whip up » Community + Creativity

Guest series :: Two pink lines

contributor — Wed, 23 May 2012 12:22:19 +0000

Guest series 2012: I asked fellow bloggers, makers and creators to write on their creativity and focus their essay on one of four topics: creativity and health, creativity and business, creativity and parenting or creativity and process. I am very excited to have a wonderful lot of fellow creative folk guest posting here at whipup.net over the next couple of months. Please welcome…

Laura Bray is a designer, writer and lifestyle expert. She inspires creative women to live a life of balance & simplicity by sharing her modern twist on traditional home arts on her blog at katydiddys. Laura lives in southern California with her physicist husband and young daughter.

It’s amazing how two pink lines can change a person’s life.

When I was a young girl, I loved art. I dreamt of becoming a fashion designer. I sketched and drew. Then one day I signed up for art class at my high school. A tough semester ended in my art teacher telling me I had no talent. Young, impressionable, and embarrassed, I abandoned my dream.

I went to college, started a successful career in finance, and earned an MBA. I married a wonderful man and we were deeply involved in our careers and loved to travel. In 2001, we decided we did not want to have children and my husband had a vasectomy. It was not a decision we took lightly. We spent many hours discussing it and in the end thought it was the best decision for us. Our lives continued to move forward to our dream of retiring at 50 and traveling the world.

In October 2004, my period was late. We were afraid that I was ill or going into early menopause. When I called the doctor to make an appointment, I was told to take a pregnancy test. The two pink lines appeared, indicating I was pregnant. As I sunk to the ground in disbelief, I saw our future plans crumble before me. Over the next nine months we realized how little control we really have over our destiny and prepared to welcome our unplanned, but already loved, new family member.

In June 2005 our daughter was born. I tried to continue my business career through the first two years of her life. We had a part-time nanny but as a small business owner I struggled to make enough to pay for childcare, let alone contribute financially. I was also incredibly smitten with my daughter and hated the hours that I spent away from her. A small voice, hidden away since high school, began to whisper ideas about my creativity. I picked-up the book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and slowly began to heal the wounds my high school art teacher inflicted upon my creativity.

My daughter and my creativity have grown-up together. They feed and support one another and give me endless joy. My daughter’s unbridled belief that she can create anything she puts her mind to bolsters my confidence. She is my muse. At the same time, my creativity helps me be a better mother. Math homework is more fun when it’s turned into an art project and teaching my daughter to explore her emotions through her art are lessons that will serve her well later in life. Many of my project designs are created as toys or accessories for my daughter. As for my daughter, she’s a successful design professional at age six! She and I have had projects published in Create With Me magazine and she’s appeared on the online craft show, When Creativity Knocks.

Who would have ever guessed that those two pink lines held so much potential for two lives? They announced the beginning of my beautiful baby girl and the rebirth of my creativity.Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: Understand the value of creativity

contributor — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:27:33 +0000

Ellen Luckett Baker is author of The Long Thread, where she writes about her adventures with sewing, crafting, and kids. Her book 1, 2, 3 Sew 1, 2, 3 Sew was recently published by Chronicle Books and her debut fabric collection, Quilt Blocks, is being produced by Moda and will be available by the end of this month. Ellen lives in Atlanta with her husband, two daughters, and a growing number of pets.

Thanks for having me on WhipUp! Today I’m going to talk a bit about my creative process and how it’s connected to my family life. I never considered myself to be a creative person until I had children. I don’t know if it was age, maturity or motherhood that allowed me to distance myself from my insecurity and open myself up to creativity. But I think it’s essential to have both the physical and mental space to create.

My fondest memories from childhood are those of making things. Some memories include creating melted crayon drawings on a hot plate, dipping candles with my mother, baking in my toy oven, drawing pictures of my favorite cartoon characters, and writing poetry. But as I reflect, I wonder where that creativity went. As I hit my early teen years, I let it go and I didn’t get it back for almost 20 years. Whether this came from pressure to fit in my environment, or from fear of failure, I don’t know. Even as an Art History major in college, I was deathly afraid of my studio art classes. But now, as a parent of a wildly creative child who does not respond well in a traditional educational environment, I see the importance of nurturing and rewarding creativity. There’s a lot of evidence that our culture is suppressing creativity so I think now, more than ever, we need to understand the value of creativity for innovation and overall happiness.

