Creativity Exercises  Activate Your Creativity!
Your Story is Powerful. | Your Ideas Inspiring. | Your Art is AWEsome.

Let’s live in a world where everyone embraces and shares their natural, everyday curiosity & creativity to experience greater ease, well-being, connection & joy!  Let’s start NOW!  Grab a pen and the back of that envelope.  It’s time to draw your self-portrait and you only have 30 seconds…but first…you have to close your eyes.  

Something magical happens in those 30 seconds. 
It’s creative nourishment. It’s the Swirl Soup Recipe:
You don’t have to be an artist or be good at art to be creative.
Simply Create & Play & Share to experience greater
ease, connection & joy!

Basic Materials You Will Need: 4-6 pieces of paper | pen or pencil | colored pencils or markers | black marker | envelope | postage stamp | dictionary | timer

 

NaME-GaME
Steps:

• Write your name 15 times, in different sizes, styles & directions, overlapping often to divide the page into many shapes.
• Color in using colors that express your mood today.
• Hang on your bathroom mirror for 24-48 hours.
• Hint: Click on Hand Lettering Tips for Beginners  

Mail-ME-A-Smile

Steps:

• Write your name in bold, BLOCK letters in your own style.
• Color the letters in by experimenting with patterns, symbols & color combinations.
• Add three words that always make you smile onto your design. ie. name of your kid or dog, your favorite place or a silly-sounding word.
• Place in envelope & address it to yourself. Add a stamp.
• Ask a friend to mail the envelope at their convenience or mail it yourself!

 

Do-Not-Make-A-Turkey

Steps: 

• Set timer for 8 minutes.
• Trace your hand in an interesting position and turn it into an animal.
• Color in using colors that express your mood today.
• Using your NON-DOMINANT HAND add your signature to the bottom of the drawing.
• Hang drawing on your fridge or kitchen cabinet!

Drawn-from-Love

Steps:

• Using only color & shape, try to do a drawing that represents LOVE without using a heart.
• Your drawing can be a symbol, images, a scene…anything goes!
• When you are finished, give your drawing a title and add it to your drawing. 
• Add your signature to the bottom of the drawing.
• Surprise someone by giving them your drawing!
• Hint: Hide it under a pillow, in a drawer or on the back of a door.  Or leave it on bench!
  

Activate The Storyteller in You!

Six-Word Memoir: Who Are You, In 6 Words?

Steps:

• Take a few moments to think about what is important in your life right now.
• Write about yourself or your current situation in exactly six words.
• Hint: Don’t try so hard, just start scribbling and see your story unfold. Don’t worry about being perfect. Break the mind’s ice. Try again and again. Just get words on paper.
  
• Tips: Be Specific | Be Honest | Write Like You Talk | Experiment with Structure | Tell A Story | Be Yourself
• If you wish to share your Six-Word Memoir with the world, post yours here.

Memoir Examples:

• Inner Child. Outside. Creating Everyday. NaturALLY. – Ally F.
• I love to make people smile.
• Big Hair, Big Heart, Big Hurry
• MTV. SATs. THC. IRA. NPR.  
• Dad’s Funeral. Daughter’s Birth. Flowers Everywhere. 
• Hired Me.
  Fired Me.
  Married Me.
  Credit:  Steps by Larry Smith, founder of SMITH Magazine & Six-Word Memoir    

Censored Poetry

Steps:  

• Choose a page of a newspaper, magazine, book or document with lots of words that you don’t mind altering.
• Scan it for words that fit together to make a new message that’s unrelated to the content.
• Circle or draw boxes around the words you have selected with pen or pencil.
• Using a black or dark marker, cover over the rest of the words on the page.
  Credit: Steps by Austin Kleon, click on image to visit his site. 

Really Short-Story

Steps: 

• Begin a 100-word story with this line: “Where were you last night?”
• If you wish, read it to a friend and ask them to write one and read it to you!

Activate Curiosity, Inspiration, Ideas & Flow!
Try these idea-generating exercises and start keeping an Idea Journal! They can also unlock creative blocks & activate creative momentum!

Be An Idea-A-List!
Steps: You can say these out loud or write them down, do alone or with pals:  

• Come up with 8 worst imaginable cookie flavors
• Come up with 8 reasons to send back soup
• Come up with 8 excuses to get out of a date that’s going badly
• Come up with 8 personal affirmations
• Come up with 8 ways to say, “I can do anything.”

Word Association

Steps:

• Open up a dictionary to a random page and pick the 8^th word on the page.
• Read the word and definition and write the word on the top of the page.
• Set a timer for 2 minutes.
• Write down as many things as you can think of associated to the word or meaning.

Alternative Uses

Steps:

• Set a timer for 2 minutes.
• Write down as many uses as possible for these everyday objects:
  chair | coffee mug | spoon.
• Paper Clip Brainstorm Example:  Hold papers together | Cufflinks | Earrings | Imitation mini-trombone | Thing you use to push that emergency restart button on your router | Keeping headphones from getting tangled up | Bookmark  Source: Developed by J.P. Guilford, 1967.

Congratulations! Your Curiosity & Creativity has officiALLY been ACTIVATED!
 Your drawings are delightful! Your story is powerful! Your ideas are inspiring! 

Now it’s time to…CREATE & PLAY & SHARE! 
Create or Join a Swirl Soup Creative Expression PlayShop! 

Photo Credits:
All images & exercises have hyperlinks to source, when possible. Please contact me if I need to correct or add a source. Image: Colored Pencils. Ally Finkel. 2015.

Hello Creative Human! If you found this, you are an instant winner. Click here. Enter your name, email, type “Snozzberries” into the subject line & tell me how you activated your creativity to collect your prize.  Congrats! You. Are. AWEsome!   big HUG, Ally