Saturday Stroll

When I was a mother of a young child, Saturdays were always so hectic–errands like the grocery store, hardware store, and probably kids’ clothing department in a store,  and certainly the cleaners (we wore suits to work every day in those years, and the dry cleaning smell was part of my life).

Busy mom, for the site by the same name. See the link to tips for busy moms at the end of the blog post.

Now Saturdays are different. When you own your own business, you stay away from stores on Saturday, choosing mid-afternoon on weekdays, when stores are empty and errands take half the time. This week was busy with a lot of driving and teaching, and that means a Saturday of cleaning house (you never outgrow that), making hummingbird food, and refilling feeders (after cleaning them, too) and then. . . studio time.

If you need a creative boost, here are some articles you may have missed, and places you can explore:

Bubble backgrounds are fun, easy and you can do them with your kids or grandkids. For teachers, try making the bubble pages, then having the kids write wishes in the bubble spaces. For younger kids (or you–I love doing this), create the background, let it dry, then color it in.

I love making paper mosaics of all kinds. This one is literal but still a lot of fun. You can put it right into our journal, there are tips to keep the page from curling. I like to help you avoid all my mistakes.

Make yourself a virtual kaleidoscope. No peeking through a tiny tube, and lots of fun to change the visuals. To save you time, you drag the pieces you want into the moving virtual kaleidoscope, on the left. Your visual shows up on the one on the right.

Tired of hugely realistic video games? Here’s one of the early ones that requires using the arrow keys on your computer. No joystick, no fingers. Still fun. Zefrank’s  old-fashioned puzzle game is fun to play–move the rocket through the gears.

And finally, want to sound profound at your next meeting? An entire site of useful things to say–in Latin.

The photo above is from a site that has tips for busy moms. So you’ll have time to come back here and play!

Have a creative, inventive weekend.

–Quinn McDonald is writing her second book. She’s amazed at the information she didn’t put in the original outline.

Theme Thursday #25: 11.19.09

It’s Theme Thursday and that means it’s time to do something fun and creative. For altered book artists, go take a peek at GoMakeSomething, who has a list of elements to add to altered books, each with a how-to link, including one for 350 ideas for altered books, as well as how to do a layout for one.

Colored pencils from metu.edu.tr

Altair Designs provides you with different geometric patterns, a brush, a color selector and a few auto-fill in tools. You can color in designs, save them, email them, and see other people’s work in a gallery. Surprisingly enjoyable; a great way to explore color combinations you’ve been wanting to  work on.

Tired of explaining your project progress  to your peers? Here’s a jargon generator that creates empty, meaningless phrases for you. The advantage is that these phrases sound important. Who wouldn’t want to empower cross-market e-platforms?

Thanks to frequent commenter Pete Harbeson, we have a map quiz with a twist. The maps are shown, complete with colors, demarcations and scales, but there is no explanation. Using only the information shown and your basic knowledge of, try to guess what information the map shows. It’s not about geography, it’s about information.

More on found poetry: Logolalia is a site dedicated to artists’ collaborations. The link points to an artist who is working through a page of a book a day, looking for found poetry. It’s visually and poetically interesting.

And finally, TinyBuddha gives you simple advice for a complex life. In this link, 7 keys to happiness.

Five Most Recent  Theme Thursdays:  * * * Creative Play 11.5.09 * * * Creative Play 10.29.09 * * * Creative Play 10.22.09 * * *  Creative Play 10.15.09 * * * Creative Play 10.8.09 * * * Creative Play 10.1.09* * *  Creative Play 9.24.09 * * * Creative Play 9.17.09* * * Creative Play 9.10.09 * * *

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also wonders what you would like to say that you didn’t?

Creative Fun Friday

Twitter has “Follow Friday,” where folks recommend smart, clever or fun people to follow on Twitter. I’m having Creative Fun Friday, some links that are interesting, clever, or fun.

NOTE: If you like creative play, I’ve done it again on Theme Thursday.

Julie (Amy Adams) cooks up all of Julia Child’s recipes set against the backstory of how Julia Child created her groove.  Meryl Streep is Julia Child. Stanley Tucci is Paul Child. Nora Ephron wrote the screenplay. A movie for foodies. See the Julie/Julia trailer.

Tricia is a designer who loves food. She’s even done a book on food design.

For all you raw-art-journal lovers, some great raw art from around the web:

Derwent Inktense pencils

–On Flickr, A Cat’s nest has purple haze in ink pencils. Ink pencils? Yes, Derwent makes them. These are called inktense, a water-soluble pencil hard enough to draw fine lines, color-laden enough to give a good ink-like wash.

Think that raw art could never work for travel journals? Take a look at Doeki’s “Giza in Binary” over on Flickr. Change your perspective, change your mind.

Over at Doodlage, Ra-Shell is ramping up a doodling contest. The sign-up is over, but you can keep an eye on it and have some fun on your own. Raw-art journalers, doodler, start your Pitt Pens!

David Fullerton belongs to Doodlers’ Anonymous. You might not be addicted to doodling, but you’ll be addicted to looking at the work.

Kate Bingaman-Burt is a doodler, journaler, and obsessive consumer. She combines it all with words, images and links on her blog.

And if you are here looking for something to do with your kids, DaisyYellow has two activity lists. This is the link to the second one, because it includes the link to the first.

Have fun and don’t throw away those doodle pages!

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, creativity coach, and raw-art-journal keeper. She runs workshops in writing, journaling and raw-art-journals for people who can’t draw.