Just before I had our first daughter, I completed a Master’s in Non-Profit Administration, hoping to continue a career in arts administration. But I knew that I wanted to stay home with my children when they were very young. It was this opportunity to be at home, made possible by my husband’s commitment to support our family, which allowed me to find my creative space, both physically and mentally.

Over these past nine years, I’ve learned to sew, made many craft projects, created a successful blog, written a sewing book and most recently, designed a fabric collection. Since I work from home, my creative and professional life is very much connected to family life. My sketchbooks are filled with my drawings as well as those of my children. The kids and I make crafty messes all over the house. There are often toys scattered about in my sewing room and the sound of computer games at my desk. And my dog is usually taking a nap at my feet and the cat is sleeping on whatever fabric I have just cut. So, while my working life is unconventional and chaotic, and completely overwhelming at times, it’s nice to be able to combine creativity with my family life. It is in the quiet bits here and there that I find moments of inspiration and clarity. Whether in carpool line, waiting during a piano lesson, or in bed at night, I always keep a sketchbook handy for ideas. Most every sewing pattern and fabric design I create has been rolling around in my mind for weeks or even years before it comes to fruition.

Though I was first inspired by reading blogs and seeing the creative works of others, I don’t spend as much time these days looking around. Growing up in Alabama, I developed a love of folk art with its handmade feel and warmth, but I also have a need for clean lines and symmetry. Some of my favorite textile artists are Sonia Delauney, Denyse Schmidt, the quilters of Gee’s Bend, and Vera Neumann.

I’m always inspired by my kids and their interesting ideas. So you might find a page like this in my sketch book where I am sketching out instructions for a pattern, followed by my daughter’s drawing of a doughnut quilt she wants me to make for her. Excellent idea!

And there’s this graffiti in front of my sewing machine. My seven-year-old, who has long known better, did this. But I wasn’t even mad because it seemed like such an expression of love; it makes me think of my kids every time I sit down to the machine. Family life is integral to my creativity, so although sometimes I feel frustrated that work interferes with my family life and vice versa, I don’t think I would trade working at home in my pajamas amidst the mess and chaos of family life.

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Guest series :: Listen and watch

contributor — Sat, 19 May 2012 10:53:47 +0000

Jodi Anderson grew up in the woods of Sauk County, Wisconsin, and her past is present in most everything that she does today. She finds beauty in the mundane, refuses to let her struggles with illness define her, obsesses over local history, and tries to keep track of it all in her online journal, Daybook.

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
– Franz Kafka

I am lullabied, and a bit haunted, by daydreams. They are a combination of beast and wilderness, childlike wonder, science, and the more primal aspects of self. There is a guttural component to my thinking and overall vision, and as often as I can, I allow myself to be fully immersed in all of these elements. The most important thing that I do is listen to and watch what is going on inside of me.

When a concept is evolving, I feel it physically. It is not unusual to find that I am sitting, eyes closed with hands, fingers spread wide, placed upon my chest, as if trying to extract the equation from within so that I can unfold this into an outward expression, a stamp of my most authentic self. These feelings, this immersion, always come first, and it is a sort of love affair with my ideas. A right-quick affair actually, so I make haste or I am liable to not do the project at all. I need to move very fast and work while I still possess that first strong urge.

(If, on the other hand, I am following a crochet pattern or have specific instructions for a basket, I have all the time in the world.)

After that, it is just a matter of desire versus reality. What can I physically do with the objects that I have in mind? Can I learn any needed skills quickly? Do I have the necessary energy? Is this something that I will start and then abandon? What is my end goal? Do I even have one?

When working on characters and costumery, as I do in the unmasked series, I might sketch out an idea, but mostly I prefer to pull together materials and play with them. As they are gathered and begin to reveal more of their nature, I naturally work out the details and consider workability while everything is within my grasp.

An important element in my recent evolution as an artist has come in the form of a fearless friend, Jen, who is a skilled knitter and seems to quickly master anything that she attempts, like basket weaving. We have become crafting cohorts, signing up for classes to do things of which I’d not heard and otherwise raising my bravery status, as well as challenging my previous belief that an introvert wouldn’t enjoy company. (Ha!) It was she who suggested we try antler basket weaving, which, damn if that didn’t incite a whole internal revolution and rock my world.

