Kickstarting my creativity

My "warm up" piece!

I don't know about you but I find creativity is an unusual beast. It is like a nagging thought in the back of your brain like you forgot to do something. But when you feed it, it rewards you with the most pleasant feelings of self-worth. 

I have struggled over the last two to three years, since my divorce, to get into gear creatively. My head has always been somewhere else and I have found it so difficult to allow myself to do anything - although I miss it terribly. When I actually come to sit down and sew or write, I immediately hear a battle in my head debating what the point of all this is.



Details of warm up

To this end, on a complete whim, I enrolled on a workshop with Jennifer Collier at Unit Twelve last Saturday. It was called Printed Canvases. As fate would have it as soon as I had paid my money warnings were issued that the Powick Bridge was due to be flooded on Friday - this was my only way to get to the motorway and I was worried that my spur of the moment idea would backfire. Luckily the water did not rise enough to flood the road and I was able to make it.



Thoughts turn to the final piece!

Even just assembling together my personal bits and pieces to take to the course was a boost.  It was great to look into boxes and little drawers that I hadn't opened in such a long time and see my lovely flea market finds again.

When I arrived at Jennifer's studio a warm welcome awaited. We were a small group of about 7 but it was lovely to be with like-minded people once again. Even then, half way through the morning my inner critic was whispering "What are you doing? This is such a waste of time?" but the fact that I had to stay there the whole day - and the expectations that I would create something that day was a great silencer to the voice in my head.

The finished article!

So now I hope to continue in that vein. I know that I am a creative being and that I feel so much better when I have a creative outlet. So I am praying that this is the start of feeding my creative soul on a much more regular basis.