The Role that Travel Plays in a Creative Life

I was bitten by the travel bug at a young age. My mom has told me numerous times about how strange it felt to put her 5-year old daughter on a bus to go to a weekend Brownie Camp. I was small and shy but there was no way I wasn't going on that trip. Since then I've spent summers living in Quebec, New York, and Edinburgh, driven from one end of the United States to the other and back again, and spent 10 months backpacking and learning to weave in Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia. These trips and others have provided more creative fuel than probably anything else I've done. I got the idea for my Edmonton postcards at breakfast place in New Orleans and I was inspired to start making paper mache organs after visiting a medical museum in Philadelphia. I started thinking about weaving at an art museum in Edinburgh, then went to South America with 'learn to weave' as my primary purpose and came home with the added benefit of understanding just how important creativity and making things was to me.

Why does travelling have such an impact on my creativity? In some ways it's the local culture that feeds me. Artists and artisans are influenced by and interested in different things in different parts of the world and seeing what else is out there has exposed me to new techniques, styles and subject matter. But even more important I think is the openness with which I visit these places. When I step into a gallery at home, it's usually in the context of my everyday life - it's a quick diversion from to-do lists and appointments and worries. I tend not to see things as clearly or be struck as deeply by what I do see. While travelling, though I often have a new set of worries on my mind, I tend to be more relaxed, and more engaged with my environment. Everything is new so everything demands my attention and there is a lot less everyday clutter to compete with for that attention.

Another reason that I'm more affected by what I see while travelling is that I am often alone. While I do love sharing my experiences with loved ones, there is a special sense of involvement that I get when I go alone. I am truly open to anything. In Edinburgh I visited their museum of history every few days and spent hours on each floor. There was no one to rush me, no one to influence my opinions. In South America I was free to follow any information or suggestion I received and wander without a plan. As a result, I just soaked it right up.

I'm not the only one who feels the special creative energy that comes from leaving home far behind. Many famous artists and writers (Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway are two often stated examples) added to their creative output while abroad. Several studies have explored the effects of "distance", whether psychological or geographical, on creativity. In one, the researchers gave participants a task - see how many methods of transportation they could come up with - and divided them into two groups. The first group was told that the task was created by local students and the second was told that it was created by students studying abroad in Greece. The group that thought the task came from Greece came up with many more methods than the local group. This kind of blew my mind a bit, and the way I interpret this study (in my very unscientific way) is to realize that you don't even have to go anywhere to gain the cognitive benefits of travel. Just thinking about another place seems to do the trick.

This is great news for those of us who aren't able to travel whenever we want. It's been well over two years since coming home from my last trip and I'm itching to get out and explore again, though I'm much more restricted financially than I have been in a long time. While I have my fingers crossed that I'll be able to go on a trip in the spring, I need to find ways to fill my creative tank now. If you're longing for a creative jolt but can't manage a big trip right now, here are some ideas to get you in a travelling frame of mind:

- Read novels or memoirs that take place in far away places. I just finished The Ghost Bride which is set in Malaysia, and while much of the book takes place in the afterlife, it filled me with plenty of intriguing images and ideas.

- Go on weekend trips. We live three hours from the Rocky Mountains and we try to get out there as often as possible to go back country camping. While I don't feel the buzz of stimulation that I do in a foreign city, being out in the wilderness calms my mind and body like nothing else and gives me space to think through problems.

- Explore your own city. Try new restaurants (especially ethnic ones), go to new neighbourhoods shop in stores you've never visited. I find that used bookstores, coffee shops, and small galleries tend to give me the biggest hit of creative energy.

- Look through photo albums and journals from past trips. While most of my trip photos are stored on my laptop, I did manage to make a beautiful album about Edinburgh, with photos, sketches, and postcards from museums. Flipping through this book brings me back to the feeling of wide open inspiration that I felt there.

These are just some of the ways that travel and travel substitutes impact my creative life. How does travel impact your creativity? What do you do when you can't get away?

