Ways to stay creative during lockdown

Art and getting in touch with your creative soul is significant. Allowing yourself to become more creative will enable you to get to know yourself and express yourself in your way. Using art as an outlet, you can end up finding your authentic self, discovering what you love.

With art, we start to see the beauty in things; we focus more on the colours and how things fit perfectly together. It allows us to get an eye for nature and appreciate what is beautiful in the world or what we find beautiful individually.

Art and Mental Health

The Mental Health Foundation gave information in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, that art is significant for our mental well-being. As mentioned above, it allows you to express yourself in a way that is authentic to you. Dorien Eising writes, “Engaging in the arts seems to be growing in popularity as a way to improve your wellbeing. Participating in the arts can enable people to deal with a wide range of mental ill health conditions and psychological distress. The best part is that it helps people to improve their mental health through creativity. Making art is helping many people express themselves, without having to use words.”

Art has proved itself to be a form of therapy. Harvard has shown studies illustrating how art has a connection with helping people with their mental health. It helps with stress and anxiety. “Studies have shown that expressing themselves through art can help people with depression, anxiety, or cancer, too. And doing so has been linked to improved memory, reasoning, and resilience in healthy older people,” Harvard Health publishes.

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Surrounding Yourself with Art

We as humans are more indulgent than we know; we live and breathe art every day. The murals we see on our cities walls that we admire, the posters from our favourite musicians which an artist created for the musician. The world is full of artists who have their art up for sale. Supporting their businesses are so helpful during these times and plus, you get to decorate your home with your favourite pieces from them. Following artists on social media is another way to surround yourself with beautiful pictures and inspiring posts.

Artists you need to follow :

• Kim Thompson
• Laura Duffy Art
• Florence Given

DIY Incense Holders

These incense holders have become very popular over the last while. DIY incense holders are a sweet touch to your home decor, and you can tailor it to your style. If you need inspiration, Pinterest and TikTok provide beautifully handcrafted by talented creatives. TikTok also gives tutorials so you can watch someone physically make it to make the steps easier for you. TikToker Sophia Barret has an array of videos of her making these DIY incense holders and each video has a different design for each.

What you need for these DIY incense holders is:

• Modelling Clay
• Clay Modelling Tools (can be bought in a pack)
• Paint and Paintbrush

Painting

Painting can be a fun activity to pass the time or create something at that moment. A great lockdown activity that can allow you to develop your skills. You don’t have to be fantastic to begin painting. It is all about fun and enjoyment. Put on a Bob Ross video and paint along, zoom call your friends and paint together, or put on your favourite music and forget about reality as you allow yourself to use your imagination to make a piece of art.

Writing and Reading

Journalling has become increasingly popular and more encouraged over the last while. With more people taking up journaling, there is an increase in people writing, particularly young people. Words are more artistic than we think they are. Most of the poetry we read is from self-expression; words stringed together in a poem are carefully coined to express the writers’ reaction to the world outside them. The topics that poetry can range from are endless, from what you love, to what you don’t love so much, to a simple experience from your day. Poetry turns the smallest thing into something bigger.

The power of reading is astonishing. There is an endless supply of literature in the world and there is something for everybody—poetry, fiction or non-fiction novels, prose, you name it. There is something for any emotion or topic. Why is reading so crucial, though? Allowing yourself time to read gives you accessibility to learning more, sees others’ perspectives, and enables you to understand your own personal perspective. Your vocabulary will also benefit from reading, which you too can add to your writing skills. Reading is also beneficial for critical thinking skills, opening yourself to books of many eras and subjects allows you to explore different aspects of life. History, feminism, auto-biographical, or self-help books are examples of topics that can lead to much more understanding.

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Studies have also shown that reading is great for improving your sleep, reduces stress and helps you empathise with people, as said above about seeing others’ perspectives.  From Healthline, it has been scientifically proven that reading helps strengthen the brain by the response of the mind. “Brain scans showed that throughout the reading period and for days afterward, brain connectivity increased, especially in the somatosensory cortex, the part of the brain that responds to physical sensations like movement and pain.”

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

You may think to yourself, how can I reuse something and give it a new purpose? There are so many things we can use again to give a different purpose rather than throwing it out. Do you have an empty or old wine bottle you don’t need? Turn it into a candle holder! Long candles are easy to find and are cheap in most crystal shops. Using a wine bottle as a candle holder is a unique way to give the background of your home an artistic ambience.