The Creative Life of Thanuja Gunatillake – Santé Photography

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Natalia

Welcome to this first instalment of The Creative Life interview series!

I believe that we’re all creative and that we can bring it into many facets of our life.
Each month I will interview people to find out how they express and nurture their creativity, as well as how they make room for it with everything else that’s going on in their lives. I’m also interested in learning about how they approach the business side of things if they have one.

So please, allow me to introduce you to…

The Creative Life of Thanuja Gunatillake.

Thanuja Gunatillake is the founder and owner of Santé Photography. Thanuja set up Santé to capture those special moments and people in life that are worth celebrating. While Santé Photography is her labour of love, Thanuja is also a devoted Mum and works full-time in transport advocacy.

©Santé Photography

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What does creativity really give you?

Posted on April 20, 2016 by Natalia

Creativity is within all of us.

It’s in how we express ourselves, our ideas and how we do things. We use our creativity when we pick out what to wear in the morning, what we use our lunch break, how we talk with our colleagues or friends, and solve any issues that arise.

The problem is not that we don’t have creativity. It’s that we mightn’t be used to tapping into it, and if we do we mightn’t have the confidence to truly express ourselves or our ideas.

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Getting something extraordinary OR “How to avoid only finding the obvious solution by using conventional problem solving techniques”

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Natalia

Has there been a time when you know you want something different, but you don’t know exactly what it is?

Or you want to solve a problem, but you know you won’t get a different result if you use the same approach you’ve always taken?

Basically, instead of boring and ordinary – you want different.
You want something extraordinary.

These are the same expectations that I bring to my own work.
For instance, as an entrepreneur, I grapple with how I define success for myself (there’s no performance review checklist that’s already been created for me by ‘the powers that be’).

So using a conventional, logical way of creating my definition of success, I’d sit down with my beverage of choice and list all the ways that I measure success and answer “How do I know that I’m successful?” But instead I decided to do this…  Continue reading →

Mandala Basics – Finding pattern inspiration

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Natalia

Mandalas are an ancient art form of developing patterns and shapes within a circle. They are very accessible forms of art – you don’t need to be a master artist or a zen monk to create some beautiful and rewarding results. However, when you’re starting out they seem a little intimidating. So I have created the following warm up exercise to help you begin creating your own mandalas.

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Creativity tips – 10 tips to make your dream happen

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Natalia

Go for it – Dream big! No dream or aspiration is too crazy, as long as it rings true to you. However, you need to take some action to make it happen.

So here are 10 tips that you can use to start moving towards your dream, or when you need to pick yourself up if your motivation’s running a bit low. Once you get a little traction and begin to make some progress, then it’s easier to keep up the momentum.

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