Having two little ones at home I don't get as much time as I need to Scrap or more precisely....to be a productive scrapper. ( I am sure though, I am not the only one) My two are 22 months apart, and the older one has been challenging! Needing lots of attention. I find it draining sometimes and even when I might have time to scrap, I really can't. My creativity is just not at my beck and call when I am exhausted or frustrated. I almost feel that if I am not able to continually create, then my creativity suffers! I need to get back 'into the zone' before I can get going, which wastes far too much precious time, then I end up frustrated even more that I wasted my time and created nothing!!! A viscious circle!
I have been investigating a 'Creative' or 'Art' Journal. It sounds really appealing to create something that challenges your creativity and exercises it enough to get those creative juices flowing. It really fits with my 'the more you use it the more you have it' thing I have going here!!! Now, I love Art, and playing with all kinds of different media, but the idea of a 'Creative' journal as a scrapper sounds really exciting. The idea of being able to use magazine cut outs, clippings from catalogues and the like, to record what I find inspiring, not to mention the lovely scrapping supplies to add to the inspiration....Just sounds divine. Below are some of the completely inspiring things I found.
At This site the description was as follows......
"A painting creativity journal is a collection of the ideas you have and things that inspire you. It's a place to record ideas that you can't use immediately -- you may think you'll remember them, but one can't remember everything, so it's better to make a quick note and put it into your painting creativity journal. Don't think it's for only finished ideas or well-planned projects, it's definitely not! It's the place to record those quick thoughts before you get distracted, those images lurking in your brain, and for building up a personal image library."
This quote was also very motivating for me
"Starting an art journal is a powerful way to move beyond words in your daily writing practice. Not only does working with images access a different part of our brains than words, making art is a source of playfulness and creative joy.
When we make pictures in our journals, we often come to deeper insights about ourselves and the world around us than we can when we carefully shape our thoughts and write them on paper. By adding color and form to the pages of our journals we illuminate them and in the process we illuminate ourselves.
Here is the site I pulled it from with much more on the details on how to actually create your journal.
They really can be a form of inspiration and motivation. I am forever seeing things I love, shapes that appeal, colours combo's that are visually striking, advertisements that grab me, text and fonts that I adore....And I look and "oooh" and "ahhh", and think to myself, that looks so great, I will remember that...." and I am dragged out of it with the 'Mum-meeee, He hit meeeee....." and it is gone, along with any inspiration the item brought me, (even if just for a fleeting moment....It was there!) By all accounts it does not need to be a hugely time consuming thing that I first thought it would need to be "I haven't got time to scrap, let alone put all my efforts into a book, which is not much good for anyone but myself" In truth I may do alot of it already just in no real 'creative' form. I do have a sketch book in which I jot things down in and draw and doodle things, practice writing different fonts....ETC, it's just fairly ugly!
I believe I will give this a try. If it exercices my creativity enough to use my time productively, then it is worth it. If it creates a bank of ideas I can draw from when doing my next LO...then all the better. Any excuse to decorate something!!! Now I am all excited. Anyone else motivated to start a "Creative Journal?"
