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3 Secrets to a Creative Summer
Summer is a season that represents optimism and boundless freedom. Although I’ve been out of school for several decades and work year round, I always associate this time of year with my childhood summer break from school. When school started in September it only took until about Halloween that I was already day dreaming about those precious 3 months of summer break. Who could I be? What would I do? What could I experience? With June upon us, it’s the perfect opportunity to ask ourselves those same questions, and dream up a summer time filled with creative experiences to fuel us through the long winter months. Let’s ask ourselves those…
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Creative Art Lesson: Use Only ONE Color
When choosing to do an art project, we sometimes can get overwhelmed or feel the necessity to use all the “crayons” in the box- or all the colors we can, since, well, they are there! For this creative exercise, I actually challenge you to do the opposite, and only use ONE color when doing a drawing. Given I decided to draw icons or doodles of summer, I chose the color yellow. I have to admit, it was very hard to not want to go in to the drawing an embellish with more colors. Also, it was hard for me to not want to draw my swimming pool in blue (not…
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Creative Wanderlust Prompt: Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan. It’s definitely one of my favorite places in all of New York City, and the area I frequently stay when I visit. When I lived in New York City many moons ago, I rarely went to midtown. I was a student (in graduate school) and midtown catered to the working world. I did go to Grand Central Station frequently as I’d take the train out to Connecticut to visit my sister, but in general, I roamed all the other neighborhoods for my NYC energy, not midtown. Fast forward to today, and I can’t get enough of midtown Manhattan. It fuels me with energy. I’m convinced it’s because of…
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Let’s Build a Creative Community
As many of you know, I’m passionate about building community. Whether in person or online, I couldn’t have made it through this last few years without community! The word community can be a loaded word and mean many things depending on context. For me, community is about people coming together and sharing experiences – and in particular in my case, creative experiences whether that be making art (drawing, painting, collaging) or through words and exploration (storytelling, learning new skills, trying new things and travel, of course!) Creativity is a very large umbrella in my mind and definitely doesn’t have to involve actually making art. I find, though, being with others…
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5 Creative Ways to Celebrate the New Season – Spring Time is Here!
It’s so easy to get wrapped up in our day to day or week to week activities that we often miss the most incredible natural occurrences happening right in front of our eyes – the transformation between seasons. On my daily walks, I do see blossoms beginning to bud on trees in spring, or colorful leaves on the ground in fall, but by the time I’m back home, inside and/or in front of my computer again, the fleeting moment is gone. It’s such a shame as I find there is so much creative energy a new season can provide. To become a little more mindful of the changing of the…
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Whatever Medium You Choose – It’s All Creative
This week while I was starting one of my art prompts, I realized I really wanted to draw digitally. I had a moment of hesitation, as for the most part, when doing my daily prompts I like using what most refer to as “traditional” mediums. I love my black pen, and crave the looseness I get with my watercolors. So I paused for a moment in a conundrum. When I wrote my weekly Creative Wanderlust Prompt list and put the words, “Paint,” “Draw” and “Write” did I inherently mean specifically paint with watercolor or draw with a pen? Absolutely not! This musing instantly reminded me that I’m the one who emphatically believes what ever…
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Let Me Guide You to Lead a Creative Wanderlust Life
I’ve been thinking long and hard about my business goals for this year, and have decided to double down on why I started this work to begin with! While thumbing through multiple journals from my past, I kept seeing ideas I had put down when I first started Wanderlust Designer 9 years ago after transitioning from my thriving party/stationery business to illustration & travel. Many of my ideas have come to fruition that I couldn’t be more proud of (authoring and illustrating 4 books, with 1 more on the way; countless illustrations licensed with big named companies; teaching numerous classes online and in real life) yet many more are just waiting…
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At Home Creative Adventures: Floral Bouquet
To brighten up your environment, create a floral bouquet just for you! This creative prompt will get you outside looking for blooms, and inside creating a masterpiece. An impressionistic style is the best approach to making a colorful bouquet worthy to prop by your desk! Here are the blooms I found in my yard, inspiration for my bouquet. If you don’t have flowers in your yard, feel free to use mine as inspiration or head to the internet for more! Below is the time-lapse of me creating my bouquet. Notice the looseness of the lines, and watercolor. Also, the varied size interpretation of each bloom. The pansy bloom is actually…
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I Am Creative – An Affirmation for All
We live in a world where fears and anxieties can many times overwhelm our own creativity. How many times have you heard, “Oh, I’m just not creative…” or “I can’t seem to come up with any ideas, I must not be that creative…” Our own fears many times preclude us from being the creative person we want to be. Fear of being judged, failure, or not being able to come up with an ideas at all can many times stop us from even trying. It’s really too bad since inherently everyone of us is creative, brimming with ideas and imagination! I recently read a chapter in a book about creative…
