Jul 22, 2021

Manufacturing creativity

Further to my last post, so how do you jump that hurdle to get started again?  I don't think collectively we've ever experienced anything like the COVID restrictions that have dragged on and on... and on and the damage they've done.  My sister even said that "creative despair" was a thing now, even with its own cartoon drawings!  To combat this, I thought about how can you manufacture creativity, how can you actively start the motions without the inspiration or passion?


So that's what we did!  My sister visited and we put aside time for a workshop I prepared.  All three of us (Mom joined in too) sat down and made needlefelted mushrooms.  Why mushrooms?  They're easy with a lovely shape and colors, can be used to create woodland scenes and none of us had ever made them so we were all beginners.  

I found some lovely pictures and printed them out and started the mushrooms' stems with a pipcleaner and some polyfill so we could start easily with the base in hand.


And we were off! 






It was really interesting to see how we all jumped in and

all with a different style of "poking".  Each mushroom materialized, and each was unique!  We all helped each other out, experimenting with how to make the white spots and different ways to make the annulus (the little skirt under the cap on the stem).


In about 2 hours, we had each finished a lovely fly agaric mushroom!  We felt great, we hadn't drawn any blood and had renewed our confidence.  Goodbye creative despair, hello magic mushroom!

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