How Do You Express Your Creativity?

In the Twitter #NZBloggers chat at the weekend we were discussing motivation and inspiration and one of the questions about inspiration actually conveniently inspired this post! The lovely Hannah from A Lovely Look asked 'Do you have hobbies outside of blogging? What are they? Do you think they help keep you inspired & motivated for blogging?' Although I don't actually have many hobbies, I mean blogging is my hobby really, it made me realise how much of my life was really creative and inspirational anyway. The design world is really inspiring so just being a design student and going to University daily inspires me so much. But it's not just getting inspired that's important, it's what you do with that inspiration. How do you funnel this inspiration into creativity, how do you express creativity? 

Of course there's blogging! Blogging is such an amazing way to be creative and write, draw, photograph anything that you feel worthy and share your feelings about them. Not only can pretty much anyone do it, but almost everyone's blogs are individual as our signatures as it's all personal. (Of course there's non personal ones but let's ignore those at the moment.) That was another main point in the blogger chat 'We're all inspired by those around us - how do you make sure your ideas are original?' and the fact is that, although we may have the same ideas as some other bloggers, they're both going to be written from different points of view. There's so many posts on the internet already it's amazing if you find an idea that not one person has ever written about before so just go with it! Unless they're directly copied from the publicity post then two posts on the same book aren't going to be exactly the same. One may love one part and the other may hate it, it's all personal opinions. Even this post is simply that, my personal opinion. How many others have written about creativity and inspiration I wonder?

These new adult colouring books have created a great way for those who 'can't be creative because I can't draw' or other similar excuses to get creative! I've seen so many fellow bloggers, twitter users, and instagrammers who have been loving these books but I couldn't bring myself to buy one and procrastinate my University work more. Luckily my boyfriend's mum bought me one so I can now procrastinate happily knowing it wasn't me who reinforced it ha! But these are a great way to just sit down with a big flood of creative energy and relax colouring in. I don't know about you, but as a kid if we ever had to colour in together I would get rather annoyed at the others who didn't know how to stay between the lines!

Personally having a really creative life means that it's easy to distract myself with other work. My University work is really stressful at the moment, there's less than three weeks left and I feel like I have about 10 weeks worth of work to do. Sometimes it just gets too much and I cry, and scream, and rage like a little baby. It's then that I can just simply swap to doing something else, I keep being creative so that I can easily go back and continue working but it's just giving my brain a quick break from the hard work with some easy relaxing stuff. Last week for example I was raging at one of my projects and I just sat back and wrote a spur of the moment blogpost that turned out being one of my most interacted with and viewed post so far on my blog. Bashing away at the keyboard, or swirling a brush of ink around on a page to make words, totally calms the mind after having to concentrate on the spacing between the letters of one word for about 20 minutes (welcome to kerning and the world of design).

I know what a few of you do for inspiration from the chat however what do you do with that inspiration? How do you express your creativity?

It's time to get personal

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6  ~ All images from Pinterest.

So for lucky people like me who don't have exams at university, we have six weeks off in the middle of the year. While we could spend it sitting on our arses watching episode after episode of Game of Thrones for the fifth time, which I probably will end up doing despite this post, we could also use it as a time for personal projects. Doing a design degree you're often restricted throughout term time to specific briefs and while you can stretch them to suit your style most often they're not really what you had in mind when you wanted to become a designer. So I've done the Game of Thrones arse sitting for the first week but I've also been scrolling Pinterest which has given me so much motivation and creativity to start some projects over the rest of the holidays. 

Create some greeting cards. 
and also hopefully start selling them. I need to work on my watercolour typography to digital skills a wee bit more first but keep your eyes peeled. 

Put up a print wall. 
I have prints, I have frames for them, I have a blank wall... now all I need are nails to put them up. Of course they'll have to be arranged nicely and all but it's simple right? 

Do some freelance. 
Make some fancy new logos for someone, or blog banners, or blog sidebar icons, or anything. Wink wink readers. 

Paint more watercolour. 
Just do more, practice makes perfect and I'm far from perfect. Maybe we'll start with flowers, I found a great tutorial for flowers so let's start there and practice my flower arranging. 

Spend more time on the blog. 
Tweaking background things, changing images, upgrading things. Sorting out things I'm not happy with and frankly just giving Sofilly some attention it hasn't really gotten these past few months while I've been working on uni projects. 

Technically if you want to get picky I could do most of these while doing the Game of Thrones arse sitting but you get the idea. Let's just spend some time with my craft and creativity and hopefully make myself even better for next semester! 

Artist Attraction #7 | Jasmine Dowling

I've mentioned her before in previous posts like this one here but I thought this talent deserved her own post. Australian graphic designer Jasmine Dowling is one of my favourite artists, I'm in love with her lettering. Just look at it all it's so preeeetty!