All this Stuff: The Objects that Inspire Me

Like many people, I collect objects and images and use them to decorate my home. Some have flown with me across oceans, some were made by friends and my boyfriend, and plenty are gifts from people I love. I have always loved having these objects out where I can see them - minimalism is definitely not for me. When I met my boyfriend and saw that his apartment was crowded with his own collection of objects of wonder, I knew that we would get along fine. Sometimes I feel guilty for feeling so connected to objects, and I sometimes wonder - why these things? What is it about them that makes me never tire of looking at them?

In her book The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp talks about creative DNA: "I believe that we all have strands of creative code hard-wired into our imaginations. These strands are as solidly imprinted in us as the genetic code that determines our height and eye color, except they govern our creative impulses. They determine the forms we work in, the stories we tell, and how we tell them."

I think these objects are part of my creative code. When I look closely I see that certain themes come up again and again: navigation, exploration, and discovery are big ones, along with a sense of history, and of being very far away in place in time. These themes underlie my art (my obsession with maps and old things) and my life (I feel a constant urge to explore, to learn, and to venture further and further afield).

Some of the things you'll find taking up space in my tiny bachelor apartment include: postcards from an exhibit I saw in Edinburgh called "Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery", an old map of the north of England that my boyfriend had beautifully framed for me, an old window frame filled with dried flowers made by a local artist, a vase full of dried local grasses, weavings from Peru, and large wall-hanging that I made in Argentina, glass insulators from the tops of old telephone poles (we used to go looking for them in ditches with my dad), an antique mirror and brush that I bought while visiting a friend in northern Alberta, a sock puppet a friend made for me when I went away for a summer, a Kachina doll I bought in Arizona, a fan my brother brought from Japan next to one from New Orleans, a tea pot my mom gave me when I moved out.

To me, these things evoke the feeling of a jumbled 19th century museum, with strange new treasures around every corner. Natural history, textile arts, maps. They provide a record of what I have already discovered and inspire me to continue exploring. Even the colour schemes that I'm drawn to are straight from the dark corners of of a natural history display - the deep rich woods of old cabinets, the dusty beiges of dried plant matter and animals, the occasional shock of green or pink from a faded botanical print. This explains, perhaps, why I keep dead plants around, despite their supposedly bad fung shui, and why I still have the vertebrae of a cow that I found in a field when I was eight years old. That slightly morbid fascination with things that have long since died gives a clue as to why I currently feel compelled to create sculptures of hearts and eyeballs, and why I cover them with old, found papers.

This isn't even all of it. I have a box full of items that didn't make the cut - a quote from a poem written in Chinese calligraphy that I watched being made in the Chinese garden in Portland, weavings made by one the best weavers in all of Bolivia, and the pieces that she taught me to make, postcards from Chicago, New York, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, Lima, and plenty more maps. I dream of one day having a library where I'll be able to display everything and have a visual inventory of my travels through space and time.

I'll be moving in with my boyfriend in a couple months and will have to pare down even more and be extra choosy about what will be displayed and what will be stored. What will stay and what will go? And how will he and I decide how to merge our creative code and tell our shared story? I can't wait to find out.

What objects are part of your creative code? What do you keep around to remind you of who you are and what's important to you? Leave a comment below.

What Watching 10 Plays Taught Me About Creativity

Some people love the Christmas season. Some can't wait for the Stanley Cup playoffs or the Olympics. For me, one of the best times of the year is the Fringe Festival, an annual smorgasbord of theatre that descends on our city every August. My parents used to take me when I was a kid and as soon as I got a car I spent the greater part of the 10 day festival volunteering, watching plays, and taking in the atmosphere. This year over 200 hundred plays opened their doors in over 50 venues across town. I saw 10 of them. Here are a few things these plays made me think about when it comes to creativity in general, and the process of creating work for an audience:

Start by playing. Some of these shows were clearly created by people who just started messing around with a bizarre character or an elaborate costume piece and let the story take them where it would. Many of my favourite plays start this way, without a script or a roadmap, just a sense of exploration and discovery. Things come out of this experimentation that could never have been dreamed up while sitting at a desk. This is an essential part of any creative process and something I'm actively trying to incorporate into my own routine on a regular basis (watch for an upcoming blog post about it!).

