feels as if we may have turned a corner and that puts a huge smile on my face.

Your turn!

One creative thing - Day 6

Today's creative thing: A balloon.

One creative thing - Day 5

Today's creative thing:  Remember that Grecian Rib stitch from Day 2? I wondered how it would look if I knitted it into a little pouch. Et voila! The beginnings of a little pouch, probably destined for my youngest who will no doubt fill it with a carefully curated collection of tiny treasures.  I'll post a photo of the complete project as soon as it's finished. 

One creative thing - Day 4

Today's creative thing:  Learning a new dance (or two). Tonight, I'm taking my daughters to a ceilidh, which is a first for us. As I understand it, a ceilidh (I believe it's pronounced kayley) is a social gathering with Gaelic origins. There will be fiddlers and a caller to teach us the dance steps. Can't wait!

One creative thing - Day 3

Today's creative thing:  Experimenting with watercolour and salt.  Not sure where I was headed with this one, really, but when you add salt to wet watercolour paint, neat shapes emerge.  They remind me a little of coral.  Or frost, maybe, if the colours were different.  I think it will take a little more experimentation, maybe with other sizes of salt crystals, but it was fun to watch the paint dry.  How often can you say that?

One creative thing - Day 2

Today's one creative thing:  I learned a new knitting stitch.  It's called the Grecian Rib stitch and I found it over at The Purl Bee, where Laura shared her beautifully tasseled Grecian Rib Scarf.  I don't have a project in mind for this stitch yet, but I love learning new stitches -- any excuse, really, to feel the yarn between my fingers, hear the light clicking of metal needles, and see a whole new fabric come to life.

One creative thing - Day 1

As usual, I've got all of these ideas.  Ideas about journaling and creativity and wisdom and balance and other life-related stuff.  It would be lovely if they'd just dovetail nicely into perfect journals and a perfect business plan and a perfectly well-adjusted adult, but that hasn't happened yet.  Sometimes they're not even ideas, they're urges or hunches or something and they come bubbling up, not quite formed and not quite useful yet, but they are there nonetheless.  So, I've been casting around for a way to channel them.

I love any quote that equates inspiration or creativity or wisdom with effort.  I've included as many as I can find in my journal pages and pocket journals.  I also love those memes out there that people use to motivate themselves to create every day -- photo-a-day, pattern-a-day, quote-a-day, blog-post-a-day, sketch-a-day.  I've been dying to try one of them, but I can never narrow it down to just one.

Then it occurred to me that I don't need to choose one.  It's enough to aim to be creative every day.  But to do that, being who I am, I need a reason, a purpose, a structure, rules, boundaries -- even if it's all of my own making.  A prompt.  One creative thing.  Just like I'd include in a journal page.  That might just work.

I've also given myself a few guidelines: it should be something simple or small that might only take a few moments, so as not to create too onerous an obligation, and it need not be perfect or even good, necessarily.  It's the effort that counts.

Because I need to create outside of my journal pages.  And I hope that a continuous attempt at creativity in other areas will find its way back to my journal pages in new and unexpected ways. 

I've tried this before -- well, not this, but other schemes to pursue creativity, and I haven't always stuck with them, but they served their purposes.  They kept me going when I needed to keep going.  And that is the secret.  To keep going and trying and wondering and creating.  Because that's where inspiration is born.

So, long story short.  Here is my one creative thing for today:  a pear.

I'm off to work on a journal page now, but I'll be back tomorrow with one creative thing.

hugs,
Christie

New(ish) journal page no. 6

For some reason, this page was a tough one.  I took me ages to figure it out and for a while nothing was right -- not the layout, not the doodles, not the prompts.  Nothing except the lightning round.

As with each of my revised journal pages, this page contains bits of the old journal page and some new stuff -- in this case, a brand new lightning round.  I love dreaming up lightning rounds.  Love it.  So many neat choices out there in the world.  Don't you think?

Anyhoo, here is a little preview pic of the colourful version of new(ish) journal page no. 6:

And a little preview pic of the colour-free version:

If you'd like either one (or both) for yourself, they are available here (colour-free) and here (colourful).

hugs and happy journaling,
Christie

Friendship cards

See the edge of that card back there, behind my first pocket journal?

It's a card that first started as an idea for an extra little something to send out with orders for pocket journals.  I wrote a little about it, way back when I listed my first pocket journal for sale, and have been including it in outgoing packages ever since.

I've been calling it a friendship card.  It's filled with lots of prompts to get you writing to good friends about all the stuff you've been up to and some of the stuff you'd like to do next.

In response to a number of emails I've received asking if more cards would be available for sale separately, I've listed that first friendship card along with another, brand new one in sets of four in my Etsy shop.

If you'd like to see a few more photos and a bit more info, feel free to stop by my shop!

hugs,
Christie