100 Days Of Creativity

100 days of creativity! Ok, I’ll be honest. I don’t know who started it or when.  And I don’t really care. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s 100 days or 49 or 30. I, Deb, challenge you to do something creative every day for a set number of days.

7 days for 7 weeks

Last September, I joined the 7×7 challenge sponsored by Studio Art Quilt Associates and created 7” x 7” blocks for 49 days. I credit them for getting me out of my coronavirus creativity funk.  I had a bunch of scraps from a previous project, so I just decided to sew without a thought of what the blocks were going to become.  After creating the Greek key block on Day 3, I just kept on making wonky Greek keys. After a few more days, the blocks kept getting wonkier.  And I created more of them each day.

The fun part of these creativity challenges is sharing your play with others. After 21 days of making blocks, I created this one, and one of my co-creatives asked if it was an alien key.

Well, that just set my mind free. I started putting the blocks together, and it had an apartment complex vibe. A pre-Columbian vibe. With aliens.

After 49 days I had a finished quilt.  Behold “Pre-Columbian Apartments.”

Here’s my artist statement about the piece: “In an homage to Pre-Columbian art, my mind combines classic patterns and wonky shapes to create humorous structures and objects. The Pre-Columbian is an alien friendly place. They even added rooftop parking for their spaceships.”

Join the fun!

So why am I telling you this? Why don’t you take the 100 days of creativity challenge?  Or 30 days or 49? If you’re a member of SAQA, ask to join the “SAQA – 100 Days – Reboot” group. Just do something creative. I don’t want to hear that you’re not creative. We’re all creative in some way, some of us just haven’t flexed our creativity muscles in a while. Yes, for some of you kindergarten is probably the last time you were forced, rather allowed yourself, to be creative. To help you stay committed, post your work on your social media account or on your refrigerator. Do it with a group of friends. You don’t need to be serious, just cheer each other on.

Do you need some ideas to get you started?

Most of us have cell phones with pretty good cameras. B&H has a list of creative exercises for photographers. Those of you who keep track of your steps might like Exercise 12. Go for a walk somewhere you have always wanted to photograph. As you walk, stop and take a unique image after a predetermined number of steps.

Are you more into creative writing? Remember those magnetic poetry kits? You can play with their words online. Create a poem. Or a sentence that doesn’t make sense.  Take a screenshot and print it out.

Do you love learning new words? Visit https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day. Use that word at least once in your conversation. Bonus points, if the person you’re talking to doesn’t recognize that you are using your vocabulary word.

Wanna have some fun with your computer? Why don’t you try coding? There’s a coding program for kids called Scratch. Many years ago ((2013) with my grandson’s help, I created a race track with a Volkswagen bug that you can control with the arrow keys.  Take time to code a few minutes each day and see what you come up with after a month or three. There’s even a Scratch Camp that started yesterday.

Did you used to paint or draw?  Sharpen those colored pencils or pull out the watercolor paints. Challenge yourself to draw for 15 minutes a day. What’s that? You can’t draw? Print out a coloring book page. Here’s just one of a bajillion resources.

And don’t forget Photoshop!

If you’ve taken one of our Photoshop Elements classes, choose a photo and open up PSE. Try a different filter each day. Change the default settings and see what happens.  We haven’t scheduled our next round of classes yet. We’re having fun being creative, too. Sign up for our newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when we start up again.

There are an infinite number of ways to be creative. As Nike says, “Just do it!” And post a comment telling us what you’re going to do!