Gifts to Inspire Creativity

December 4, 2019November 10, 2020 | Eileen McKenna {my creative resolution}

If you have creativity in your life – regular creativity – you know what a gift it is. It’s relaxing – almost like meditating. What better gift this holiday season than the gift of creativity? Here are a variety of gifts that will inspire creativity in your friends and family.

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Art Set

Create a gift set with my “Creative Exploration Book,” favorite sketchpad, sketching pencils, kneaded eraser, and colored pencils. The recipient will be all ready to explore their creativity!

Painting Set

Watercolor is my favorite medium. Combine my “Beginner Watercolor Exploration Guide.” with paints, brushes, a palette, and paper for a great gift!

Clay Kit

This kit is the perfect gift to get someone started in Polymer Clay. I know because it’s the kit I bought when I wanted to give sculpting a try. It comes with a huge variety of colors as well as tools. Sculpting with polymer clay is easy and fun and your creations bake right in the oven!

Block Printing Kit

Block printing is so fun and satisfying. Create one design and print several copies of it! Pair the Speedball block printing kit with Strathmore cards. The Speedball kit even includes ink and Strathmore makes such nice papers!

Screen Printing Kit

I’ve wanted to try screen printing forever. I should add this to my list!

Baking Set

Combine a baking book with pans or accessories. I love to bake and Williams-Sonoma products are some of my favorites!

Cooking Set

Learn from one of the best! We just made a Gordon Ramsey recipe and it was the best Shrimp Scampi we’ve had! And it didn’t take forever to prepare. Combine a recipe book with Gordon Ramsay knives or other cooking accessories for the perfect gift.

Gardening

How about a kit to grow a succulent garden?

Crochet

Combine a “How to Crochet” book with needles and yarn for a unique gift.

Embroidery

An embroidery kit is a great way to introduce someone to embroidery. Everything is included – except maybe scissors. 🙂

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Map Making – the100dayproject – the first week

April 9, 2019 | Eileen McKenna {my creative resolution}

Map making #the100dayproject
I am so glad I decided to commit to #the100dayproject and decided on the theme of illustrated maps. My decision was a bit spur of the moment, but I’m having so much fun. Since I usually paint for at least 15 minutes every morning, it hasn’t been hard to work on the elements for my map. I decided on Fire Island which is a nearby summer vacation island.

Fire Island illustrated map elements

I’ve been to certain parts of the island, including the iconic Fire Island Lighthouse, so I started what I knew. Today I was doing research and learning about other areas of the island and what might represent these areas. It’s a challenge to represent an area, even one you know well. I’d like to do a map of my hometown, but will it be a map of landmarks meaningful to me, or one that is more universal? It’s a hard call. One that I put off by choosing a different location!

I painted the island itself separately and will add the type and map elements in Photoshop. This way I can resize them and move them around as needed. I had to take some liberties with the proportions of the island, because it is very long and thin. To fit it on the page it would have been a single thin line. Instead, I tried to create a perspective shot of the island, focused on the western edge where the lighthouse is.

I’m planning on finishing up this week. Can’t wait to share it. I’ll be moving on to a new and exciting location for the next map!

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Anniversary Map – the100dayproject

April 1, 2019 | Eileen McKenna {my creative resolution}

St. Ignatius Church Long Beach New York Wedding reception illustrated map Pizza fishing illustrations New York City Apartment building | anniversary map unique creative gift Lifeguard chair illustration

Last month I created a map of our important landmarks – our first apt., the church where we got married, the reception, favorite beaches, pizza, where the kids were born. I’ve always aspired to create illustrated maps so for #the100dayproject I am going to work on creating map illustrations. I’m so hesitant to say I’m doing it bc 100 days seems like a long time but I also know that 100 days is the perfect amount of time to hone a skill. I hope you’ll tune in to watch my progress and maybe you’ll be ordering up your own anniversary map towards the end! 🤣

Want a dose of creative inspiration? Sign up for my newsletter “My Creative Collection” where I feature artists and makers, and link to inspiring art, design, and craft, inspiring places, interesting books, movies, and more. It’s a collection of all the things inspiring me delivered to your inbox every two weeks. Click here to sign up.

A Swimming Quilt – Guest Post by Susan Finlay

February 2, 2018February 2, 2018 | Eileen McKenna {my creative resolution}

Intro. by Eileen McKenna – “I enjoy designing fabric prints but I don’t sew! So, I’m always so interested to see what people make when they purchase one of my fabric designs on Spoonflower. I was so thrilled when Susan Finlay (Wee Susie Stitches) tagged me on Instagram when she posted her swimming quilt. Susan used my Rainbow Goggles and Swimming Laps fabric designs in her quilt. And I was even more excited when she agreed to write a guest post about designing and making her ‘Eat, Sleep, Sew, Repeat’ quilt.”

Eat, Sleep, Sew, Repeat by Wee Susie Stitches

Firstly I would like to say a massive thank you to Eileen for asking me to write this piece about the quilt I made using some of her fabrics.

My daughters’ swim club are always looking for ideas to raise funds. The club wanted to raffle something that the kids would want to win rather than the usual hamper or bottle of whiskey that they have no interest in. I was asked to make a quilt.

I spent time (too much) online looking for suitable fabrics, first I looked for waterproof/resistant that the kids could take poolside, but nothing was suitable. So, I started thinking about the design rather than the fabric first. I saw a quilt that Lucy from charmed by you had made. Seeing Lucy’s quilt inspired me – the mantra of lots of swimmers that they wear on their t-shirts & hoodies is EAT, SLEEP, SWIM, REPEAT. That was going to be the main body of the quilt and designed using club colours of Royal Blue and Yellow. I would add a border of squares to represent the tiles of a swimming pool – the swimmers look at these for hours every week!!

"Eat, Sleep, Sew, Repeat" swimming quilt by Wee Susie Stitches #swimming #quilt

For the border I didn’t want plain fabric, boring, I wanted something special that would appeal to the kids. Back to searching online and I couldn’t find any fabric shops in my area that inspired me but then I found spoonflower and fabric from Eileen and Julia Diane Studios that I thought, yes, I could use them, they were perfect! So, I clicked order and a few weeks later the most beautifully tissue wrapped amazing fabric arrived.

Excited? Yeah. Husband and daughters too were excited! The girls asking the question what are you making for me Mum?? Sorry girls, as usual, this is for someone else!

"Eat, Sleep, Sew, Repeat" swimming quilt by Wee Susie Stitches #swimming #quilt
I started cutting perfect 6 ½ inch squares to create the pool tile effect from this beautiful fabric.

Then began the process of precisely cutting the letters A, E, I, L, M, P, R, S, T, W, or in full ‘EAT, SLEEP, SWIM, REPEAT’ to applique onto the background fabric.

"Eat, Sleep, Sew, Repeat" swimming quilt by Wee Susie Stitches #swimming #quilt
I used my Elna 680 sewing machine to blanket stitch around each letter.

I joined the squares to make border round the main letter panel. Next, I machine quilted the fleece backing with a nice simple straight line to continue the pool tile and lane rope effect. I finished the quilt off with binding.

The MASC quilt was complete.

My girls were excited by with the end result! The Swim Club were excited by the end result. The quilt is now being raffled to raise funds for Musselburgh Amateur Swimming Club. Hopefully it will make one swimmer happy and keep them cosy after a hard training set and ready to Eat, Sleep, Swim, Repeat.
"Eat, Sleep, Sew, Repeat" swimming quilt by Wee Susie Stitches #swimming #quilt