Put your heart into it. When someone really really cares about what they're doing, and really really cares about my experience of their work, it shows. Their joy and passion flow through every aspect, and I leave feeling satisfied. Yes, they have talent, but it's clear that they've worked for it. They mastered the skills, they put in the time and the hard work necessary to do the best that they could, and they inspire me to reach for my best work as well. If I can inspire that kind of dedication then I've done my job well.

Be specific. The more precise and perfectly choreographed a piece is, the more captivating it has the potential of being. In theatre, improv can be fun (and useful in the right contexts, as in the first point) but nothing beats the energy of something has been rehearsed and meticulously fine-tuned. I watched a show where the actors wore masks, so they had to use subtle gestures and movements to convey emotion and to move the story forward - if they had been sloppy and tried to wing it the audience would have been lost. In another the actors matched the rhythm of their movements to pre-recorded sound effects so effectively that I found myself mesmerized by an invisible typewriter. In my own work this means keeping an eye on the details that I often like to overlook to make sure that everything syncs up.

What's the take-home? Decide what you want your audience to take away from your work. I watched a show about the coming apocalypse and despite it being rather political and a bit heavy-handed, I wasn't entirely sure what they wanted me to get from it. Was I just supposed to laugh and then go on my way? Did they want me to take action and start trying to prevent the apocalypse, or start preparing for it? Or was it just a friendly warning that the apocalypse was on it's way, but everything is going to be just fine? Not every piece of art has a message of course, but everything does have a purpose. Be clear about that purpose - what do I want people to do with this piece?

Make a decision. This point is similar to the last in that you must be clear. One play billed itself as something and then turned out to be something quite different, which isn't always a bad thing. What didn't work is that they tried to be both and it just ended up feeling awkward. Just as it started to gain steam in one direction it would switch gears and lose me completely. Choose something and then stick to it. Don't try to be everything to everyone. This is advice I really need to pay attention to, since I have a hard time not trying to do everything.

Show, don't tell. This was one of the biggest lessons I learned in drama school and it's true in many art forms. In general the audience will be happier if they are drawn into something and can feel it in their hearts - rather than thinking about it intellectually. One play featured two vibrant, charismatic performers whose portrayal of a couple from the 1890s had me captivated immediately. After a few minutes, however, they broke character and started telling us the story of the characters rather than acting them out. This served its own purpose in the structure of the play, but I couldn't wait for them to jump back into character and continue showing me the story, since, to me, that was so much more compelling.

Know when to stop. One of the shows I saw was pure comedic gold. The characters, the absurd storyline, the use of audience participation - all of it was like nothing I had ever seen before. The scene wrapped up, I wiped my eyes (from laughing so hard I shed a few tears), and got ready to leave and tell all my friends about it. But it wasn't over. After a brief interlude, the actors reset and started over again. Same characters, different absurd storyline, different use of audience participation. This time wasn't as surprising, or even as much fun, and certainly wasn't as careful and precise as the first half. The message I took home from this show was to be careful about taking something too far or giving too much of something. If you're relying on novelty and surprise to keep people engaged, then make sure you're not overdoing it and wearing them out. From my own personal experience I knew that once people started walking by my booth at craft fairs (where I was selling postcards of my hometown) and saying - 'There's so much Edmonton-themed stuff here this time', and 'Oh, I love your postcards, I have 5 at home!' that it was time to move on to something new.

Sometimes, more is more. After you've made some decisions, gotten specific, decided what the purpose is, feel free to go full throttle. Pile it on, shock us, exceed all our expectations. I saw a dance show where the dancers spun and twirled amidst a mass of white pillows that kept growing and growing until they had a pile of over 300 and it was large enough to launch themselves into. It was the very definition of excess and it was wondrous and beautiful. They let the audience live vicariously through their grand exploits and we were very thankful to have been taken along for the ride.