Already at home in the woods and liking best those things that are alive, or once were, I find that weaving, whether baskets or a garden trellis, works well with my creative process. I have always been first inspired by the wild world, like the spring woods or a bustling river. You can work with synthetic materials, but I find that reed and cane fit in well with my personal design aesthetic. Although there are some general techniques in weaving, such as ojo de Dios (God’s eye) binding when the handle first meets the rim, the craft is remarkably forgiving and intuitive. I find that I don’t need to do much planning, if any. Weaving put a new notch in my figurative craft belt, and it shifted a bit the way that I approach unfolding ideas and then implementing them. It allowed me to more fully relax into making and the end result is like a timestamp of my creative self during that project.

In the end, I believe that our individual life journeys, all of the things that we make, the dreams that we mold, those thoughts manipulated by head and hand, even the art that is conceived and not taken any further, each of these is a step in the creative process, where the ultimate craft is the revealing of our true self.

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Guest series :: Healing through craft

contributor — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:26:00 +0000

Maize Hutton lives in a cottage in the woods with her Westie Violet Blossom. She’s the President of MommyTags.com and MaizeHutton.com. You can visit her blog at maizehutton where she shares numerous DIYs and snapshots of her daily life.

In 2003, my daughter was kidnapped at gunpoint, beaten up and managed to escape. That incident and the months that followed caused me so much stress and grief, I was afflicted with a severe case of Bells Palsy. The left side of my face was paralyzed for 6 months and I was unable to continue my work as a paralegal.

One day during my recovery, I pulled out a book a friend had given me called The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. It helped heal my broken heart and was the catalyst that put me on a path I never could have imagined. I still write my Morning Papers and find they help keep negativity at bay. I often find myself jotting down ideas within the borders and sometimes end up writing poems. If you’ve never tried writing your Morning Papers, you should start. Pronto. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at what happens when you do.

While I dabble in everything crafty, my one love at the time of my healing was making jewelry. One evening, after hearing of my niece’s birth, I decided to make a silver pendant personalized with my niece’s name and date of birth. I christened it Mommy Tags. My sister in-law loved it, told her friends and I set up a website. I sent a sample of the tags to American Baby Magazine, and in April 2004, much to my surprise, they published a picture of Mommy Tags. It was right before Mother’s Day and I was inundated with orders, so much so that I had over a million in sales in two short years. Mommy Tags was declared a trend and soon many jewelry designers started making and selling personalized tags for moms, which you now see different versions of today.

My creativity has taken me in interesting directions. In 2009 and 2010, I won the Montana Ecostar Award, which is given to small businesses that take environmentally responsible steps to improve their business through reuse or recycling. It was an honor to meet and be presented with the award by the Governor of Montana. I’m also a contributor to GreenCraft magazine by Stampington & Company, where several of my projects have been featured within their pages.

My true love is to design and make things. I’ve taught myself how to knit and crochet, embroider, sew, and I hoard vintage sheets. I love to thrift and often the joke around our house is that I’ll buy back things I’ve donated to the thrift stores! My current aspiration is to sew my wardrobe or refashion what I already have.

My creative process is to scour thrift stores for ideas or take a walk with my dog in the woods. Usually, I wander around looking for items I can use in a project or redesign into something else. One idea, The Woodsy Hanger was sparked while I walked along a country path. I like quick crafts that are executed well and are simple to do. The KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid, is my mantra.Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: Crafting brings the joy

contributor — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:03:42 +0000

Sayraphim Lothian is a craft and visual artist interested in exploring playful and participatory experiences. She co-runs Pop Up Playground, a Melbourne pervasive and social games collective; recently participated in a playful residency at the National Gallery of Victoria and some of her work can be found in the archives of the NGV, the collection at MOMA and on streets around the world.

Yesterday morning I was feeling pretty excited. I’ve been making artificial cupcakes on and off for the past couple of days and yesterday they were ready to be distributed in the CBD. They’re all in colourful patty pans, with purple ‘icing’, sprinkled with different coloured glitter and a cheery red bead on top. Threaded through each bead is a glittery paper tag, printed with a hand carved stamp that reads “For you, stranger <3 sayraphim”.

