I emailed my subscribers a few days ago asking what they would find helpful over the next few months and the responses were split almost fifty-fifty between “lots of new doodles to work with!” and “I want lots of new inspiration!”, so today I thought I’d start by sharing a few ideas for creative projects you can do while at home. I’ll pin this post to the top of blog so it’s easy to find and will keep it updated with your recommendations and any other fun stuff I come across.

Firstly, I want to share what I am planning to do for the next few weeks. My daughter would have been taking her GCSE Art exam this week so I’ve been looking for some arty projects for us to do together to keep the creativity flowing, but that aren’t too structured or pressured. I want something that was free and expressive and will allow us to play around with ideas and just have fun together! These are the three projects that we’ll be dipping and in out of:

1. The Two Week Art Journal

First up is a new, free course from art journaling guru Julie Fei-Fan Balzer: The Two Week Art Journal

This is a continuation of Julie’s great Art Journal Everyday series and I’m really excited to introduce my daughter to art journaling! I love the idea of having a little completed, hand-made journal by the end of the two weeks.

2. Tangie Baxter’s Virtual Art Parties

I’m also hoping to catch some of Tangie Baxter’s livestreams this month, she has a few scheduled at an earlier time-slot (2pm EST) that will work for us! I’ve watched some of Tangie’s classes before and there’s always such a great community spirit to them. Classes or parties are held on Zoom so you can interact with other classmates, either by being on camera, using your microphone or in the typed chat.  I’m really looking forward to creating along with Tangie and her team over the next few weeks. Here’s the full schedule of Tangie’s Virtual Art Parties, maybe I will see you there!

3. Wreck This Journal

Finally, we’re going to be dipping into our Wreck This Journals. We both have the original version of this book, and I picked up the colour edition a little while ago. These are great books for freeing creativity (and sometimes venting some frustration!) and there’s a fun online community sharing their journal pages so it’s always easy to find support, ideas and inspiration.

BONUS: 100 Day Project

If you’re looking for a more structured approach for a creative project, you might like to check out the 100 Day Project which official starts again on April 7th (although of course you could start your own version whenever you wanted!). There’s a BIG online community around this project (especially on Instagram) so in playing along with everyone else you will find new friends, inspiration and support along the way. This is a project that isn’t limited to art and drawing, you could develop any part of your creativity following the format of creating something (however small!) every day.

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Here are some other resources that you might find useful to help boost your creativity at home (if you have any suggestions for other resources please let me know and I’ll add it to this list):

Scrapbooking

• Progress on Projects POP series from Craft Some Joy – an in-depth series of videos on organising your scrapbooking projects.
• Art of the Apps Project Life Tutorials from Pixels to Pages- a comprehensive overview of how to use the Project Life app
• Artsy digital scrapbooking – a collection of wonderful tutorials from Anna Aspnes
• A series of live videos from the members Simply Project Life group on Facebook (great for picking up extra tips on using the Project Life app!)

Books

• Wreck This Journal and Wreck the Journal in Colour (and all of Keri Smith’s books!) – perfect for those of us who find it hard to let go of perfectionism! To quote the publishers: “Think of Wreck This Journal as the anarchist’s Artist’s Way — the book for those who’ve always wanted to draw outside the lines but were afraid to do it.”
• Conscious Creativity by Philippa Stanton (aka – 5ftinf – check out Phillipa’s gorgeous Instagram feed for more inspiration!)  – a beautiful, uplifting book about cultivating your own creativity
• Create This Book by Moriah Elizabeth – filled with creative prompts and ideas, this is a great project book for kids and teens

I have a few more ideas for creative books over on my Creativity Starters Amazon list.

Photography

• Traci Reed is hosting a Photo A Day Challenge with monthly prompts, you can find the list for March here.  I’ve found these prompts really helpful for making me think about new things to record and new ways of documenting, even from home.
• Photo ideas list from Pixels to Pages
• Fat Mum Slim’s ongoing Photo A Day prompts – LOADS of inspiration for photos ideas and a big online community playing along

Art and Art Journaling Classes

• One of my favourite courses I’ve ever taken was the Sketchbook Explorations class by Lisa Congdon over at CreativeBug (I wrote about it here and here). CreativeBug is a paid subscription but they do offer a free trial so you can get a taste of the classes.
• Funky Florals  – this is another class I really enjoyed taking and dip back into from time to time! If you love flowers and mixed media this is the course for you.
• Roben Marie Mixed Media Art courses – mixed media and art journal courses
• Alisa Burke online art classes –  a variety of arty courses
• Balzer Designs classes – lots of mixed media and art journaling courses
• Claire Powell is sharing a short video of a daily art activity for kids and adults alike on her instagram account
• Daily colouring and drawing classes from colouring book guru Johanna Basford

Other Creative Classes

Big Picture Classes  also offer a free trial and have a number of classes on scrapbooking, card making, planners and organisation and more! You might also like to checkout Skillshare and Creative Live for more online classes and tutorials.

Please let me know your favourite creative classes, tutorials, groups, prompts, books etc! I’ll be keeping an eye out for more free classes and ways to connect and will update this page accordingly. Stay safe everyone xx

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