The soul usually knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind. (source)

For the last few weeks I’ve been finding it really hard to keep motivated and complete an artistic project each week. I’ve even considered quitting a number of times. Even though I’m passionate about it my primary focus each week is with Baby C and my family, so I’ve been leaving my projects until the last minute before trying to whip something up. Sometimes this works but a lot of the time it doesn’t. I’m just not a naturally spontaneous creative sort. I need to have a little plan before I feel comfortable taking a step forward.

For other creative types this might sound a bit suffocating but I’ve tended to find that the work I’ve enjoyed doing the most, I almost always had a well thought out idea in mind before I started. That still doesn’t mean it turned out how I wanted it to each time. But isn’t that the journey of a creative process; it grows, adapts, expands or simplifies as you go.

This weeks project isn’t an overly artistic one. But it’s one that comes out of not having a plan and facing a severe creative block a few weeks back.

After my Husband and I were married I created our wedding albums with Adobe Lightroom which I then had printed. In the printing process the company printed the wrong titles on the albums. The company reprinted them for us but that left us with two albums with incorrect covers. As we don’t need two sets of the same album (and I wasn’t going to throw them away) I’ve been meaning to create my own new cover labels and give them to family.

I originally wanted to make handmade ones with lovely paper and ink. As you can tell that is not what happened. I didn’t have a plan or proper idea of what I wanted to do and I decided to wing it at the last minute. Throw in that I was tired and had my weekly deadline breathing down my neck and it ended in wasted paper and ink. Not to mention a few tantrums too. I then had a severe case of creative block. It was like my brain just went foggy and shut off all creative thought.

So here I am again fighting myself NOT to quit, with another case of creative block. But I’m not going to be defeated. I need to accept that as a new Mother, each day, week and month isn’t always going to go to plan. I’m going to have good days, great days and not so good days. And simple sometimes just has to be good enough. And that’s what I’ve done this week. I’ve finally made my wedding album labels but kept it really simple. That is why I love Photoshop!

Until next week… happy painting!

Have you suffered from creative block before?

I’m sure some of you are asking the question as to why we had two weddings. The short answer is that we had a legal surprise ceremony at home (the night before we left for our month long honeymoon) and a symbolic elopement ceremony in Scotland. The long story… well that’s for another blog post.