I went into the city and left them all out in various places for people to find and take – I’m exploring random acts of guerrilla kindness – and I was really excited to see how it went. My ultimate goal was to make someone’s day a little brighter by gifting them with a fun fake cupcake. By the time I was back on the train heading home I’d already gotten my first response, someone on twitter telling me that finding a cupcake had made them smile and that they were so inspired by the project they were planning to do something similar.

My current body of work investigates kindness and loveliness as art. I create fun, magical moments for people to experience and enjoy. Sometimes these take the form of games to play, in the street, in theatres, in parlours or out in the open, and sometimes they are joyous craft pieces, installed in the street. Along with the For you, Stranger project I’m also working on Gilding the City, which installs reworked pieces of found and broken jewellery in cities around the world, and Street Pests, which places pigeon and rat softies sewn from material found in the streets back in the suburbs they came from. I see all these pieces as little bubbles of joy or surreal moments for passersby to notice.

There are two main influences on my current practise. The first was my grandmother, Marge. She tirelessly created toys for charity throughout her life. She had a wardrobe filled with material people had donated to her, a garage full of yarn and she knitted, sewed and created hundreds of dolls and toys for charity and gifts. She would also teach anyone who asked and freely gave of her time and expertise whenever she saw a need. At the end of her life, while in a high care dementia home, she was still knitting scarves for the hospital and teaching the nurses to knit. She shared her skills and knowledge freely to anyone and she made the world a better place for hundreds of people.

The second person is a British gent named Tassos Stevens. He co-runs the playful society Agency of Coney and just over a year ago he visited Melbourne to invite people to rediscover their playful side. He inducted us into Coney’s world of play and its principle of loveliness via games and challenges. In one challenge he asked us to gather into pairs and suggest someone we thought might like a lovely, possibly anonymous, surprise and what that surprise might be. Another challenge was to get together in groups and chat about a group of people who are normally ignored, or who do crappy jobs for little pay, and what we might create as a nice experience for them. Nurses, public transport drivers, cleaners and people living in old folks homes were some of the people nominated for loveliness and some of the experiences brain stormed were quite touching.

I fell in love with this idea – niceness’s organised for people who might need them – a little bit of kindness to improve someone’s life. During the week, through these challenges and some physical games out on the street, Tassos taught us that making lovely experiences for people is actually a Thing. Which sounds silly when you say it out loud, but sometimes you need stuff pointed out by other people to fully understand it.

The whole experience made me want to do that too, so I started a new direction in my work, making niceness’s for other people in all manner of ways.

My first project was called A Moment In Yarn. It took the craft skills and generosity of my grandmother and mixed them with the personalised kindness experiences that Tassos teaches. It’s a one on one experience in which the participant tells me a cherished memory and, as we chat, I translate the memory into a granny square for them using different coloured and textured yarn. It’s a really beautiful experience and I always feel really honoured that people trust me with a memory that’s so precious to them. I love hearing their stories and I love the challenge of re-creating them in yarn. It’s a big responsibility – you’re being lent a treasured moment of their lives and you don’t want to do anything to sully it – but it’s always so heart-warming at the end to see their faces when they receive their Moment In Yarn; their memory made solid, something warm and soft they can hold. What I knew would happen at the end of each Moment is that the participant would get a craft object based on their memory (which they all seem to love) what I didn’t expect was the awesome feeling I’d get that I’d made something that meant so much to someone.

The next project was called Gilding the City. You can read the post I wrote about it for Whipup here. It’s a street art project reworking found bits of broken jewellery into little art pieces for cities to wear. It started out in Melbourne and quickly spread around the world. They’re usually pretty small, often they don’t stand out from where they are installed, instead they are little rewards for people who take the time to look around and really see the city rather than just going about their daily business. I love the city, I love peering around corners and scanning the ground to see what I find and, with Gilding the City, I wanted to encourage other people to see the city the way I do. I’ve sent Gilds to people all around the world to install in their own cities and they tell me they love the thrill of the hunt (to find the right place) and the excitement of installing the piece. One lady, who installed a little figure with her son, wrote to me to tell me that he waves to it every day and has named it ‘Lollipoloser’.

