I’m heading up to Philly this afternoon to have lunch and a movie with and old friend, and then tonight I’m going to see Amos Lee and Brett Dennen in concert with another group of friends.

So I hope everyone has a productive, enjoyable, crafty Saturday, and I’ll be back to posting crafty stuff tomorrow!

Karen Walrond at chookooloonks has a fantastic post about creativity today. Here is just a snippet:

I’ve come to believe that in fact, we’re all creative beings, and we all have the power within us to create art.  The trick, it turns out, is to avoid falling into the trap of believing that art or creativity is limited to the ability to take a pencil and a piece of paper and draw a realistic likeness of something that exists in real life.  Art and creativity can, and should, mean so much more than this.  Art should mean photography.  Writing.  Music.  Cooking.  Building.  Needlework.  Mechanics.

Creativity and art should be defined as the manner in which we are called to express ourselves, in ways that fill us with joy and grace.

Go read the rest of the post – it is fantastic. I’m going to work on the vision board she talks about; please share if you do too.

So if you hear that nagging “I’m not creative” voice in your head, just tell it to be quiet. All you have to do to be creative is to make something. It doesn’t need to be perfect and you don’t ever need to share it. That is what this hobby is about to me. Bringing an idea to life. Even if it doesn’t work out the way I thought. Because sometimes it comes out better than I’d imagined. And that brings me joy.

I work for a company in the solar industry as Marketing Director. We are a startup, so we try to keep operations lean, which means I have to wear a lot of hats. Strategist, cranky process person, graphic designer, IT desk, office manager, executive assistant, to name a few.

Most of today I was graphic designer Katy…redesigning a product label and designing a new background for our trade show display. I’m hoping to get a quick turnaround on the new background for a show next week that we just added to our schedule. So I was at work until almost 8pm working on the graphics.

It is times like this that I’m so thankful for discovering this hobby of paper crafting. Most of the time it is my stress reliever, but it also has helped me get a better grasp for layout and design. What I was doing today isn’t too different from scrapbooking actually.

Here is the sketch I made of the banner background over the weekend on Chalk by 37 Signals, a great website for jotting down thoughts if you have an iPad

A title at the top and then alternating boxes of text and photos below. Once I laid it out in Illustrator, I wasn’t so sure about the alternating boxes; instead I’ve rearranged them to be a row of pictures under the title, then alternating boxes below that.

The funny thing about designing the background for a trade show booth is that I need to consider the different ways my salespeople may set it up. Lots of questions to ask. What are my most important messages? What areas could be covered up? Will they look stupid covered up? Should I add a QR code to it, and if so where? The top? Middle? I’ll be sure to share what I come up with tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to the work jabber!

Sarah’s post about art being a sanctuary really hit home for me, because I’ve been on a creative tear all month. I’ve posted a lot on this blog…and that is only the tip of the iceburg of projects I’ve got going now. What I realized after reading Sarah’s post is the extent to which I’ve been using stamping as a stress reliever.

My full-time job has been very hectic and stressful. I work in the solar industry – business is booming and we are doing at least 2-3x the amount of business as previous years. Fantastic right? Well, yeah, but we are doing it with the same number of people, and I’m feeling a bit worse for wear.

What has saved me is going home, pulling out some stamps and paper and playing around. Or getting some wood, fabric, and a staple gun and creating a cool side table for the living room. Or putting together a new storage unit for my burgeoning stamp collection. All of these have kept me from getting stuck in my own head and stewing about the stresses of work.

One of the things Sarah talks about is appreciating yourself. Here are my self-appreciations for this month:

1. I appreciate that I was able to keep a calm head at work by focusing on crafting at home.
2. I appreciate that crafting on a daily basis has made me more creative in all aspects of my life
3. I appreciate that I found the time to finish and submit a fab project for one of the monthly SU! Demo art contests.
4. I appreciate how being an SU! Demo has allowed me to stay close to two of my good friends from college who live far away (my uplines Jess and Amy).
5. I appreciate how crafting connected me to an online community that is vibrant and supportive.

Wishing you lots of creative mojo!