Don't forget to have fun. In every show I saw, from the serious to the playful, when the actors let themselves go and gave in to the moment, they had me. I could tell they were enjoying themselves, and that is a beautiful thing to watch. I find that the projects that feel fun to me while I'm working on them always succeed better than those that don't. Find what makes you smile and do that - chances are your audience will be left smiling too.

What sort of creative events fill you up? What do you take home from them? Leave a comment below!

I Invite You to Try...Visual Journaling

  Last week I wrote about my experiences with journaling and apparently I'm not ready to let the subject go since this week I want to talk about visual journaling - about how I got into it and how you can get started.

What is a visual journal?

Any form of record keeping that uses images can be described as a visual journal. In the book, Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art, Jennifer New explains that the word journal can be used almost interchangeably with sketchbook, field notes, notebook, or logbook. Visual journals are most frequently associated with artists, but they can also be kept by scientists, musicians, travelers, parents, or anyone who wants to keep track of their ideas and observations. In fact, rather than dividing her book into sections based on disciplines, New called her chapters Observation, Reflection, Exploration, and Creation - though most journals contain a little bit of everything.

New explains the magical properties of visual journaling:

"Visual journals are created in a secret language of symbols. Intentional or not, they are private maps only their makers can follow. No one else can look at a page and understand the specific meaning of a punching bag or a set of arrows. And no one else can remember the moment of its making. Joni Mitchell blaring on the stereo. Sage wafting in a hidden garden. The discomforting echo of last night's argument.

That said, visual journals may provide stronger records of the cultural milieu in which they were created than their purely written counterparts. Rather than describing the stuff of the day, they are often made from it. Anyone who has used primary source materials for research knows this. The difference between reading about someone's life and opening old, yellowed letters is startling. When pressed flowers and handwritten recipes escape from a tattered envelope, one can almost see hollyhocks growing in the garden and smell bread baking in the oven."

How I got started

As with many things, I first became interested in visual journaling when I saw someone else doing it. Somewhere I stumbled on the books of Sabrina Ward Harrison, who became famous for her "visual memoirs" - messy, chaotic art journals that vividly capture the rawness of certain moments in her life.

In the introduction to Messy Thrilling Life, ward explains:"This is a document of how we can traipse about wondering how we can devise plans and theories on how to make life feel better, more safe and right, more beautiful, and how all the while our life, this big messy thrilling life, is waiting for us to step into, to dance to, to write about and to live. This is a book about doing just that."

Her words are mingled with photographs streaked with paint, pieces of detritus from her daily life, and collaged paper dolls and vintage images from the covers of sewing patterns. She draws herself as a sad-eyed girl with pursed lips, staring out of the pages, watching and wondering. The pages of her books showed me how beautiful the art of visual storytelling can be, and gave me the desire to move beyond the written word in my own journals.

It's clear that journals like this are not made on the fly - they cannot be carried around in a purse and worked on casually. These take serious commitment. I was never quite so committed in my visual journaling efforts. I started when I was in University, and between classes, a part-time job, writing papers, rehearsals for theatre projects, and a social life, it was simply impossible to find hours for exploring in a journal. I would make a quick collage, or an even quicker drawing, before racing off to my next commitment. My efforts were sporadic and often disappointing, but it was enough to give me the desire to press on and to experiment more with different ways to tell my own story. Now I carry a small notebook with me to record observations, feelings, and quick sketches, and I have one at home for more elaborate collages. Though I may go months without creating an image, I always find myself returning eventually to this satisfying form of creative exploration.

Your turn

You don't need to spend money or have the right materials to start journaling. Cartoonist Lynda Barry uses a yellow legal pad because it reminds her that she's just playing. You can use computer paper, old notebooks, or whatever you can find.