Some of these projects take a little bit of time to create but I love doing it. I love the idea that someone stumbles across one of the street projects and it brightens their day. I’m always thrilled to see interesting art out in the streets and I want to share that experience for other people. I create tiny moments of joy for people in the city; out-of-the-ordinary moments that transport them, if only for a second, to a world filled with magic and wonder. I get such joy out of making each item and I’m always chuffed when people contact me to let me know they found one.

My advice is keep an eye on the streets around you, you never know what you might see…Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: I’m a mostly self taught creative type

contributor — Sat, 12 May 2012 11:17:08 +0000

Cam is a crafter, illustrator, textile designer, maker, blogger, and obsessed op shopper. She adores rioutous colour, and vintage style. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her trusty sidekick Mr Limpy Houdini Dog, and is currently on the waiting list for a double lung transplant. She blogs at CurlyPops.

For me, craft is a part of my work and business, but I also still craft just for fun. I adore making and giving gifts to family and friends, and I also love to be able to contribute something handmade to community and charity events. From a business perspective, at the moment, I’m focussed on textile design and sewing. I’m really enjoying the challenge of creating hand-drawn illustrations and applying these to textiles. My current goal is to improve my digital design skills so that I can combine both to create my next boutique range of fabrics. Seeing my handrawn illustrations coming to life as a textile design and then taking that fabric and transforming it into a functional item has been absolutely thrilling.

Inspiration :: I seem to find inspiration everywhere I look. At the moment I’m quite obsessed with pattern and texture. It can be anything from the pattern in the bitumen on the road, to a dappled sunlight shadow coming through the window, to a wallpaper or tile design that I see on one of my favourite DIY tv shows. If you take the time to look beyond what seems to be right in front of you, you’ll be able see it too.

Colour :: In my eyes, everything looks glorious in shades of pink and orange and red. But I really just happen to love all colours. Everywhere I look, my eye is always drawn directly to the strongest and most saturated colours. When working on any new designs, it seems that my colour choices also follow this same pattern.

Technique :: I’m a mostly self taught creative type. My best ideas seem to suddenly appear while I’m lying in bed in the middle of the night, so I make sure to always have a sketchpad and pen in my bedside drawer. I have my own peculiar techniques when it comes to creating and making. The first step is to take the idea and visualise the finished item in my head. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to construct it, and how the seams will come together.

Once I’m happy that my idea is feasible, I usually sketch it out and work on the finished dimensions. Using that sketch of the completed item, I’ll then sketch out the separate fabric components, calculate their dimensions, and add the appropriate seam allowances. I have multiple sketch books in all sorts of different sizes. They’re literally all over my house!

For my own range of CurlyPops products, I don’t necessarily make myself a pattern. I usually just work with a sketch. I also make a lot of one-off custom orders for things like camera bags, or teatowel handbags, where the dimensions of the camera, or the dimensions of the teatowel actually dictate the size and construction method. I receive quite a few requests for unusual items, and I’ll usually try to make anything at least once!

I was lucky enough to work part-time for Nicole Mallalieu from You Sew Girl for a couple of years. I learned so much about sewing, bag making, using hardware and choosing the right type of interfacing to create the appropriate structure in a project. I most definitely would not have the skill level that I have today without the knowledge that I’ve gained from Nikki. That’s one of the reasons why I decided to become a You Sew Girl pattern stockist.

Donate Life

I’ve been on the waiting list for a double lung transplant since August 31st 2011. Craft really has been wonderful for keeping my spirits high, but it’s also helped me to raise awareness for organ donation. If you’re in Australia and you would like to know more, then please visit the Donate Life Website and sign up on the Australian Organ Donor Register. If you read my blog, or follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll be the first to know when I finally receive that amazing call from the Transplant Co-ordinator.Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: Slowing down and connecting with each other

contributor — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:55:35 +0000

Marcie has lived as an organic lettuce farmer, a tropical rainforest field technician, an Alaskan tent-dwelling field biologist, and a Manhattan biology teacher. She now has two young girls. After a few years of babywearing, Lego-playing, Play-doh-making, puppet-showing, costume-making, fort-making, worm-digging, goop-making, tadpole rearing, mudpie-making, tomato-growing, and forgetting herself and forgetting just about everything she knew while kid-less, she developed Mossy. A blog about child-rearing and family life, with a focus on simple natural growing and making projects.

