The Creative Collective // Anything-Goes Art

This week's Creative Collective really pushed me out of my comfort zone.  The project was to gather random artifacts from around your house and compile them into something.  I found this task oddly difficult, I have taken many art classes in my life, but being artistic without a sense of direction has always been difficult.  This is probably why all my scribbles are either hearts or song lyrics!  Anyway, I find it extremely difficult to just sit down and create art.  For this reason, I put off this project until last Monday when I just sat down at my desk and decided I wasn't going to get up until I finished my piece of art.  With this determination, I grabbed a stack of index cards and made this:

While this may be headed to the trash can after I write this post, I am happy that I took the time to make it.  It forced me to think outside of the box and experiment with a new material, i.e. index cards.  I'm really enjoying these projects from the Creative Collective.  They're a nice break from the monotony of school work and routine in general!

The Creative Collective// New Music

The Creative Collective is back and today's prompt is to create a playlist full of new music.  The expectation is that I would utilize Pandora, Spotify or another music source to find some new artists.  I have not had the time to do that.  I've been writing my Extended Essay.  I literally spent four hours at the library writing yesterday! Therefore, I do not have enough songs to create an entire playlist so instead I have complied a playlist of non hits from some of my favorite artists as well as some new songs I've been listening to recently.

This playlist is a strange collection of songs.  From stand-up to punk to country to indie it's a good reflection of my actual music collection.  I would probably listen to this playlist while driving.  I would sing my lungs out to Hunter Hayes and Panic! At The Disco while Volcano Choir and Snow Patrol are nice to sit back and truly listen to.  Where would you listen to these songs?  What songs have you been loving lately?

'Growth' // The Creative Collective

Melyssa from the Nectar Collective has started The Creative Collective. She brainstormed 23 creative activities for bloggers to participate in throughout the year of 2014.  I'm really excited to participate in this collective and actually made my collage almost a week early because I was so eager to start!  The first prompt, for January 15th, is to create a collage of materials in your home which embodies the word you want to focus on in 2014.

For 2014, I have decided upon the word 'growth'.  This word will remind me to grow with change and work on my intellectual growth.  With my freshman year in college fall 2014, change is going to happen and I want to be okay with that.  I think the word growth will remind me that with every change comes an opportunity to better myself too.  Another aspect of growth is intellectual growth.  It takes a lot of effort to sit down and read nonfiction instead of just going to sleep or turning on the computer.  However, I feel more accomplished by finishing a book than a TV series. I hope the word growth will help me remember to further my education outside of school.

My collage is made entirely of college pamphlets.  I have been sent at least a pamphlet a day for the past year and a half which has added up to a large pile of paper.  For some reason I have kept all of these letters but there are no magazines my house! I actually find the use of college pamphlets very fitting as college is what a lot of my growth will be centered around in 2014.  It is also incredibly easy to find inspirational images in a college look-book!  I really like the combination of reading and adventuring in my collage.  I think they're both valid ways of expanding your worldly knowledge which is my main goal this year.

While searching through the mass of leaflets, I found these great quotes in a letter from MIT.  Unfortunately, the did not fit on my collage but I just pinned them up underneath it.  These quotes are great inspiration to begin your dreams.  My favorite has to be "The most effective way to do it, is to do it." which Amelia Earhart said.

I'm really excited about this series of posts for 2014.  Creativity is a great thing to foster and can easily be lost in the day to day.  If you decide to participate in the Creative Collective make sure to visit the master list of days and prompts on Melyssa's blog (link) and comment below with a link to your post!