If, like I was, you're excited to get moving but don't know where to start, here's a suggestion from Barry's memoir/creative instruction manual What It Is: 

1. Number your page from 1 to 10.

2. Relax.

3. Write down the first 10 images that come to your mind from the day before, regardless of significance.

I would then add the fourth step of choosing one or two (or ten!) of those images and finding a way to represent it visually. Can you find pictures in a magazine to evoke your image? Can you sketch a literal version or even a rough cartoon version? (stick figures can be surprisingly evocative!) If you took a photograph, can you play around with the photograph, adding text or doodles? Do you have any physical objects you can include, such as napkins, paper bags, coffee cups, feathers, or flowers?

Give yourself room to play, to experiment, and most importantly, to make mistakes. Go easy on yourself. The point of this practice is not to create works of art. For every page I made that turned out nice enough to show on this blog, there were 10 that I wouldn't want to show to anyone. I had to remind myself over and over that this was an experiment and that no one would be judging my work.

Think about all the different subjects you can explore in your journal: your emotions, your dreams (the collage with the fish at the top of the page was based on a dream I had), your experiences/memories, your favourite moments with friends and family, the things you notice throughout your day. Or, if you prefer not to use yourself as the subject, you can record what's growing in your garden, how your city is changing, or world events. Anything that involves noticing and interpreting what you find.

Once you've gotten a feel for what medium you enjoy working in and what subject matter you want to explore, then you can start collecting the materials you want to use. Decide if you want to carry the journal around with you, or leave it at home. Find a routine that works for you. You could leave it out and do a few minutes a day, or work on a page until it's finished. You can cram a ton of things onto one page, or spread them out. For more inspiration, look for the books I mentioned in this post at your local library. Have fun!

Have you ever tried visual journaling? What does it add to your creative practice? Leave a comment below!

What I've learned in 22 years of keeping a journal

I have been keeping a journal of some kind since I was around 8 years old. I have always been afraid that if I didn't write things down my life would fade away from me and I would be left with nothing. My record-keeping has evolved over the years from a strict diary of daily events, to a dumping ground for negative emotions and self-hatred, to colourful experiments with poetry and drawing, to a record of my growth and progress and a celebration of life. I've gone from writing every day, to every week, to once a month, to everything in between. I keep my diverse collection of books in a Rubbermaid bin that I drag from one home to another, and though I can't bear to read some of them, I wouldn't dream of letting them go. Without these books I honestly think I would be lost. They keep me in touch with myself and with all my past versions, and they constantly give me something to aspire to. Without these books holding me accountable to myself, I imagine that I would drift aimlessly through life with no intention or goals.

If it sounds pretty dramatic, that's because it is. These books are my lifeline. They hold my wisdom and my mistakes, my triumphs and my failures, my joys and my sorrows. They ARE me. Writing about what I've learned about journaling is sort of like writing about what I've learned about life. It's a big topic. With that said here are some things I've discovered in my journeys through journals:

1. Keep track of the good times. One of my primary goals is to write about everything good that happens, and everything that I want to remember. Lately I've taken to simply writing a list at the end of every month: I spent time with this person, I tried this exciting activity, I read this amazing book, I learned this important new lesson. For our first anniversary I made a zine for my boyfriend, with each page being a record of my favourite shared memories from each month of our relationship. Thanks to my journal I was able to recall these memories with ease.

This year I started a self-care journal where I write down, every day, the things I did that made me feel good and the things that I'm grateful for. When things aren't going so well this record helps remind me that I am doing okay and that life is actually quite lovely.

2. Keep track of what you learned from the bad times. As a teenager I use to write about every miserable little feeling that I had (and at that age I had a lot) so books from these years are filled with drama and whining. When I do dare to crack one of these books, they make me grateful that I grew up. Lately my strategy has been to hold off on writing about a negative situation until I can get some perspective on it and give myself some advice for dealing with similar situations in the future. This makes it feel like a constructive activity, rather than self-indulgent.

