Simple Creative Ideas for When Life gets Overwhelming

How crazy is it that it’s been a year (well, depending on where you are of course!) since the pandemic forced countries to go into lockdown. We’re still in the middle of the pandemic, international travels are still pretty much non-existent and many of us have not been able to see our loved ones in person. Although there is hope with vaccines being approved and vaccinations offered in a number of countries, it seems like there is still a long way to go before things can go back to “normal” (what is normal anyway?!). I personally have felt overwhelmed at times, feeling I’ve had enough of this pandemic, wanting to travel and most of all wanting to go home and see my family back home! Sadly, the virus seems to be very insistent on staying with us for a moment longer. I’m sure many are also feeling the same way. I’m here to share with you some ideas that might be able to boost your mood a little. There’s nothing better that a little bit of art and creativity to make you feel better!

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Plants and Paints

Hey guys, it’s been a while! I hope you are all doing well in this new year. I know we’ve been pretty silent in here. For me personally, I’ve been struggling to find a balance between my day job and keeping up with my creative side. On top of that, the pandemic has gotten me in all sorts of mood. Being unable to go home and see my family has sometimes made me feel down and hopeless. In trying to keep sane throughout this difficult time I’ve inadvertently discovered a new love – gardening. A close friend of mine actually influenced me to start, she had successfully grown all sorts of edibles inside her apartment and had shared her urban farming journey with me whenever we talked. So, in November I moved into an apartment with a balcony and started my gardening journey. I didn’t realise how much I would love it until I saw seeds I sowed starting to germinate and grow into “real” plants! There’s just something so amazing and humbling watching a single seed turn into a plant, a flower, something you could actually harvest and eat. So, in this post I just wanted to share with you what I’ve been doing in my garden and how that’s become inspiration for me to paint.

Simple Watercolour Tutorial – Feathers

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen me share photos of old paintings I did in my stories last week. I’m moving to a new apartment in about a month time, and so that’s given me the opportunity to do one of my favourite activities — spring cleaning! I actually really like sorting through my things and going through old items, I never know what I’ll find. Sometimes I’ll find gems I forgot I had, other times I find well… trash lol! Anyway… when I was sorting out my things last week, I was pleasantly surprised by old paintings I did about 3-4 years ago that I had forgotten about. Some where really terrible, which made me reflect on how much I’ve learned and progressed in the past few years just by consistently showing up and trying out new styles of painting. Some, however, sparked inspiration in me and made me want to recreate it, such as this painting below of butterflies and feathers. It’s such a fun exercise to do where you get to play around with different colour combinations and watch what watercolour does best — flow! Here, I will take you on a step by step journey on how to paint feathers using watercolour.

Watercolour Basics – All You Need to Know

So you’ve seen all the inspirational photos of watercolour paintings on social media and decide you want to give it a try. All you need to do is buy some paint, paper and brushes. You go to your local art store (or online!) thinking it’ll be straightforward but then you get there and ton of other questions surfaces as you are welcomed by a wide variety of paints, papers and brushes.

A Constant Work in Progress

Have you ever wanted to try out a new hobby but fear you’ll be no good? We sometimes go to social media, be it Instagram or Pinterest for inspiration, but the plethora of information can instead leave us overwhelmed and in the end reluctant to even think of starting. Far too often we find ourselves too intimidated to share our work, because others have done it better. However, we forget to realise that everybody started somewhere, and that those beginning stages may not be as pretty as we thought.