I find being creative with no boundaries or guidance really, truly hard. Hand me a piece of paper and a pencil and tell me to draw what I want and I'm lost. I'll dither, get anxious and end up producing something that objectively looks shit. From anyone's point of view. But, hand me some instructions, and a little extra guidance and I'm golden.
Christmas is a wonderful time (IMO), and it's the perfect season to think about your actions a little bit more carefully. So many people do so much more giving at Christmas and I honestly love seeing it and doing it. One of the ways that I love giving back is to shop small.
If there was one thing I would love to be, it's more artistically creative. I love creating things with my words, but ask me to do it with images and I suck. This isn't a fishing for compliments post, just FYI, it's more of a 'let's get the facts straight first' kinda post.
I really feel as though exploring my creativity in a whole range of mediums could really help me overall. I always feel hella inspired after doing some mindfulness colouring, or taking some blog photos that I'm really into, but I need that extra nudge in the right direction.
In the past, I've dabbled in a 'Wreck This Journal', which I found fab because it prompted you. It gave you an idea that you could run with. I mostly went with a slow wander, but I could imagine some super artsy people making incredible things on each page.
So, when Penguin asked if I wanted to try 'The Line'* I practically screamed because 1.) Omg Penguin got in touch because of my weeny little blog?! and 2.) 'The Line' sounded incredible. It's made by the same woman who made the 'Wreck This Journal', but with this one you need way fewer supplies. A pencil should get you through. As I don't own too many any art supplies, I had found that I was a little limited in what I could do with my 'Wreck This Journal', so this was a welcome change.
I have to say, I'm hooked. I do a page a day when I get home from work to help me wind down. It gives me a chance to focus on something small and move away from the stress of the day. Each page seems to get more and more intense (I'm almost a quarter of the way through now), and I love how it forces you to engage with the book and with the line you're creating.
I keep pushing myself to think outside the box when it comes to this daily routine, and not make the simplest line drawing I can. I honestly think this is improving my creativity in so many other ways. I'm starting to explore new ways to take blog photos, and how to delve into my writing. I can't wait to see what else the book has in store for me on future pages!
*An item in this post was given to me for the purpose of a review, but all thoughts and opinions are, as always, my own*
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I've been living in my first ever home with my boyfriend for six months now, and it has flown by. We've lived together for the past four years, but the majority of that time was spent in student housing; we'd never lived on our own, just the two of us, before. We've added a few little touches to make it feel more homely, but quite frankly, we don't have the money to spend on decor: we don't even have all the furniture we need still!
So I *may* have been meaning to post and make this since Valentines Day (whoops), but I've had so many exciting posts I wanted to share with you in the meantime that this got pushed back a little. Me and my boyfriend have been living together in halls and student houses with our friends for over three years now, and it's really easy to get stuck in the routine of doing separate things all day and then only coming together to eat dinner and sit in front of the TV for a couple of hours each evening.
So, I came up with a plan for a date night jar. We're going to dedicate one night a week as a date night, and pick something out at random each week to do together. Making this was actually really fun (almost a mini date in itself) as we sat together and each put some things we wanted to do more often or start doing in the jar. And before you ask, no, it isn't filled with 'those' kind of things *insert wink emoji*.
We tried to make a whole range of things - some involving glamming up and heading out, but others coming at a more relaxed and cheaper pace. So, I thought I'd share how we made it and some of the things we've included in case you're wanting to get out of the cohabiting rut too.
How to make one
Altogether this only cost me £2.85 which was an absolute bargain for something that's going to be taking pride of place on our mantelpiece. I simply grabbed the jar in Tiger and picked up some red card from Paperchase and we were good to go. If you really wanted to go wild with it, Paperchase have a whole rainbow of colours to choose from and you could make a really pretty multi-coloured jar!
Once I got these home, we chopped the card up into small rectangles and got the sharpies out to begin writing our ideas down. This probably took about 15 minutes in total, and most of that was thinking time.
Ideas to put in
Here's a handful of the ideas we came up with:
- Have popcorn and watch a film, cinema style at home
- Watch the sun set
- Make cocktails together
- Go out to your favourite restaurant
- Massages
- No technology night
- Xbox and wine night
- Cook a roast together
- Binge watch a new Netflix series with snacks
I really hope you liked this post - it's my first 'creative' one and I'm super excited to be sharing it with you! Have you made anything like this before?
