I have been following an amazing series over at the Gussy Sews blog about living a creative life. If you don’t follow Maggie’s blog, you should check it out. She inspires me daily and her Creative Life series is no exception!

Her series has got me thinking about how I live my creative life? My journey starts at a very young age. As long as I can remember I have always been creative. Whether I was making up plays, crafting, writing, or just playing with my friends there was always an element of creativity. As I got older my creativity took on a more specific role through clothing (I used to wear and shop vintage before it was cool ya’ll!), and through my study of art in high school and college (before I switched to a more “sensible” career path), and decorating my first home.

Then life started happening at a fast pace and my creative endeavors took a backburner for many years. I got married, started a career in Marketing, and began a family. I put all of my energy into those things, and somehow lost my creativity along the way. I wasn’t crafting, wasn’t putting any thought into my wardrobe and for the past five years have lived with beige walls with very few decorations or personality in my home. I was enjoying life but a big part of who I am was lost.   In hind sight I can look back at pivotal moments over the past few years and realize that I was searching for creativity and compensating for it in ways that were not being true to myself.

It wasn’t until my oldest was about two or three and we started crafting together that I began getting my creative groove back. It was a slow process but I found that the more things we made together the more I wanted to make! We were doing craft projects several times a week and sometimes several times a day! It felt great and I was beginning to be inspired by other crafters, home decorating shows, and books on sewing and furniture refinishing. But then another bump in the road happened, I started Freckles Crafts. “Wait, hold on!” you might be saying. “Your running a creative business, isn’t that the epidimy of living a creative life”? Yes, and no. Running a creative business, at least in my experience, requires a different kind of creativity. About 10% of my job actually allows me to be creative in the sense that I am able to turn ideas into a project or product for sale. That 10% is when I am creating the ideas for craft kits, or working on a blog post. The rest of my time is spent on production, customer service, shipping, billing, yada yada yada. While this part of my business still requires creativity, it is a lot less left brained and not quite as free spirited. Fortunately I love both aspects which allows me to put 110% of passion into it everyday!

But I degress, I woke up one day several months ago and had this burning desire to create. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, however, I knew I had to make something and my mind was racing with possibilities. By the end of the day I had a list of sewing projects, home decorating projects and I was thinking about new ways that I could rework my wardrobe to look less blah! It was the strangest feeling being overcome with this new spark of creativity. Since then I have found ways to incorporate creativing into my daily life as much as possible. Decorating my home has been my muse of choice lately, and I have rekindled my love of junking and refinishing furniture! Between work, kids, dog, house, husband, church, friends, family, etc., I don’t have as much time as I would like to work on creative projects, however, I try to fit it in as much as possible. I find that if I go several days without working on something I start to get a little panicky. I can’t really explain the feeling except to say I get cranky, bore easily, and find myself getting lost in thought about projects that I want to work on. Working on projects as much as possible, learning new crafts, and enjoying watching my children foster their own creative interests keeps me on track with my creativity! It isn’t always easy but like anything else you use it or lose it!

So how do you live a creative life? Do you have any favorite ways to sneak in creativity throughout the day or week? Let’s discuss!