Have you thought about starting a daily project?

Looking around my studio, trying to find inspiration for today’s new daily piece, I see plenty of papers scattered about. I’m a list maker. If you visited my studio you would see a lot of these slips of paper are filled with lists. I make shopping lists, to-do lists for the days/weeks, and a favorite of mine, life lists.

Last year I read the blog Hula Seventy by Andrea and was so inspired. Every year she creates a list of things she wants to do before her next birthday. A light bulb went on in my head. Instead of creating a life list of things that have long been hanging over me, I should be creating a yearly list. This way each item has a deadline. No, it won’t be the end of the world if everything doesn’t get crossed off, but it is more likely to get done then just saying “someday….”

What was on this year’s list? Well, things like riding in a hot air balloon, creating a tabletop ecosphere and hitting up multiple photobooths. This year I also decided that I wanted to take a crack at creating a new piece daily and posting it to my etsy shop for an entire month. August was that month.

So, what have I done for my month long challenge? I started by creating guidelines and limitations, which I felt would help me accomplish my goal. I decided for myself that each daily piece would be of a uniform size and would be created on the same material. I enjoy working with many materials so I just kept it open to all two-dimensional mixed media. I took some notes prior to the month on concepts I might like to use if I am stumped.

I have done some “on the whim pieces” where I try not to over-plan, but just move quickly and rely on my natural sense of composition and color. While on other pieces I have tried out new methods that I’ve wanted to explore before, like stamp making and paper cutting.

The idea of creating daily might be overwhelming. It doesn’t need to be. Start with a small goal, maybe just working daily for a week. Try sketching in your journal or knitting on your WIPs for 20 or 30 minutes a day. You will find that when you’ve reached your goals that you will gain momentum and ambition to do more. You will start to find inspiration in more places, and look with excitement towards your daily creative time. Your creativity will flourish with each passing day.

Check out Robyn’s daily artwork for August in this Flickr slide show.