3. Use the right book, and the right pen. I don't mean to stress you out, but this is a very important decision. The book needs to be portable, yet sturdy. I stopped buying coil notebooks because the coil will collapse after being crushed a few dozen times in my bag, making it hard to open. It needs to lie flat, and be stable enough to be used on my lap, or on the ground. The paper needs to have the right texture for what I want to do with it. On my South American trip I found I did the most drawing in a square hardcover book with slightly rough pages. Something felt so right about drawing on those pages, whereas the book I bought when I finished it barely got used. I will spend an hour in a stationary store feeling the pages, holding the books in my hand, imagining how I will use it. I would recommend blank pages, as they're more versatile and you can pack more in, but lined pages definitely have their place.

If I do get a lined book, I use a plain ballpoint pen. But my blank journals call for something a little more decadent. A gel pen flowed across the pages of my last book, while a fine-tipped Sharpie scratched across the one before that. I can't say this enough: it has to feel right. I has to feel like the most natural combination, like something you can't wait to pick up again. If I find that journaling has become a chore, sometimes getting a nicer pen is all it takes to get me going again.

4. Don't discriminate. Record everything. When I'm traveling I am the best at journaling. I write down snippets of conversation or overheard exclamations, I describe my surroundings in great detail, I sketch what I see, I record all five senses, and I write about what I'm learning - about myself and about the world. I basically pack the pages full of wonder and curiosity, and joy. And when I'm at home... I occasionally remember to write about dinners with friends and special date nights. But those times when I do bring my journal everywhere and use it religiously, I can feel my life expanding and becoming infinitely richer. I pay closer attention, I feel more attuned to the different textures of my life. And these journals are the ones that I love going back to, to be inspired and to remind myself of what it feels like to be fully present and alive.

5. Play. Since I've started trying to make a living making art I often forget about playing with writing or with art, though as a child and early teen, that's all I ever did in my spare time. I have books full of poems, attempts at non-fiction, drawings, paintings, and other assorted bits and pieces. Lately I have to remind myself to write about an adventure longhand - to try to squeeze some juice from my experiences - or to illustrate my emotions, or to make a collage to help me remember a dream or an event. It's important to create for the sake of creating, without an audience in mind, and the journal is the perfect place for these adventures since it is a solitary place with no critics and no judgement. It is the best venue to try something new, to experiment.

Keeping a journal is one of my most important creative practices, no matter how intermittent it may be. Writing about it has me feeling inspired and excited: I can't wait to open a new book and start recording.

Have you ever kept a journal? What did you love most about it? If you've tried to keep one and given up on it, what was your biggest challenge? Leave a comment below!

Inspire July: Creative Challenge Recap

In July I ran my first creative challenge and it was a lot of fun. Incredibly challenging, but a lot of fun. This is what one of the participants had to say about her experience:

All in all, I've had a blast. Not all of them had been winners, but I've felt a definite sense of pride at what I've accomplished. It was something to look forward to everyday in July. 

I'm really glad a few people were inspired to look at their days a little differently during the challenge. I know it certainly stretched me and I learned a lot. Here are some things I thought about throughout the month:

• It really hit home how important it is to take creative action every single day. Whenever I missed one prompt, it was harder to do the next day. It honestly felt like training a muscle and as soon as I stopped working on it, it would stop giving me something in return.
• It also showed me how small those creative actions can be. It takes less than a minute to snap a photo, post it to Instagram, and add a hashtag. But somehow, telling that simple, small story opened something up inside me. It made me wonder, what else can I do? One of my posts inspired me to do a sketch and another one inspired me to create some collages. Others reminded me to share what I was learning with the world or to spread a little sunshine.
• Having other people do the challenge along with me was a big motivator since I knew they would be watching and wondering what I would post next. I didn't want to let them down or leave them hanging so I tried harder than I might have if I was doing it alone.
• Sometimes the posts came easily, and sometimes I had to step out of my daily routine to find something that would work. If my day didn't seem to have an opportunity for creativity, I had to make one. That's a really important lesson, I think. We can't wait for inspiration or creativity to find us. We have to make it happen.
• Most importantly, it helped me see my world differently. To me, this is how we learn to be creative, by looking at the ordinary with fresh eyes. It linked things up in new ways, helped me draw comparisons and create metaphors, and added significance to the seemingly insignificant. Like the participant said above, this fresh awareness gave me something to look forward to every day. It made me wonder, 'what will I discover today?'

