Have you lost your creative spark or mojo? Do you feel like the past week, month, or even year, feels like a blur? Does it all feel a little routine?
It’s so easy to get caught up in our day-to-day routine that we forget to find the joy. We lose our spark; that zest. And it’s especially tricky when you’re relying on your creativity to make a living or produce those exceptional results at work.
Connecting with our joy is one of the easiest way to get into a creative flow.
In early April 2015, I went on a Play Adventure where each day for 30 days I ‘coloured in’ a mandala colouring page (that I had previously created).
Here are all thirty designs that I created out of that one mandala colouring page. I even surprised myself by how many different and unique results I could create out of such a seemingly simple outline.
This Play Adventure was rewarding in so many ways. I introduced more play and fun into my day. I got to express myself creatively. I learnt more about the creative process and what worked for me. It also got me thinking about creative inspiration, taking risks and how ideas can flow. I learnt so much! I captured my learning in the following blogs each week:
Continue readingUnless you’ve been living in an internet-free cave during the last year, you might have noticed the growing popularity of colouring books for adults – yes, for adults, that’s right :-). And I’m not talking about cartoon or franchise inspired designs, but intricate, detailed and complex illustrations created by artists.
I’ve been happily watching this space with interest over the last year. There has been increasingly more press about the benefits of colouring. And I am still blown away that my Colouring For Grown Ups board on Pinterest is my most popular board, with around 4 times as many followers as most of my other boards. But I really knew that it was a “thing”, when I walked into my local bookstore to see their front display table full of adult colouring books! And then again, when I saw a big display at a large department retailer.
Colouring books on display at Jeffreys Books
Colouring in has become associated with the growing interest in mindfulness and seeking ways to destress and unwind in our increasingly high paced 24/7 lives. It’s even being used by companies to support staff in relation to workplace stress. And while colouring in can create some beautifully stunning results, is it really being creative?
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Going on a mandala Play Adventure was rewarding in so many ways. I got to introduce more play and fun into my day. I got to express myself creatively. I learnt more about the creative process and what worked for me. But the biggest takeaway was learning about the importance of developing a creative habit or practice: doing something creative on a regular basis and making it a normal part of my everyday life.
In the first week of my mandala Play Adventure, I wrote about the practical tips that helped me make time to create my mandalas each day. In this blog, I want to share the secret behind making a creative habit.
The final week of the mandala Play Adventure!
In the last 9 days of the Play Adventure I started to wonder if I would run out of good ideas. I was worried that I mightn’t be able to produce interesting and unique designs. So it got me thinking about the part that inspiration plays in creating new ideas.
We commonly view inspiration as that light bulb ‘aha’ moment where in a moment of clarity we come up with the solution out of the blue. But that’s not totally true. Our ideas are never formed in isolation to anything else (although it may often seem like that).
Our brains are pattern-seeking machines, looking to make sense of any new information we receive through our experience and senses, by forming connections and associations with what we already know. Continue reading