Creative Rut

Wow it's been a long time since I have posted anything new here. Well I had good intentions. Last fall got really crazy for me. Work and teaching classes took up all my spare time. I blinked and the holidays were here. I didn't get a lot done creatively for myself and I wrapped up the holidays in a creative rut. I have been doing a lot of organizing and purging since the beginning of the year. It feels good to get rid of excess clutter and be able to find stuff. I rearranged and organized my scraproom as well. So now I want to start focusing on creating again. Yesterday I seen an HP commercial with Gwen Stefani in it that sort of expressed how I feel about my creativity at times.

"Sometimes it's so hard to find what it is I am trying to say. People might think you can turn creativity on & off, but it's not like that. It just kinda comes out, a match up of all these things you collect in your mind. You never know when it's gonna happen but when it does, it's like magic. It's just that simple and just that hard." Gwen Stefani

Creativity comes from our heart and mind. And sometimes our heart is so broken, and our mind so distracted by personal problems that we can not be creative. But we just have to be patient and wait. Life has a way of coming full circle and bringing us peace, rescuing us from whatever it is that keeps us from expressing what is in our soul, our creativity.

So I would love to hear what jump starts your creativity. What in inspires you when you are in a rut?

I just bought a couple of new books I am hoping will help ... I am not a mixed media/collage artist, but I love that style and have always wanted to try it. I have several books that I hope will help me work some of this style into what ever I create in 2008.

1. "Paper Transformed" by Julia Andrus
A great basic book with lots of recipes using different mediums

2. "Collage Discovery Workshop : Beyond the Unexpected" by Claudine Hellmuth
Fun artistic techniques taught in this one as well

3. "Pretty Little Things" by Sally Jean Alexander

I bought all of these locally. Google them and see if they might inspire you.