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january 10, 2007 volume one : issue twelve Wow. I am so loving how you guys took that concept of one little word and ran with it. I am planning to have challenges related to your word throughout the year to help keep you focused and bring it all back home again. Coming up with a topic for this week was a challenge for me. I think I was having a hard time finding something to follow up such a cool week last week. In addition, I have a lot of projects that I am supposed to be working on and instead have found myself surfing around online, working a bit, cleaning a bit, emailing a bit, and generally getting distracted way too easily. My problem? I am in a bit of a rut. Just can't seem to get back into my productive, creative mode. Not fun, but oh so normal. I decided to put my surfing and procrastinating to good use by identifying ways to get those juices flowing again. You know what? I think it worked! Read on. Enjoy. Peace. Ali life art top tips: breaking out of a creative rut  Ruts. Down periods. Being stuck. Dry spell. That time where nothing feels right. You start and stop and just can't find that happy, magical place where it all seems to come together. I have so been there. I am there. And I know I will be there again. The good thing is, I am not afraid. It is a natural part of the process. Anyone who participates in a creative endeavor experiences times when they are less prolific. Less inspired. Where they just feel blah about something that normally fills them with excitement and passion. I try to look at ruts and creative dry spells as simply a part of the cycle of artistry - a chance for the place where my creativity comes from to take a break. To rest. To be filled up again. For a bunch of new stories to be experienced. Here are some of my favorite ways to get back in the groove again: 1. Just do nothing. Yep. Ignore that thing that you normally love all together. If you have a scrapbook room, shut the door and give yourself permission to take a day, a week, a month off. No guilt. No pressure. No worries that you will never feel "it" again. You will. It will come back. 2. Be surprised. One of my favorite ways to get re- energized is to allow myself to be surprised, delighted, and inspired by someone or something. Taking some time to surf around on the web can be a great source of delightful surprises. One of the coolest things is that people like to link to other people. People online like to share information, share the things that fire them up, the things that kick start their creativity. You can go from one thing to the next to the next and end up in a totally crazy wonderful place you never knew existed. You may even learn something. You may even be absolutely surprised at where you end up. And you may not even be able to wait another minute until you can go create something. 3. Try something from this list: Keri Smith's 100 Things. Keri has a great blog that I have been reading for the last couple years. I love how she has been talking about "life experiments" this past week. She is also great with links to new and different things that get me all fired up inside. 4. Do the opposite. If you are normally a very linear scrapbooker/artist, force yourself to do something very organic and messy and free. If you really let yourself go and give yourself to the process and you end up hating your creation, throw it away or paint over it or cover it and start again. By simply going through the exercise of forcing yourself to do something totally opposite from what you would normally do you may be able to wake up your creative impulses enough to get back into the groove. I liked this quote from Cameron Moll: "Inspiration weaves its way into every facet of life. We�d be sorely remiss if we sought to be illuminated only by the medium or genre with which we work." 5. Go. Get in your car, on your bike, or use your own two feet (one of the best methods) and go somewhere NEW to you. It may be a new restaurant, a new store, or it may be simply walking down a new street in your neighborhood - the key is to get out from under your normal vision and see and experience something new. I love doing this by myself (it is one of the reasons I have come to love travel), but it can also be done with a friend, your partner, or even with your child(ren). Kids are amazing at seeing what exists right in front their noses, whereas we as adults tend to have lost that ability. Getting out of your normal environment and seeing something different is a great way to kick start your creativity. 6. Take a deep breath. One of the simplest and most effective ways (and one of the things I do often) to break up those negative rut vibes is to walk to your front door, open it, take a step onto your porch, stand up tall, and take a deep breath. Sounds cheesy but it is something that has worked for me - it clears my head, helps me focus, and allows me just enough of a break that I can go back into the studio and feel ready to work again. This is especially effective if you are working under a tight deadline. 7. Eye candy. Another way I like to work my way out of a rut is to pick up some new magazines. Usually they are unrelated to scrapbooking - most of the time I will pick them up because the design looks interesting or something catches my eye. Larger bookstores tend to feature a wealth of interesting and different magazines that you won't find at the grocery store. Check out a magazine for art or photography or cooking or parenting (maybe use #4 from above and grab something like dirt biking if you normally gravitate to knitting) or design. Magazines tend to be so visually stimulating that it is hard not to see something that makes your heart beat a bit faster. 8. Google. Try this result page. As you will see, a TON has been written on this topic. Most get down to the same thing - give yourself a break - it will come back. And if you find you are in a rut because you are struggling a bit with your personal creative confidence, go back and read issue five of the AEzine. weekly challenge One of the things I noticed in many posts about people's one little word was mentions of looking up their word in the dictionary. I love that idea. This week, locate the definition of your word and copy it onto a 3x5 notecard and stick it somewhere you will see it everyday. Maybe you have a board you look at, maybe your bathroom mirror, or someplace else where only you will see it, etc. It will serve as a little reminder of your word. In addition, you may want to visit my favorite quote site Inspiration Peak and do a quote search using your word. See what sorts of interesting places it comes up and jot down any quotes that resonate with you. These could easily become a layout or the basis for another creative project. And speaking of words, my friend Jennifer sent me a link to a very cool site that creates jewelry featuring words. They best part? You can customize the pieces to fit your word. Check it out: WordWorks Jewelry. If you really get excited about this you may want to consider setting up a small notebook for your word. Layouts you create, thoughts you have, things you find in your everyday life that have to do with your word could be slipped into page protectors and given a home all in one location. Come by my blog and post your response to the challenge on Monday, January 15, 2007. Looking forward to seeing your creations and reading your thoughts. inspired by A new addition to the AEzine. Each week I will bring you one thing that has inspired me from the week before. Inspiration truly comes from all over the place - even in the smallest little cracks. Inspired by: The Creativity Book: A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance  by Eric Maisel.
I ordered this book on a whim recently while searching Amazon for books on creativity. What I love about this book is his emphasis on everyday creativity and that everyone is creative - no matter your job or your lifestyle, is creative. This is a great book to pick up at the beginning of the year as it has things to think about on a weekly basis. This is one I can see myself picking up again and again throughout my life as things change and grow. question & answer Q from Kim : Do you scrap events like Christmas, birthdays, Easter, etc.? I am always so inspired by your work and wondering what you do about scrapping all of the recurring events every year. A : I sure do. One of my favorite ways to attack holiday/event pages is with my square punch. I love to create pages that tell the story in photos - bits and pieces of the views from that day that capture the emotions, the excitement, etc. Holiday/event layouts are currently kept in albums with all the rest of my layouts (right now they are added in mostly by when they are completed). Look for my next book (coming our later this year) to include most of my holiday/event layouts from this past year. If you have a question you would like to have answered in an upcoming issue send me an email (ali@aliedwardsdesign.com) with NEWSLETTER QUESTION in the subject line. Copyright � 2006 Ali Edwards/AE Design/Life Art Media. Please do not reproduce any content without permission. Ali Edwards, author of A Designer's Eye for Scrapbooking and A Designer's Eye for Scrapbooking with Patterned Paper, is Creative Editor of Creating Keepsakes magazine where she writes a monthly inspiration column called Studio A . She is a wife, mother, artist, writer, and seeker of balance. Owner of AE Design and Life Art Media, she conducts life art workshops around the globe. You can find her online on her blog or contact her through email at ali@aliedwardsdesign.com
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