Craft Your Stress Away

Today is World Mental Health Day, and I can’t help but think that we could all use a day to pay a little bit more attention to our stress levels and spend a little more time giving ourselves some self-care. This year has been…shall we say “bizarre”…to say the least. My stress levels are so high my ears are ringing and I have to keep reminding myself to relax my neck and shoulders. Sadly, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better any time soon. Ugh. Everything is being cancelled, done virtually, and just messed up in general.  They’re even discouraging Halloween festivities. Luckily for us, we are crafters, so we have some great de-stressing tricks and treats (see what I did there?) right at our fingertips, so I’m here today to remind you about a few of them.

1. Craft with friends

My household can be a bit chaotic even on a good day.  With three (sometimes four) adults and two dogs, there’s always some kind of noise and commotion. I like to get away to crops and retreats where I can tune out all that mess, but with COVID, that’s just not possible. Back in March, when we weren’t able to meet in person any more, we started doing some Zoom crops (weekly on Thursdays, and frequently on weekends, too). It’s been a tremendous stress release to be able to chat with my friends, especially when we all come to realize we all have the same hopes and fears about this crazy situation. You can start your own Zoom meeting, open a Facebook “room”, or use any number of other online meeting options.  You can even join our weekly meetings; the info is available in our Crafty Neighbor Facebook Group: Crop and Craft Events. That’s where we post all of our virtual and (hopefully some day) in-person events from now on.

2. Do something mindless

Since I can’t go anywhere to get away from the stressful things in my life, I’ve started to think instead about things I can do right here at home, and that usually means veg’ing out on TV while doing something quiet and mindless. Zentangle, doodling, and coloring are great options, as is sewing the binding on a quilt, or even just cutting your scrap paper down to card or photo mat sizes. I have spent many an hour rolling balls of yarn and spools of ribbon. Just find something simple that you don’t have to think too much about.

3. Go for a quick victory

One sure-fire way to feel better is to give yourself an easy win. Finishing an unfinished project, cleaning out a drawer in your craft room, putting those finished layouts into albums, or even jotting down some ideas for your next project are all great ways to boost your mood. By checking off a task on your to-do list, you give yourself an automatic check in the “win” column, and that always feels good. It doesn't have to be a big undertaking…completing even the smallest task is enough to get the endorphins going. 

So the next time you’re feeling down in the dumps, or anxiety is making you pull your own hair out, treat yourself to one of these crafty (and fun) techniques to kick that stress to the curb! I know you’ll be glad you did! 

Breaking a Creative Block

I haven’t posted anything from my 365 journal in quite some time.  Obviously, it is so far behind that it’s really not even a 365 journal any more, but I’m still determined to finish all 365 prompts.  I believe the last page I posted for that was Prompt #128, so I thought I’d pick up the trail with #129, “What have I done over and over this week?”

I did this page a while back when I had a lot of work that wasn’t getting done as quickly as I would have liked.  The result was a lot of late nights, so I took an easy approach to journaling this page and went with a doodle/zentangle.  I used Copic markers for this project, and I had originally intended to do some shading/blending with them, but in the interest of time, I just let the page be. 

I’m sorry to say it’s been a year since I got off-track with this project and I haven’t even come close to getting back into a regular groove with it.  I’m really not even sure why.  I love working in my art journal, but it seems like every page is so time consuming and I have to think so hard and work so hard at it that I don’t have time to finish it.  I feel like these pages should take about 30 minutes to an hour, tops.  But day after day, I sit here with the same pages and prompts, and I’m not sure what to do with them.  I don’t want to call it a creative block because I still feel very creative, and I often know exactly what I want the page to look like.  The problem is that I’m not always sure how to get the results I want and I wind up spending too much time trying to figure it out.  So it’s more of an engineering problem than a creative one.  I guess I just have to keep working at it, and eventually my block will become unstuck.

Question of the day:  What do you do to break out of a creative block?

More Layouts

Sharing some layouts from the other Crafty Neighbors....

Stephanie created this mosaic to showcase her many photographs of the Bronx.  Mosaics are a great option when you have a lot of pictures.  Wish in the Wind is just one company that offers paper, tools, and easy tutorials for creating awesome looking mosaics.

Cindy created this mosaic using background paper from Wish in the Wind.

Christen's freehand doodling around flowers cut out of patterned paper renders a unique perspective.

In another layout by Christen, doodles created with stamps and stencils accentuate a single 4x6 photograph.

More of Christen's doodling.  The stars in the background originated from a stencil and were embellished freehand.

Layout Ideas

Every scrapbook deserves a great opening page.

For this opening page, Stephanie cut a focal point out of her patterned paper (the Statue of Liberty), matted it on a contrasting color of cardstock, and used pop dots to adhere it over another piece of the same patterned paper to give it a 3D effect.

Cindy used a Cricut Expression to cut many different sized circles for this layout.  The circles echo the rings in the olympic symbol.

A layout of last year's Pam's Pals event.

More pages of the same event. The doodles were made with Inque Boutique's "Nightingale" stamp collection and black Staz-On ink.  I then highlighted portions of the doodle with a white Uniball pen.

In keeping with the pink and black theme, Cindy used Staz-On "Brilliance" ink and then restamped a little off-set and embossed in light pink.