Alright, I’ve got creative projects I love to work with, and it’s one thing when I’ve got large blocks of time to devote, but often I find my time filling up with work and chores and other obligations.

How can I stay in touch and focused on something I enjoy so much, with ease and joy, without it becoming a challenge or a pressure and without setting the stakes so high that I set myself up to fail? How can I make my creative process an organic part of my life, so I keep my momentum, even when there doesn’t seem to be any time?

What if I could spend quarter of an hour every day on my personal creativity? Or even ten or five minutes? It would keep my creative process going, and my projects would continue to grow, even when I’m too busy to spend long chunks of time with them!

Here’s the idea for Creative Minutes:

• Start off by finding activities that evolve creative projects and that can be done in 5, 10 or 15 minute blocks, without putting your creativity on hold.
• Next, fit them into daily life, from Monday to Friday, leaving the weekends (or two different days) free for other activities.

Creative Minutes

I know I’m not the only person who has trouble finding time for creativity, perhaps this idea is something we could work on together? Maybe you’ve got a book on the back burner? Artwork or poetry in a drawer? Neglected craft projects, an instrument or camera on the top shelf? Feel free to join in. Share your ideas in the comments or write about your Creative Minutes on your blog. Finding methods to advance your creative dreams in micro-bites. Wouldn’t it be fun to share ideas on how to find ways to live with our creative dreams every day?

I’ve made four square banners for Creative Minutes that I’ll be using for the project. Feel free to use them too if you like! Happy creating!

Tags: Creative Minutes, creative process, Creativity

Pink heart

I’m just about about emerging to the surface after having spent six weeks In The Fish Bowl: Life As An Artist Online with Marisa Haedike of Creative Thursday, holding onto this quote by the Persian poet and philosopher Jalal ad-Din Rumi: “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”

It’s been six dynamic, inspiring & empowering weeks, charged with a combination of expert know-how and a passion for doing what you love to do. Organically connecting everything from pricing, to blogging and marketing with being connected to your vision and following your heart.

Thank you Marisa, for your focus on being true to your self, and thank you all of you amazing and inspiring artists who participated in the course!

Tags: courses, Creativity, hearts, quotes

Black boots and Italian basketweave scarf.

Autumn. Boots and scarf and hat and gloves. Shiny street, wet from the rain, sometimes black with a little purple or blue.

My head is still spinning from this week’s adventure with natural media software, Painter 11. The way the paints interact with each other and the canvas, the texture and detail is mind blowing! Exploring the brushes, markers, chalk, pastels, watercolor and oil, just to mention a few, and if this isn’t enough you can make your own brushes with the RealBristle tool. You can control the width of brush strokes by the tilt of your pen, just like when you use a real, traditional brush! It’s amazing… You can decide to leave a layer of digital watercolor in wet mode, so that it’s still wet when you continue, whether you continue working on your painting a month or a day later! It’s like having access to all the natural media you can imagine, without having to take it out of storage, wash the brushes or deal with the toxins, mess and expenses! There’s a free demo of Painter that you can download to give it a trial run.

This weekend I’m looking forward to visiting the blogs of fellow artists in The Fish Bowl. Seeing Julie and Julia at the beautiful cinema Skandia, designed by Gunnar Asplund in 1923. Creating a reading corner with a grey sheepskin Lamino armchair in the living room and washing the kitchen floor.

I hope you have a wonderful and restful weekend!

Red leaves and berries.

Tags: autumn, black, grey, natural media, orange, Painter, red, software, technology, watercolours

Apples, satsumas and rose hips.

Today is one of those autumn days that’s as crisp as an apple. I’ve been playing around with my camera and water colours, drawn to a bold and fiery colour palette, textures and contrast. Quite different from last week’s romantic, dreamy Full Harvest Moon Dreamboard and Montage.

I’m planning a new collection in the series of Luminous Folder Icons, inspired by autumn and Halloween. This time in hot, spicy shades of orange and cayenne, perhaps adding some earth tones with cinnamon, umber, ochre, and sienna.

And best of all, finally satsumas are in season! Zesty, sweet and tangy taste of sunshine, with that light spray of satsuma oil as you peel them.

A beautiful gift from online friend Anna of Beyond 56 Days.

Tags: autumn, green, orange, Photography, red

Dreamboard. Full Harvest Moon. October 2009.

A Dreamboard for the Full Harvest Moon. Layers of transformation, expanding creative expressions, painting, photography, writing, type… The past, the present. And finding a focus for the future.

I was standing in the museum of a castle ruin, reading fascinating (no I’m not being sarcastic) and informative text on those typical museum boards, when suddenly the graffiti on the wall behind the board caught my attention. Or rather came forward to me, like a wave of text, like light, layers and layers of graffiti carved onto the stone wall. And I started to photograph the graffiti, going from room to room, floor to floor, captivated by it, following its light, and forgetting everything else… The earliest date I found was 1609, and the most recent was 2009. It was like a living memorial to all those people. I imagined each person writing their name on the wall, carving glorious moments of stolen kisses, or writing a “here I am, I exist” in the middle of an everyday experience… I wondered if people ever recalled, later on, the moment when they crafted that graffiti…

When I returned from my journey to Öland, my best friend wanted to see my photos from my trip, but I mostly have loads of photos of this graffiti from the castle… One of the images, the one below, was the starting point for this collage, and was meant to be the focal point, and yet it didn’t make it in! Somehow it just got to be too much.

Here is a desktop wallpaper and an October desktop calendar version of my Harvest Moon dreamscape.

Centuries of layered graffiti on the wall of a castle ruin.

Tags: collage, creative process, Creativity, dreamboard, dreams, fonts, full moon, grafitti, handwriting, history, layers, letters, making wishes, orange, Photography, purple, vintage, watercolours