PERMISSION TO PLAY : Creativity : #p2play

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week, I was ready to start making art again. Well… sorta. I was ready to do *something* in my studio, something that involved paint and hole punches and paper and glue. But I didn’t want to think about it too much. I really am averse to making ANY decisions right now. I just feel exhausted in that department, depleted. And creativity can get very, very fussy as far as decision making goes. What shape, size, design, color, application? Just writing those questions makes me feel tense.

I have been thinking a lot about childhood these days, about life as a kid, about the things in life that are created *for* kids. And one of those things I thought about is a playground.  A playground is designated space full of structures and things like swings and slides that is specifically for kids.

When a kid seeds a playground, they know that they can go and jump and run and yell as much as they like- the space has been designated as “safe” and “play” and therefore, they can just *go to it* and not worry about what the adults might say about their activity.

I was thinking that I needed a “playground” for myself, a space that was DESIGNATED for play and “safety” and exploring and making messes. I figured I already had my “slides” and my “swings” (in the form of paints, stamps, markers, pens, etc.), I just needed a place to put them.

So I decided to make myself a playground journal- a journal made up of scraps of paper that were already marked up that I could just open and PLAY in.

Meaning, if all I felt like doing was stamping down the same stamp 400x, I could open to any page and do that. Or do it on a bunch of different pages.

If what I felt like doing was playing with red paint, then I could open up the page and do that, too.

If all I felt like doing was doodling flowers, then there would be space for that, too.

I can either work on a new page, or I can open up the book to a random spot and continue working in that page. And when a page is “done”, I can simply take it from the binder mechanism and move it to the front. And in time, the journal will come together.

So I started out with a simple American Crafts binder– an 8×8 album. It’s got two rings inside.

It comes with a bunch of small page protectors, but I removed those and instead went on a tour of my paper collection and pulled out some paper I have had for a while but couldn’t find the right use for. Large maps, sheet music, paper bags, ledger paper, etc. I wanted something to be a good background, but nothing that would be so colorful or patterned that it would “guide” what I decided to do on the page. I also used quite a bit of the K & Company Life’s Journey paper pad, which is PERFECT for this sort of thing.

I made a little collection of papers and cut them into different sizes so that they fit into the binder (some 8×8 square, some 7×9, some 3×4, some 8×2, etc.) Then I put a thin coat of white gesso (a primer that makes a piece of paper more of less water-proof and better to hold up to paints and liquids) on each paper, front and back, punched holes in them and put them into the binder.

In the back, I included some graph paper and some large lined index cards (both easily available at your local supermarket or drug store in the school supply aisle), in case I want to do some writing and sprinkle those pages in with the art.

Within a few hours (a very FUN few hours), I build myself a little creative playground, from scratch. I not only provided myself a space to just create – no rules, no worrying about “ruining” anything (the variety of papers and the fact that they are not “pristine” makes it so much easier to “ruin” them by marking them up. And at any time, I know I can open the binding and move the paper around- but by creating the project, I got to use my supplies again and “warm up” for more creative stuff in the future.

And a few days after I made the journal, I had the urge to play with paint. And so I sat down with my watercolors, cup of water, a few new fat paintbrushes, and  my “playground” journal, and I did this:

I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s finished. All I know is that I had fun doing it. And I’ll leave it be until I feel like doing more with it. It’s there for me, like a swing gently waving in the breeze, beckoning me to jump on and have fun.