Overcoming my creative wall: Peek inside my new journal

I’ll be honest – I haven’t been feeling all that creative lately. I’ve been in a bit of a creativity rut.

As the school year wraps up and I’m slowing down, the tiredness from three and a half full terms has hit.

I’m still journaling most days, but creatively, I’ve hit a bit of a wall.

But you see, I want to create. I keep browsing instagram and looking at all these amazing art journals (I’m always inspired when looking at work by Samie Harding, Lisa Sonora, Mary Wangerin and Nichole Rae, to name a few) but I can’t bring myself to pick up my paintbrush.

The solution? Create a new journal (this seems to be a pattern with me…)

But this journal is all about using magazine images with words I find, and words I add, to create my own images. A kind of visioning/collage process. It takes away my inertia because there are ready-made images to work with.

I love looking through magazines to find images that inspire me. I’m careful about what I read, and I tend to be drawn to the same sorts of images time and again:

• Landscapes, trees, gardens, nature – green
• Water, sky – blue
• Beds and pillows
• Cups or tea or coffee, teapots
• Books, handwriting, journals
• Deskscapes
• Bright colours
• Crafty things like knitting, sewing, painting
• Images of families
• Simple, rustic houses – wood, stone, exposed beams, cosy fireplaces etc

At first I felt like this didn’t count as ‘creativity’ – but then I had a wee chuckle. Creativity is anything really. And besides, I’m taking images and arranging them in unique ways, with my own words and ideas. The images are really just a building block.

I want to get back into painting and I will when I’m rested and open to it. For now, playing with these words and images is soothing my creative urges.

How do you break out of a creativity rut?