Morning all!
If you remember a few months ago the lovely Purple Plume wrote a DIY guest post for us here. Afterward, she asked if I would write something for her bog!
Of course! I was very excited when she asked. It’s my first guest post for another blog too!
So the below post was written for a guest post over on Purpleume’s blog.
I wanted to cross post it over here because after writing it, I realized I really loved it and thought it needed to be shared as much as possible!
( Make sure you go check out Purple Plume’s blog too! It should be up today! )
(photograph by me, 2010. Taken while on Vacation and trying to keep my Creative Itch/inspiration strong)
So what is The Creative Itch? The creative itch happens when you get inspired, want to create something, when your hands are screaming to be covered in paint and glue. And it most often happens (to me at least) when I’m away from all of my supplies!
I’ve been visiting family for a few weeks now and didn’t bring any art supplies with my (besides my cameras) and several times I’ve gotten the creative itch.
So what do you do about it?
Here are a list of 10 things to do to keep the itch until you can create again!
These things are great if you’re out grocery shopping, at work, on vacation or just too busy with the kids/significant other to get to your art supplies and get messy!
1 – Journal. No, not an art (or visual) journal. Write down real words. It could be a brainstorm of what you want to create or just as a diary. I recently started to keep my own journal/diary and have found it to help my creativity immensely.
2 – Go outside! Sounds a bit counter intuitive right? Well this is a great one if you are inspired by nature! I know I sure am. Sometimes when I need a little boost or to keep my creative itch going, I’ll go to a park, sit back and listen to the birds and other animals. And I’ll collect things. I love collecting leaves, flowers, twigs, grass…all of it. You can use it later in a journal or art piece or keep it all in a box at home for more inspiration later!
3 – Doodle. This goes along with visual brainstorming but is helpful if you don’t have a specific idea. I doodle in my Journal/Diary and write around my doodles to make it more visual. Just getting your hand moving in a different way helps to keep the creative juices flowing!
4 – Browse on weheartit. Or etsy, or ffffound!. But make sure you favorite or print out the things that inspire you the most! I can spend hours on weheartit just browsing around and hearting things! Not only does it help me stay in a creative mode but seeing all the beautiful pictures, designs, spaces etc inspires me even more!
5 – Visual Brainstorming. If you have a specific idea, sketch it out. And then sketch it out some more! In art school (especially for graphic design) you sometimes have to come up with ten, twenty even 100 different sketches for the same project! Okay you don’t have to do that many but do more than one! I don’t know about you but when I’m actually planning something, I always have several ideas and am not sure which is best.
6 – Blog! Write, read, browse, plan. Stay active in your little art community. Personally, I’m pretty addicting to blogging and follow an ungodly amount of blogs(170 currently). Which means at any time there’s always one with a new post I can read! Writing blogs is also helpful, or planning new things to do on your blog (wordless Wednesday, music Monday etc).
7 – Don’t keep it a secret. Find someone you trust(so they don’t laugh at you or walk away mid sentence because they hate art and you stop liking them…or something heh)…could be a best friend, significant other, parent, sister etc and tell them about your new ideas! When I get a new idea I’m excited about I love to tell my boyfriend about it. He’s not artistic (visually at least. But he writes.) so he totally doesn’t understand most of what I say…but he can see how excited I am and gets excited too! Then helps me if I have questions (even if he can’t really help!) or keeps me on task with new projects when I ask him too.
8 – Listen to music. There are certain songs that keep me inspired. Some songs that help me stay visually inspired and some that, when I listen to them, make my hands itch to start typing and write something. Make a special playlist for inspiring music and go listen!
9 – Take some pictures. Maybe you didn’t bring your camera, but I’m sure you have your phone! They might not be the best pictures but some of the newer phones (smart phones) take some decent quality pictures and you can download some free apps (like the Retro Camera App I used to take some pictures while on vacation). Don’t know what to take pictures of? Anything and everything! (again see my vacation shots). See something that has an interesting shape, color, shadow…shoot it!
Last but not least…
10 – Don’t stress. The more you stress about not having the time, the supplies or that your idea/inspiration will just float away before you can make it into reality…the more you loose your inspiration! Take a breath, drink some coffee and do some of the above things to make sure you remember the idea.
These ideas are not only ideal for when you have The Creative Itch but for when you are beginning a new project or great daily things to do (journaling, doodling, etc) to help keep your creative drive up and your motivation strong.
I hope you wrote some of these tips down and return to them. Make a short list of these in the front of your journal (words or visual) to keep it as a reminder. And remember the last tip! The most important I think.
Good luck keeping your Itch alive and your inspiration strong :)
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