I grew up spending a lot of time outside—with parents who took us camping, hiking and sailing. Before kids, I worked as an wildlife field assistant, went to graduate school in Alaska and then later taught biology and ecology in Manhattan. My creative projects were mostly geared toward rugged outdoor endeavors—functional ski gaiters, messenger bags, backpacks and snow pants.

When our two girls arrived amidst a house renovation and cloud of plaster dust, crafty projects were neglected for several years. As the girls grew, it became a matter of both necessity and pleasure to get them plugged into nature and to get their creative juices flowing through hands-on projects—felting wool, making superhero costumes, making tents and playhouses, building a vegetable garden, making a bee coop, designing field guides, making finger puppets and stuffed animals. It was really an organic evolution that we not only find ways to work together at home, but that we understand the nature behind each activity—Why does bread rise? What causes a seed to germinate? —I deemed it my “job” to nurture the creative part of our kids and offer small simple real-world experiences that matter.

I love unraveling life’s mysteries with my girls—the messy, the comical, the unexpected. Before they were here, my projects were more intricate and utilitarian in nature. Now with them my projects are smaller, slower, more whimsical and slightly messier. Always, their ideas propel things in an unexpected direction, and, in the process, we build upon an old skill, or learn a completely new one. More importantly, we’ve spent time slowing down and connecting with each other.

I think, to build lasting connections with our families and our environment, we need to understand where things come from—how they are made, how they are used, how they impact the surrounding environment throughout a life cycle. I think sustainability should be securely sewn into the fabric of every day, as an awareness that touches all that we do. Sometimes it takes substantial patience and effort to slow down and merge family and creativity. But sometimes it’s the things you do while standing still that make up who you are.

On my own, I like to think carefully about the process and combine like-minded colors and textures in my projects. I like to use high-quality cast-off fabric—wool remnants, curtains—and notions and materials like Bakelite buttons and hand-me-down silver. I like to reconstruct unwanted clothing and upholstery into vintage and modern designs. I like to make things out of things. I like to make things that will last.

A woman I used to know told me once that she was inspired by orange and sometimes red. The following people and places inspire me daily:

Charlotte Lyons :: Lisa Congdon :: Ann Wood :: Mimi Kirchner :: Micaela Preston :: Jenny Rosenstrach :: Maya Donenfeld :: Rachel Ball :: Elisabeth Dunker :: Gayla Trail :: Stone Barns :: Storm King Art Center

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Guest series :: The Four Essential Truths of My Creative Self

contributor — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:02:10 +0000

Colleen Babcock is a cloth art doll designer living in London with her husband. Originally from Canada, Colleen sells patterns, teaches online and in-person and exhibits in the UK and across North America. With work featured in several books and magazines, Colleen also writes guest posts for popular craft blogs, like WhipUp, while keeping the creativity levels high on her own blog, The Magic Bean.

The Four Essential Truths of My Creative Self or What Life and Health Have Taught Me About Creativity

When Kathreen asked me to write about my creative process I wanted to run. Not because I wasn’t flattered to be invited and not because I wasn’t pleased to do it, but because my best ideas come when I’m not thinking about it, when I’m doing something else, like running. My best creative moments come on the treadmill, in the bathtub, or in the kitchen. Which would probably account for why my ideas book is always damp – it’s constantly getting covered in sweat, bath water and sauce. Let’s just say, it’s not a pretty sight. It’s knowing that I have a tendency to over-think things that has led me to recognise my first essential truth about my creative self.

Essential Creative Truth No. 1: I come up with my best ideas when I don’t really think about it. It turns out my subconscious is far more creative than my conscious mind. Word to the wise: if you want to use this method of inspiring yourself by doing something else, make sure you keep a piece of paper or a notebook nearby. You never know when inspiration will strike.

