Weekend inspiration

Only a few more days left of school holidays for me. I am making the most of my free time to catch up with family and friends and to be creative. I've been eagerly watching and trying out ideas from online classes, and catching up on inspirational ideas on others' blogs.  Book of Days 2019 is being taught as a collaborative this year. This means that monthly we get a full lesson from Effy, plus an interview with and full lesson from a guest artist (who is a favourite teacher of EFfy) and a bonus introduction to an emerging teacher. The emerging teacher this month is Marit - I recommend checking out her blog HERE for her take on daily journaling spreads.

Taking classes is awesome and it's great to support your favourite artists, but there are also lots of opportunities for learning online for FREE. I keep an updated list of free online art classes HERE - they are always available through the link top right of my blog and I have just checked all the links and updated that to be current with 2019 offerings as of right now. Please let me know if I've missed anything there.
I am often inspired by what other artists are doing on their blogs, and one I follow is Julie Balzer. She did a really cool post today about inspiration. 

She says : You see, the only thing that is unique about me, as an artist, is me.  That's it.  Who I am.  How I see the world.  The things that happen to me.  The choices I make.  So, I have to find inspiration in living my life -- whether it's the things I do, the things I read, the things I see, the things I like. Read her post HERE - she takes fashion inspiration and shows how she turns that into art.
In case you missed it, when I did my post about My word for 2019 I also shared Kiala Givehand's blogpost where she explains about a Depth year for 2019 - going Deeper, not Wider. It really resonates with me and supports my intention of inviting Ease. You can read it HERE. 

One of the challenges we all face is finding time to create. I've done a number of posts on this topic. My main ideas are to make the most of micro-movements (using 5-15 minutes at a time) and also to commit to doing 'something' every day. This led to my new habit since November of taking daily photos as a record and motivation to #arteveryday. It's motivating to create something I can photograph, and it's also heartening to look over a week and see that I AM making progress. Although I haven't been sharing the daily photos, I'm continuing to keep up with the challenge. My weeks were a bit flexible over the holiday time, but I'm back into the swing of a normal 7-day week now. My rules are that anything related to creativity counts : a purchase of something creative (supplies or classes), immersion in a class (screen shot from the computer), progress photos of how a project was left that day...here's what 3 "weeks" of this practice looks like. 
Week 8 : Boxing day until we left on holiday (26 Dec - 3 Jan)

Week 9 : 4 Jan - 18 Jan. Art and purchases whilst on holiday, and art once home.

Week 10 : 19-15 January. Back to a normal week of documenting #arteveryday (I've started to date them as well)

Today begins Week 11 and next project on my list is quilting my poppy quilt. I'm hoping to devote a lot of time to it this afternoon since the other members of my family are all busy today.

Hope you are having a creative weekend and that there's something in this post which continues to inspire you as you settle into daily routines for 2019.