Creativity Cards

Back of Card

I’m always looking for inspiration – something to help me see in a new way. A few years ago, while at an art retreat, I had the bright idea of collecting “jumping off points” from the participants. My plan was to make myself a deck of cards that I could pull from when I felt blank or stuck.

Back of Card

I’ve been making cards off and on. Just this morning I made about ten. I’m actually altering a real deck of cards, so the pieces are small, easy to handle, and quick to finish. Having spent years on a single quilt, I always get a kick out of something I can finish in ten minutes.

Front (Idea Side) of Card

Front of Card

Here is the list of ideas I am using for my cards. They are not in any particular order. Some were donated by art buddies, some were borrowed from books, and some are my own. Maybe you will find something that makes your muse sit up and take notice.

1. My brightest color

2. Change dimensions

3. Who am I?

4. The voice in your head needs a face.

5. Carve a stamp

6. Dwell in radiance

7. Use an art supply you already own – one you have never (or rarely) used

8. Amplify a feeling. What color is it? What shape? Which animal?

9. Remember your roots.

10. Make a mess.

11. Use your non-dominant hand

12. Honor a favorite (book, person, animal, movie, flower, etc.)

13. Wonderous light

14. Just begin again.

15. What does your muse look like?

16. Use today’s junk mail.

17. Scribble – then find the hidden pattern

18. Let it flow.

19. What does the angel of death look like?

20. Draw something you see every day.

21. Surprising interpretations of future artifacts.

22. Design clothes for an animal.

23. Mismatched animal parts.

24. Face a change.

25. Make the familiar new.

26. Make a 1-inch square hole in a card or piece of paper. Use it to select a piece of a painting, photo, or ad. Start with this image.

27. Work with apple green, violet, and black or silver.

28. Acknowledge how you feel.

29. More is more.

30. Open your closet.

31. Turn it on its side.

32. Sunbeams streaming through an open window and falling on a sleeping cat.

33. Craggy mountains, their heads wreathed in clouds, their feet planted in the earth.

34. Waves crashing against a stoic wall of rock.

35. Bloom.

36. Rip compelling images from a magazine and make a collage.

37. Paint each nail a different color.

38. Look closely at the patterns on insects, beetles, and butterflies.

39. Wad up a piece of striped fabric to make a flowing pattern, and go from there.

40. “I have me a pocketful of memories.” Carl Sandburg.

41. Myopia

42. Victim of a kind heart

43. Stuffed with sorrow

44. Galloping snails

45. Solemn summer

46. Silly spring

47. Watchful winter

48. Ancient life today

49. My worst nightmare

50. Windows in-between

51. Austere autumn

52. A table fit for a king

53. Walled in by dreams

54. Color floor

55. The hope of devastation

56. Who do I want to be?

57. Where do I want to go?

58. Add a completely different material OR start with one you never use

59. Found poetry (based on Julianna Coles’ method): Use a timer. Spend five minutes randomly clipping words, sentences, and phrases from a magazine. Spend ten minutes making a poem using some or all of the collected words. Don’t think or plan!

60. Celebrate something simple, like a soda can pop-top, a staple, or a rubberband.

61. Write a letter to your muse.

62. Start with a poem or quote.

63. Adult-erate a nursery rhyme.

64. Listen to your heart.

65. Fragile

66. Make a tiny shrine.

67. Write down a secret, then cover it up

68. Color study: pick a color, take a walk, notice everything that is that color. At home, play with the list/images/color

69. Write

70. “If I were…” Pick an animal

71. Depict what is in your way.

72. Depict what you want.

73. Use a color you hate.

74. Clapping waves

75. Change something in your work space, then get back to work (i.e., turn the music on or off, move beloved objects around, or sort a drawer or box)

76. Spend $5 (or less) at the dollar store, and use what you bought as a starting point

77. Call a friend

Back of Card

Wildflowers

Our backpacking trip was beautiful on many levels. The big picture views were stunning – mountains, lakes, meadows, sky — but things were just as delightful when looked at the scene up close. I was surprised by the number and variety of wildflowers growing everywhere – in the meadow, along the streams, in the cracks of rocks, and on the slopes above Lake Emmaline. Naturally, I took a ton of flower pictures. (A ton of pictures translates to 50 or 100. My total photo count for this 48-hour trip was over 300…) It’s hard to pare them down, but I want to share a few of the more extraordinary ones.

