4) Inspirations: Creative Ideas for Adults

While I most often write and think about creativity for kids, recently I have been thinking a lot about creativity for adults. I just finished taking a great Sketchbook class at the nearby art college. The class met once a week for 7 weeks and was just the creative inspiration I needed. On our first class the teacher asked us all to think about what creative influences in our childhood had brought us to this class. At the time it seemed like kind of a crazy question, but as everyone in the class went around to share their answer we were each surprised to find that we had clear memories of parents, grandparents and siblings, who played music, drew, danced, wrote, or had some other creative hobby. Each person kept remarking how they had never really thought about how much those childhood experiences with creativity had formed their own interests in art. So of course that made me think about my own kids and wonder how they will be effected by all the creative people in their lives?
So this week my inspirations are for adults who are looking for a little creative inspiration of their own:

Books to Read: Earlier this week I wrote about creative coloring books for kids, but who says kids should have all the fun. From Brainpickings, here are 7 Activity books for grown-up to get their creative juices flowing!
I also came across this book this week at the bookstore Steal Like an Artist By Austin Kleon. While I have just gotten started on it, the back cover lists 10 ways to unlock your creativity. All 10 are really good tips but my favorites are 2) Don't wait until you know who your are to get started and 5) Side projects and hobbies are important. I think as adults, and especially parents it is really easy to push your own hobbies and interests to the side, they just seem like easy things to cut out when you are trying to figure out how to get everything done in a day. What I am starting to realize is that they are actually really important for everyone involved.

Moments Big and Small: Since most parents don't have a spare hour in the day to do anything, I think this advice from Design Mom is really helpful. I am often amazed by what can happen or not happen in a just a few minutes!

Things to Do: Wreck this App, some creativity for your phone or ipad!

Stuff to Watch: While this is not technically a category on the blog, it could be, so I will go with it, and start with this Adora Svitaik: What Adults Can Learn From Kids TED talk.

So who was the creative influence in your childhood?