Her and a couple of other similar artist influence my own watercolour typography that's featured here occasionally. I've been wanting to get more into it and hopefully start up a collection of greeting cards that I've been brainstorming recently. She sells some of her work as prints, pillowcases and tote bags. She's worked with some major companies such as Maybelline and creates marvellous work for each and every one of them. I do have a soft spot for some of her foil designs but the simple black ink designs are truely the best. Can't wait til I'm no longer a student and earning enough to spend money on things that aren't food and buy some of her prints but until then I shall create my own and cry that they aren't as good!

You can find her work on her website here or check out her blog and instagram! 

Scandi Ampersand

All images via Pinterest

Before University starts next week I've been trying to use as much time as possible just to chill and relax before the havoc of late nights and constant sketching, 'photoshopping' and analysing starts. Lately this has involved scrolling through pages and pages of blogposts and pinterest pages huddled up under a blanket (yes even though it is the height of summer it still gets cold in the Wellington evenings) with the kitten. Either that or playing hours and hours of Pokemon but we don't need to talk about that. The one thing this teaches me is that I need ALL the Pokemon and that I need my own little house that I can do what I want. There's only so much I can do with the yellowy/cream walls I have now although I love my little house so much I would love it with white walls. Ah white walls... Ah white floorboards... Yes I may have a thing for scandinavian interior design (along with the entire blogging world). 

I really really want that light up ampersand, maybe as an S although I really do like the ampersand design. But there's just something about these interiors that make you want to get out of bed and do things! Is that just me or does someone else feel that too? As I have a lack of white walls and floorboards I may have to take inspiration from the other items in the room. I really want a sheepskin rug however I know this will not go with our current house nor will it probably survive the kitten who occasionally still has toilet accidents. However with my current white desk, and fairy lights I think a few additional pieces shall suffice, for my desk area anyway... the rest of the house will have to wait! We are students remember. I may invest in a chair very much similar to the one in the bottom photo as they have come available at The Warehouse and Kmart for my lovely NZ followers and my teal leather office chair is on its last legs. 

Are there things you dream of changing in your home or a specific area of your home you really want to upgrade? 

Tumblration

If you like what you see have a look at my tumblr ahbloodyhell for more and have a follow :)

Pretty ideas, bits, and bobs

There's just something so exciting about moving into a new place in that you can pick up all your old stuff and shove it into a new environment and it all looks like 10x more amazing! Of course with the addition of a whole bunch more stuff you bought beforehand cuz it would 'look good in the new house'. Now with the idea of packing boxes being a month away my heads just brimming with ideas about how I (and the boyfriend but mainly I) will make the place look fabby. I've been browsing Tumblr and Pintrest for some basic ideas at the moment and not allowing myself to get too involved in ideas until we've moved in and seen where everything we already have is going to fit. Especially as I'm probably only going to be living there for around 2 weeks before I move back home for the summer until January when the real work kicks in and I'm, as my boyfriend puts it, 'allowed to put all the girly shit everywhere'. Until then the scrolling will continue, mood boards will be created in my head and probably some minor things might be bought oops...

Artist Attraction #4 | Brittany Statt

I came across this artist on Tumblr and ended up browsing her entire portfolio here. She's a Graphic Designer from Rochester, NY and has a real knack for type. The piece above is a part of her hand lettering projects and this is the sort of thing I really hope I'll be able to achieve in the near future. A mix of art and type it's really gorgeous and the quotes are unique rather than the usual famous quotes seen all over the place. Check her out! 

Artist Attraction #3 | Dawn Tan

I came across this artist whilst browsing Pintrest a while ago and ended up spending quite a while browsing her various pieces. After coming across her again on Tumblr I thought I might include a little post about her work on the blog. Dawn Tan lives in Australia and specialises mainly in landscapes, food and plants, her art is laid back and fun to look at. I wish I had the confidence she has with watercolour. I think she's been one of my latest inspirations to my work especially as I discovered her shortly before purchasing my first watercolour palette set. I wonder if you could actually make what she's drawn just from seeing the ingredients, the pieces are really unique and I really wish I could have one for my room! Even just the soy bread and smoothie piece, which shows how easy her inspiration comes to her - just from breakfast. I think from looking at her architecture pieces that the year 10 art class at my school studied her, that's a bit freaky coming across the actual artist years later!    

You'll never influence the world by copying it.

While purchasing a book for one of my classes I decided to pick up an A6 diary to keep with me at all times. I was inspired by one of my tutor to keep something near me to doodle or write on whenever I had spare time. Basically I wanted to improve my drawing skills and more importantly my pen drawing skills.. I've never really been one to understand the joys of using pen because of my major perfectionist brain I always wanted to erase half my drawings and redo them to make them as perfect as my skills could manage. Here's a few pages that I've done so far, as you can see I've been using it as a place to make lists too and fail at doing things on the list but hey at least I'm trying. Hopefully by the end of the book, 60 pages back and front so 120 drawings in total, I'll be slightly more decent at pen and throwing away my perfectionism... hopefully x