Sneak Peek: Behind the Scenes of My Latest Art Project.

Like most creatives, my inspiration and creative flow is a rollercoaster. One minute I’m able to create project after project, or complete a collection in one go. Then the next thing I know the river runs dry and coming up with just a single idea seems almost impossible.

In order to combat this, I’ve found a few tricks that work for me. My most recent experience with loss of inspiration came after completing my first collection of surface patterns. After months of working, and creating the results left me unsatisfied and questioning the style I was using. When this happened, self doubt entered and I began questioning everything, and creating new patterns became extremely difficult. I found myself with two choices, I could continue to fight against my creative block, or I could shift, and try something new. So I chose to switch mediums, and I made a tiny clay snail.

This pretty simple snail sounded like a fun relaxing activity and it proved to be just that. I didn’t put too much pressure on myself to achieve perfection, but rather I went for cute and fun and was very happy with the results.

After completing the snail, I felt like he needed somewhere to sit, and then I came across Y Street Studio on YouTube. She has a series of videos where she made a miniature fairy shelf, and I decided to try to make my own version.

Emma’s fairy shelf was more of a wall hanging, so I decided to make mine like a bookshelf. I decided to use a paint stirrer for the shelves, and some elderberry branches as the supports, a little hot glue and one finger burn later, I had what looked like a tiny bookshelf.

Next it needed a little personality. I used an assortment of mosses that I got from Joann’s and added those to the shelves. It came with a bark like moss, but it was delicate and would fall apart when I tried to add it, so I used a little mod podge to help give it some structure. A few tiny red polymer clay mushrooms later, the final look was cuter than expected.

Once I finished crafting the shelves, it was time to fill them, so I started to create miniatures to add. A close friend suggested a tiny skull and after my first version was more stormtrooper than skull…I made a few changes and the final version looked much better.

Which brings me to its current state. There is still a lot of room on the shelves, so I’m planning to make some books, and a tik tok user suggested an acorn book end, so make sure you’re following my social media pages to see how it all turns out.

My final thoughts on this current work in progress, is this project has done exactly what I needed it to. It broke me out of my creative block, and gave me a chance to make something cute and fun, while getting the creative juices going. If you find yourself in a creative low, I highly recommend switching it up a bit until your inspiration comes back. You can always go back to a project when your mind and heart are back into it. Talk to you soon.

❤ Kelly