Just as you never know when inspiration may strike you never know when disaster might strike. Being creative means taking risks. Trying new things, new mediums, new techniques, means that it is easy for mistakes to happen. If you let them, mistakes can become disasters, but they don’t have to be. And that brings me round to …

My Essential Creative Truth No. 2: Learn to see the beauty and opportunity in mistakes. As I always tell my students in my art doll making classes, “There’s no such thing as a mistake, there’s only creative redirection”.

This truth is something I try to remember when I take classes as a student. In a recent screen printing class I slopped some ink where I didn’t want it. I figure there are two options in this sort of situation – make the mistake a design feature or artfully cover it up. Maybe that blob could have become part of the design, but I just slapped a ruffle over it to cover it up. In the end, I preferred the bag with the ruffle. If I hadn’t made that “mistake” I likely wouldn’t have thought to add that detail. And that bag was really crying out for a ruffle.

Sometimes people let fear of making mistakes stop them from trying anything creative at all, but sometimes we find other excuses for why we “can’t” be creative.

“I don’t have the skills.”
“I don’t have the time.”
“I don’t have the money.”

You have the choice to make excuses for why you’re not getting creative OR you can embrace …

Essential Creative Truth No. 3: Learn to love limitations by thinking of them as creative challenges rather than as roadblocks.

I’ve come up with some of my best work when I was given only a short time to meet a deadline. Last year, I had to submit two projects for proposed classes at an exhibition while preparing for Christmas and fulfilling other deadlines. I designed and made my Dive into a Book fabric bookmark fairy within days as a result and she remains a popular pattern.

I think I do well with time limits because I don’t have time to worry about what I’m doing and my instincts take over. In essence, the time limit helps me to get out of my own way. I’ve learned to think of the obstacle course of everyday life as the scenic route – every obstacle you have to overcome might just hold the key to creative inspiration. So what’s your excuse? Or should I say, what’s your creative challenge?

One of my biggest creative challenges is space, or the lack thereof. I live with my husband and run my craft and doll making business out of 350 sq feet of space. Visitors to my tiny London flat question how I can possibly live, create and stay sane in such small environs. Luckily, my primary creative passion is making art dolls which are on the diminutive side. Granted, it would be more difficult in my allotted space if my passion was making large quilts or sewing wedding dresses, but if I really wanted to do those things, I would find a way. Which leads me to …

Essential Creative Truth No. 4: Where you really need space to be creative is in your head.

When I first discovered art dolls I was smitten and I was happy to put my own spin on other people’s designs using patterns, but I got to a point where I wanted to design my own work, but however hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to find my own vision. I was assailed by a fear of the overwhelming possibilities. Would my designs be good enough? How would my designs be different than what was already out there? Where would I start? In the end, what got me started was being stopped in my tracks by a hand injury that required surgery, years of physiotherapy and a stream of alternative therapies. Having my physical ability to create taken away from me for many months meant that the fear and insecurities in my mind became the least of my worries. During that period I realised that the only way I could be creative was in my mind and so I dreamt up designs, even going so far as to visualise cutting and drafting patterns. Now the problem was not fear. It was me against the pain. I was determined to make the designs in my mind a reality, even if I had to make them with my feet. Ever since, I have had more ideas than time to make them. It’s a good problem to have and it taught me that the fear of not being creative enough is not nearly as bad as the fear of not being able to try.

P.S. I intended to go for a run to get some inspiration for writing this post but I never made it out the door. This missive was written while I was wearing Lycra and one running shoe. So I guess my Essential Creative Truth No. 5 would be: You never know when creativity may dawn so be ready for it. Are you ready?Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: I did my best with what I had

contributor — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:56:13 +0000

Amy Palanjian works as a food editor at Better Homes and Gardens and contributes to Recipe.com; in her spare time, she quilts, sews, crafts, and spends time in her kitchen and garden. She has just written the soon to be released So Pretty! Crochet: Inspiration and Instructions for 24 Stylish Projects by Chronicle books. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa with her husband Josh.

My husband Josh and I are expecting a baby the first week of June (ish—she of course may decide to come sooner or later than that!), and with that, my outlook on crafting and creating has changed a bit. I’ve always enjoyed making things out of scraps, found objects, and vintage fabrics, but my desire to teach our daughter to be resourceful, without having to rely on always going out and purchasing things, seems to be coming through front and center with how I’ve approached preparing for her arrival.

