
Exploring my creative side
In mid to late 2010 I started a photo a day project after I purchased my first smartphone. Having a camera that enabled me to take photos and share them online helped massively with this and I don’t think I would have done it otherwise.
I completed a year of this, had a few months off and then did it again throughout 2012. I religiously posted my photos on Flickr, shared on Facebook and had lots of positive comments about my photos. On many days I would get toward the end of the day and realise I had yet to take a photo and it probably shows in some of them (the photo of me wearing a sock for example). But it’s a snapshot of my life over the two years — a snapshot of the day-to-day — and that was one of my aims.
So when a friend put out a call for visual artists to exhibit in her restaurant I put my hand up. I chose a selection of around 24 photos, got them printed, framed them myself and hung them in the space. I organised an exhibition opening, and packed out the place. It would have been nice to sell some or all of the pictures but I didn’t sell a thing. It was great to get the support of my friends though and my sense of achievement at stepping out of my comfort zone felt really good.
Since then I feel I’ve mostly lost my creative mojo.
I could blame a lot of things. I work nearly full-time. I parent full-time. I’ve got a house to take care of. I’ve got a social life. Instead of watching television at night I could be pursuing my creative side but once I get home from work or any after work activities, prepare and eat dinner, I just want to relax in front of the telly for a couple of hours before I go to bed.
I used to blog really regularly but I haven’t updated that for a few months either. I’ve tried to resurrect it but what started off as a parenting blog isn’t it for me any more. My lad is 16 now and it’s just not the same.
Reading Anika’s story about her creative side projects helped give me the push to start something for myself I’d been thinking about for a while. And she wondered what others are doing! Huit Denim Co said there are 3 rules behind side projects, they are low-risk, low-pressure and love.
I’d been wondering how I could combine my love of op-shopping (thrift shopping), photography and digital. In 2014 I did Frocktober because I have a lot of dresses and thought I could easily wear a different frock every day for the 31 days in October. Which I did, and then some, while raising money for ovarian cancer research.
I got my son to take a photo of me every day in my outfit and posted it to social media and with it put a description of the dress, roughly how much it cost, and whether it was opped or new. Surprise surprise, second-hand dresses outnumbered new ones. I thought people would get sick of me posting my outfits to Facebook daily for a month but I got lots of great feedback and it helped me raise money.
Following on from this, and to try and satisfy my creative urge, I’ve started another blog — thriftyclifty.com — to have a place for my love of the thrift. At the moment it’s very op-shop focused as it’s quite new, but I could incorporate other ways of being thrifty as well. Ideally, I’d like to grow the blog’s readership but it might just end up being my little digital oasis documenting some of my thrifty adventures. Remember, low risk and low pressure! And op-shopping is definitely a big love of mine.
Whatever it ends up being I’m still learning. I’m still creating and that’s valuable.
I’m writing this as I find that putting things out there, ie making myself accountable in a public forum, means I tend to stick to them more readily.
