The Ease of Creating

Hi guys so in COMPLETE contrast to my last few posts I realised there is a complete flip side I can share to the story. 

recent carefree page from my Outdoor Studio/Warm Up Journal

Just like life, being an artsy craftsy type can have it's ups and it's downs...and while I am a 'creative-positive' person let's say, where I do believe anybody can develop the skills they want, I never deny that the road might be rocky. This in effect is why I share my own ups and downs, not just the ups, because no-one is excluded. It includes those you, and I, might even look up to and admire for their creative prowess. 

Being a creative person means we are not just allowing others to dictate the things that are in our, and sometimes others, world - because we ourselves are bringing forth new things into the world. Things that would not exist if we did not. I think it is the path least trodden, so sometimes we will get tripped up by exposed tree roots or smacked in the face by a branch while we find our way.

The beauty is though at other times our path is a glorious rocky cliff, overlooking beautiful blue sea with a golden sand beach to our left and luscious green tree-filled mountains to our right, while the sun beams down on us happily from above. Sometimes our course can be super easy, super harmonious and super joyful. This is the flip side.

So here are a couple of my recent projects that have turned my treacherous path into a super joyful one:

Since my last post where I ditched a couple of projects I have been creating a video...and loving it. Feeling completely back in my 'zone' creating a fun tutorial with lots of bits and pieces I know will be beneficial to a lot of people. It's not easy to make but it is coming together with ease...if that makes sense.

Sneaky Peeks:

Another example is for months I have been slogging away at a zine I was making (I won't share the title or theme - it's good, so will keep it to private for now just in cases I do want to do it one day). Anyway like the London journal it had been on my mind for years...in fact it was to be a series of zines full of art & information and I spent months planning what was going on in each, I  never thought I would have a problem actually creating it. But in hindsight I think I flogged the donkey a bit too much, all that planning meant the content was *excellent* but the creating was completely *joyless*. 

Sneaky Peek at the Joyless-one:

Anyway I was nearing the end of the first zine and I hated it - it was not at all the wonderful fun zine in my head. Then one morning in the week I was going to finish the damn zine (I was, I was, I was! I was determined...I wanted it done & gone!) I woke up and had a completely new zine in my head: 

This new zine was not only written and drawn within a creative whirlwind of just a few days, but I was proud of it to boot, and sent it off to the printers to be a new publication for my shop:

The contrast between the ease of creating this zine, and the agony of slogging out the old one left me with only one outstanding action to do on the first one: to ditch it. I realised I wanted to walk along the sunny cliffside path, and given that a new zine had been born instantly and so effortlessly too, I also realised that that is what creativity is reaaaally about.

xoxo