When I found out I was pregnant, I looked for inspiration for this new period in our lives. I found it through many bloggers including Meg of Sew Liberated, Sara of Feeding the Soil and Kylie of How We Montessori. Getting to know these women and their approach to parenting through the stories that they share each week has been enormously helpful—their lives look and feel similar to ours and they have given me a lot of hope that adding a child to the mix doesn’t necessarily have to change that. In fact, it can make it all a lot more fun, meaningful, and interesting.

I’ve made a few mini quilts for the baby to play on using fabric that had been lingering in my stash for months (or, in some cases, years). I also made a quilt using a collection of vintage blocks that I’d picked up at a local antique mall for a few dollars last year—the fabric was already so soft and broken in that I can’t help but think that it will be a lovely place for a baby to play. We purposefully kept our registery list short in the hopes that we could teach her about the world through real objects, rather than relying on toys (though we do of course have some toys!), and each time I think I want something for the baby, I consider whether I could make it myself.

When I found wall decals that I loved, I realized that I could probably make something similar using supplies that I already had in my house. I gave it a go and crafted some fabric wall decals in the shapes of butterflies to decorate behind the crib. I used fabric that played a role in our wedding and that I had used in a quilt that I made last year for a good friend’s new baby. Sure, I still need to figure out a more secure way to adhere them to the walls, but for now, I’m content with knowing that I did my best with what I already had.

I am sure that this way of thinking will change, bend, and react to the girl once she is here with us, but I am finding that it’s been a good place to start. Waiting for our daughter to join us has been a joyful experience, but one that has been filled with wonder and questions.

Making time to sit and make things with her in mind has helped me stay calm and sane throughout the past 8+ months.

Will I have time to sew things once I have a baby to take care of? Will I ever be able to keep the straight pins that are surely hiding in my couch (where I sit and quilt) away from the baby? Will my beloved fabric shears be safe from little hands (and will she be safe from them)? Will she like to spend time in the garden with her dad as I am hoping that she will? Will she love quiet and books and good food like her parents do? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but I hope that as a start, we are able to teach her how to use her own creativity as a way to explore the world.Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: Take your creativity where you can find it

contributor — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:58:24 +0000

Christine Chitnis is a Providence, Rhode Island-based writer, photographer and mother. Her writing has appeared in Country Living, The Boston Globe, Time Out New York and many other local and national publications. Her first book, Markets of New England highlights fifty of the most vibrant farmers markets and art events in the region. Visit her at christinechitnis.com.

To say that having a baby changes every aspect of your life would be an understatement, as all of us moms know. There are joys, struggles, and sacrifices, to be sure- but there are also so many wonderful, unexpected surprises. I have always been a creative-type; dabbling in everything from sewing and knitting, to photography and writing, but I couldn’t have anticipated how having children would change my approach to crafting and creativity.

Although the time I spend creating has lessened since having my son over a year ago (and our second is due in July!), I tend to be much more productive and focused with the time I do have in my studio. I find great pleasure in crafting for my son- whether it’s knitting him a sweater, making felt blocks for him to play with, or quilting big beach blankets for our summer picnics. But I also make sure to carve out time to craft for myself- I am currently working on an incredibly girly quilt entirely in shades of purple! That one’s for me- just for me!

Since having my son, I have expanded my view of creativity to include all of the things that I naturally do each day to make our family life full of warmth and love- this includes healthy cooking, keeping a clean, beautiful house, taking my son on daily adventures to libraries, museums, farms, beaches and nature walks, and documenting our memories with pictures and words on my blog. All of these things fuel my creativity and imagination, and that has been the unexpected gift – you take your creativity where you can find it, and you try to let your creative spirit come through no matter how mundane the task at hand.

I am endlessly inspired by mothers who manage to seamlessly integrate their creativity into their family life. A few of my favorite inspiring moms:
SouleMama :: Sew Liberated :: Nectar and Light :: Maya*Made :: Film in the Fridge :: Oh Happy Day

Whenever I need crafty inspiration, I turn to these great resources: Purl Bee :: Make Something :: Squam :: Creature Comforts :: And, of course, I love perusing Flickr and Pinterest!

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