The Colorado state flower is the Colorado columbine. While the name has taken on unfortunate negative connotations, the flower itself is stunning. I was delighted to see several examples on our hikes, including a little patch of them on the slope facing Emmaline lake.

Colorado Columbine

Tucked between some rocks nearby, Kurt spotted a tiny pink flower that I’ve identified as moss campion. I put a pocket knife in the frame for scale.

Moss Campion

Kurt also found a little garden of red, blue, and yellow flowers (which I have yet to identify). You couldn’t see them until you were standing in the space between two boulders.

As we hiked back down from the lake to the meadow, I noticed this plucky little flower growing inches from the edge of a receding snow bank. The tenacity of some of these flowers is inspiring.

Before going up to the lake, Kurt and I took a short hike around the meadow and saw several different wildflowers along the way. The first was this parry primrose growing right on the edge of the stream.

Parry Primrose

The Rydberg penstemon was in a sunny space along the trail. I took a lot of unsatisfactory pictures of this flower, but finally got one that was clear.

Rydberg Penstemon

We saw scarlet paintbrush all along the trail from the car to the meadow.

Scarlet Paintbrush

This patch of narrow-leaved penstemon gives you a sense of the abundance of the flowers during our hikes. All the shots I tried to take of banks of wildflowers were disappointing at best. The flowers are so small, they disappear in photos taken from a distance.

Narrow-leaved Penstemon

Why Armadillos, Part 4

This week’s topic at Inspire Me Thursday is polka dots, which dovetails beautifully with my armadillo theme, because I happen to own a handmade, polka-dotted armadillo. (How many people can say that?) Made for me by Donna Faivre-Roberts, doll maker extraordinaire, as a going away gift when I left Ithaca, this cutie is about 4 inches long and completely needle felted. Ain’t he sweet?

Needle-felted armadillo by Donna Faivre-Roberts

Clever Found Object Art

I just found out about this on my friend’s sheep and wool friendly web site. Click here and here to see pictures of a herd of sheep made out of telephones by Jean Luc Cornec on display in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s a wonderful example of seeing the common place in a completely new way.

The Trees of Emmaline Lake

I came home from the trip to Emmaline Lake with a slew of botanical photos. The wildflowers were booming thanks to the ample run-off from this winter’s snows, but I want to look some of them up before I post a few. So today’s post is going to be some art shots I took of trees we encountered. (Note: I haven’t bothered to look any of these up, so maybe I don’t need to know what the wildflowers are either…) The most interesting trees were on the peaks surrounding Emmaline Lake (approx. 11000 feet).

One of the things that fascinates me about the plants in the mountains is their tenacity; they grow in the most unlikely places. I saw wildflowers blooming just inches from the edge of snow drifts, trees reaching out from steep, rocky slopes, and stunted trees permanently bent by the winds that blow over the ridge they are growing on. But the all time winner was this plant below. I don’t know if it’s a tree or not, but it is growing out of an old tree stump that is right in the middle of a rushing river.

After that, the trees that interested me the most tended to be dead already – smooth or gnarled with twisted trunks and branches. Both of these were up near Emmaline Lake

These exposed tree roots were hanging out from under a clump of scrubby bushes on the slope we climbed to get to Emmaline Lake. (Note: Kurt and I did not approach the Lake on the official trail. In skirting a snow field, we wound up blazing our own trail on a slope nearby.)

There were also beautiful dead and dying trees down in Cirque Meadow and in the woods on the Emmaline Lake trail. Here are the ones I thought were interesting.