a little nudge in the right direction...

I've been pouring through Etsy's online resources for new sellers. I love the wealth of information on everything you could possibly need to know, from photography tips, to dating vintage items, to blogging....
     

 

Last night I found this post, from their How-Tuesday series a week ago, and thought I'd share some of it here this Tuesday! I'm obsessed with tips for boosting creativity. I honestly think I like reading them almost as much as I like being creative - which sometimes slowwws my creativity. Oh, well. It helps in the long run!

Noah Scalin writes about his book Unstuck: 52 Ways to Get (and Keep) Your Creativity Flowing, at Home, at Work & in Your Studio and highlights six big ideas to help you move closer to productivity. These are his words on the Etsy blog:

1. Let Go of Preciousness. One of the biggest creative stumbling blocks is our need to get things right. Believe me, I’m a perfectionist myself, so I know how hard it is to let that go. The reality is that treating your creations as precious little things to protect keeps you from the world of possibilities the comes from trying new things out, making mistakes, and getting things wrong.
2. Freedom Comes From Limitations. If someone were to give me an infinite amount of time and an unlimited budget to create something, I would be frozen. It’s only from narrowing down the options that creativity becomes possible, as you are forced to push against the walls that close you in.
3. Get Out of Your Environment. No matter how inspiring your workspace, there’s only so much creative work that can be done within it. Of course, if you’re in a place that’s not so inspiring to begin with, the need to be elsewhere is even more urgent. Since most people spend the majority of their time inside, they’re missing out on the much wider world right outside their door.
4. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone. At some point in your life, you’ve probably been told not to make a fool of yourself, but the fact is that it’s one of the most effective ways to get creative inspiration! Fear of rejection and fear of embarrassment: these are the recurring enemies of creativity.
5. Get Things by Giving Them Away. It may sound counterintuitive, but you get a lot from giving things away. If I had kept my own project under wraps, rather than sharing it as I went along, I probably would have had a fraction of the positive experiences. The more I gave away, the more people gave back to me.
6. Collaborate. There’s no substitute for the benefits you receive when working creatively with other people. Some of the best things that came out of my own project were the friendships that blossomed from incorporating other people into my work. You get results that are exponentially greater when you don’t work alone.

I think one of my resolutions this year should be to live one of those tips every day. Experiment with something (try new things, make mistakes, maybe even waste some materials!!), make a fool of myself, give more away, collaborate... These may be super vague, but if I keep track of them by journaling, I'll be more and more conscious of the actions.

He has a blog called Make Something 365 & Get Unstuck with a ton more ideas.. I'm definitely interested in doing a 365-day project, but I've never come up with a good one. One of these days it'll come to me, I know it will.

Here's to a very creative new year!

cheers, nico