Why I create every day….

Do you consider yourself to be a creative person?

Until last year, bearing in mind the fact that I see myself as the world’s worst crafter, my answer to that question would have been a resounding NO!

But when I was off work ill, I watched  the video below by Emily Quinton over at Makelight and I felt inspired enough that I decided that I was going to make some time every day to create something – no matter how small.

At this point, I already knew how much I loved photography but I realised that I always took photos for a purpose, whether it was for here on the blog, to record a family memory or even just a picture to share on Instagram. I never took photos just for the sake of taking photos and that’s where the creative side of photography for me came in to play.  I started to take photos for no reason with no intention of ever sharing them, I went out of my way to set up a pretty flat lay photo just to be creative and style everything or I’d go for a walk with my camera and just take photos of whatever caught my eye.

Taking photos just for fun this way kind of made me realise that not everything has to be for a reason, sometimes doing something just because it makes me happy to do it is OK.  It’s not the waste of time that I used to think it was- in fact, it’s actually a really good use of my time because it does me good.

Realising this was a huge turning point for me and helped me to decide that I wanted to explore other creative outlets as well as photography although I didn’t really have any ideas what it was that I actually wanted to do!

I ended up popping to Hobbycraft one day and literally spending an hour wandering around trying to find something I wanted to try.  In the end I decided to give water colour painting a try because I liked the idea of being able to create beautiful pictures.

I bought the cheapest of everything (that might have been where I went wrong) and went home feeling like I could be the next big thing in the art world but sadly it wasn’t to be because no matter how much I enjoyed it, I just couldn’t do it.

I’m not a fan of abstract so when I worked on painting a water colour beach scene or a sky with clouds in, that’s what I wanted the results to look like. They were pretty much unrecognisable though and seeing as the only thing I could manage that looked remotely like it should was a rose, I hung up my paintbrushes and moved on to something less challenging!

I won’t go into detail about every creative thing I’ve tried since I started but here’s a few of the others to give you an idea of the things I’ve tried:

• I’m trying to learn hand lettering which is much harder than it looks.
• I’ve done some colouring in which I’m still on the fence about.
• I’ve started a bullet journal which is much more creative than it sounds.
• I’ve up-cycled a few charity shop bargain finds.

I haven’t shared many on here because none of them have been particularly blog-worthy but I had fun giving them a try even though I never found anything that I really enjoyed.

But then a couple of weeks ago, I even went along to the Trimcraft bloggers day at their HQ in Nottingham with Jen and I had a brilliant day.  I was clearly out of my depth with the standard of the other bloggers there as they were all amazing crafters but I had a good go and I discovered a few crafts that I actually loved.  I’ll be sharing them over the next few weeks but in the meantime I really recommend popping over to the Trimcraft blog if you’re a crafty type or even an aspiring crafter like me as it’s been relaunched recently and it’s such a great resource!

Since the bloggers day, I’ve actually found a few crafts that I not only enjoy, but that I can also do to a reasonable standard which definitely helps me enjoy them more!  There’s even a little project in the kitchen now drying ready to be photographed to share with you!

Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter, BlogLovin or Networked Blogs and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram.