As I mentioned in a previous post, I am practicing a daily creativity habit this year (loosely following the book mentioned in that post). I am not completing a piece of art every single day, but I am spending 30 minutes a day being creative. I didn’t get that many mandalas completed this month, as some of these took me a week+ to complete.
I’ve been posting my projects on my Instagram under #createwithelizabethkaybooth if you want to see them all in one place. I love having a theme because it is more relaxing completing the challenges in the book knowing that I just have to translate them into a mandala. It gives focus and allows me to just sit down and get to work instead of feeling overwhelmed with the proverbial blank canvas.
A manadala made with my non-dominant hand. It was very tiring to work with my non-dominant hand – some of the sloppiness in here came from the awkwardness, but more of it came from just getting tired!A mandala that took me a week+ to complete. The idea was to make something that blended into the background. I usually love color and rarely work in black and white, but I thought maybe just leaving it all in linework would assist with the blending in part of this project.Mandala inspired by a dollar bill. Pen and marker. I’ve never examined a dollar bill so closely before!The challenge in the book was to write a love letter and illustrate it. I decided my project would be to crochet the heart mandala out of the book I mentioned.
Day 1 in the book – make something with whatever materials you have on hand. My first ever mandala – colored pencil and pen.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I am practicing a daily creativity habit this year (loosely following the book mentioned in that post). I am not completing a piece of art every single day, but I am spending 30 minutes a day being creative. So far, I’ve done pretty well sticking to the goal.
I’ve been posting my projects more regularly on my Instagram, but I thought it might be fun to post a monthly update here. I have to say, making mandalas is so enjoyable, I look forward to sitting down to work on them. They take me awhile, especially the first two, which took me an entire week of 30 minutes each day to complete. But I can already see the benefits of this habit and it is relaxing to be focused on enjoying the process instead of racing toward a finish line like I do with work things.
Day 2 in the book – week 2 for me. Create something inspired by your favorite animal – if you can tell which animal this is inspired by, PLEASE leave me a comment, just for fun! Colored pencil and pen.Day 4 in book – Day 15 for me – take a 5 minute walk and make something with whatever materials are available where you ended up. It was POURING rain, so I walked 5 minutes TOTAL and got very wet setting up this little beauty, but I love this photo. Such a great color combo!Working with something I collect. No secret there about what I collect. 😉 Even though this was working with my favorite thing in the world, this is my least favorite mandala from the entire month.Look in the kitchen and work with the first fruit or vegetable you spot – which was my basket of citrus. Biggest trick here was to keep the lemons and limes from rolling around.
I attempted Day 3 in the book, which was to make something out of paper, but don’t use scissors or glue or draw on it. I tried, friends, I really did, but have you ever tried to make a mandala this way? If you have successfully, please share, because all I ended up with was a crinkled up piece of paper. I was annoyed, and decided to just let that one go. There have been other prompts in the book that I found equally uninspiring and also decided to let go.
My biggest takeaway for the month: if you want to establish a habit of daily creativity, you need to be focused on enjoying the creative process and not on following rules or the quantity of what you’re producing. I hope you enjoyed the update, and if you want to create with me, use #createwithelizabethkaybooth to post your creations.
ELIZABETH KAY BOOTH 