Thank you to the small but dedicated group of people who played along with #InspireJuly. You inspired me and made it all worthwhile, and thanks to your effort you can look forward to many more creative challenges in the future. If you didn't keep up with the challenge as it unfolded, I've collected the majority of the posts in the following Storify. Enjoy, and I hope you'll join in next time!

How I Decorate my Hearts With Collage

I've had lots of questions about how I make my heart sculptures. I wrote a post on where I got the idea and how I shape the hearts here. Today I'm going to share my process for decorating the hearts - taking them from a blank 3D framework to a finished piece of art. The look I'm going for is that of a strange, rough artefact. At each stage I need to be careful not to get too precious. With this project, messy is best!

1. First I cover the newspaper with white paint to create a blank surface to work on.

2. Next I tear up pieces of maps, music notes, and different colours of tissue paper. On some hearts I used varying shades of one colour (light blue, medium blue, dark blue) but on this one I just had one shade of red so I mixed it with this beige colour. I also ripped up some patterns I made in an art class years ago - I'm a big fan of recycling!

3. I use a matte medium to glue the pieces, alternating maps, music notes, and the pattern with tissue paper. I use a sponge to coat both the surface of the heart and the piece I'm gluing. Then I cover each piece with matte medium to seal it and repeat this process until most of the heart is covered. I try to work quickly and not think too much about it, which I learned from Nick Bantock. This gives it a chaotic, unplanned look that I love.

4. I use a sponge to apply red paint unevenly across the surface. Some areas I make quite dark and some I barely touch. I try to bring out the texture of the paper by gently grazing the sponge over rough spots and again, I try to work as quickly as possible. After the red I went over it again with some brown, trying to give it a scuffed-up look. (No, I'm not left-handed, this is just me pretending to paint since I couldn't figure out how to hold the camera in my left hand!)

5. I then use a paint brush to fill in remaining white spots with red. I usually paint inside the tubes with the colour I used on the outside, but the red wasn't dark enough so I used a dark brown. Next come the veins on the front and the sides (I forgot to do this so there's no picture!)

6. To apply gold leaf I paint the glue on haphazardly, let it dry, then crumple the leaf up and stick it to the glue. This way it comes out uneven and spotty, rather than in solid chunks, which I prefer.

7. This is almost finished! It just needs a coat of varnish and a stained wooden stand (which my woodwork-loving boyfriend makes for me!)

I'll be selling these new hearts at the Art Walk in Edmonton this weekend! Stop by Friday, Saturday, or Sunday between 10am and 5pm. I'll be on the North side of Whyte Avenue between 103 and 104 Streets. 

#InspireJuly: A Creativity Challenge

Welcome to my very first creativity challenge!

The Mission:

To stretch our creative muscles a little bit each day in July. To open our imaginations and share our stories.

The Rules:

1. Use the words above as prompts to create a story: either a visual image or a small Tweetable piece of text each day.

2. Post the story you create to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #InspireJuly, along with the word that inspired it.

3. Interpret the prompts any way you want, literally or off-the-wall figuratively.

4. Use any media you want. Try to stretch a little bit and think about the different stories you can tell with each word. Will you sketch or paint a picture? Make a collage? Take a photo? Use found objects to make a sculpture? Take a video? Use found text? Transcribe overheard conversations? Create a map? Of course, if you want to use all photographs that's fine too!

5. Do as many or as few as you want, in any order you want. I don't want to stress anyone out, so make this challenge whatever you need it to be to have fun.

6. Share with your friends! The more people we have playing along, the more fun it will be.

The challenge starts tomorrow and will go to the end of July. I hope you'll join in on the creative adventures!