I need a pintervention.

Do you ever find yourself in a creative slump? Sit in your space and not know where to start? Have lots of ideas but don't get round to committing them to paper? That's what I am experiencing right now. The last card I made was at the beginning of April and it took 5 minutes, tops, before then, the last time I properly crafted was the end of March, my mojo has officially vanished.

Today I thought I would share two cards that I made for a submission call at the beginning of the year that were rejected, fortunately a third card was picked up for publication :) As I like to prepare all of my submission forms I thought I would include the full product lists and instructions.

I love this card, the colours, the chevrons (yeah, I still dig chevrons), just all of it!

Cardstock: (Kraft) Recollections, Michaels. Other paper: (Vellum, White), Making Memories Clear stamps: (Hello sentiment from Mini Blooms), Papertrey Ink. Ink: (Versamark) Tsukineko Embossing powder: (Gold) WOW! Color media…markers, pencils, pens: (Turquoise Perfect Pearls) Ranger. (Mango Orange Mica Powder) Cosmic Shimmer Paint: (Gelatos) Faber Castell. (Tarnished Brass, Distress Stain) Ranger. Accent: (orange, turquoise and gold seed beads) Michaels. Fibers: (Gold thread), Korbond. (white thread) Gutermann Dies, embossing folders, brass templates: (chevron placemat #53724 Jillibean Soup) Silhouette America.  Other: (Watercolour paper) Finished size: 51/2" x 4 1/4"

Instructions

• Make card base, cut watercolour paper to almost cover card base and roughen the edges with scissors. die cut chevron frame to use as a stencil and spray the reverse with repositionable adhesive. 
• Adhere stencil over watercolour paper and paint random chevrons in orange, turquoise, brown and gold, leave to dry. Once dry peel off stencil and adhere panel to card base. 
• Stamp sentiment on vellum strip, emboss and stitch to card base. Wrap gold thread around the vellum panel adding in beads, tie off the thread behind the panel and trim ends.

and here's the next one, a little more simpler in style.

 Cardstock: (white) American Crafts. (Cotton Candy) Bazzill Basics Paper. Clear stamps: (Hello sentiment from Mini Blooms), Papertrey Ink. Ink: (Versamark) Tsukineko. Embossing powder: (Gold) WOW! Color media…markers, pencils, pens: (Putty, Dusky Pink Promarkers) Letraset. Paint: (Tarnished Brass, Distress Stain) Ranger. Fibers: (gold thread) Korbond. (white thread) Gutermann. Dies, embossing folders, brass templates: (chevron placemat #53724 Jillibean Soup) Silhouette America. Finished size: 4 1/4" x 5 1/2"

Instructions

• Die cut place mat stencil from cardstock and spray the back with repositionable adhesive, reserve some of the chevron die cut centers for later.

• Make card from card stock, sew on white panel, place stencil over card and color in random chevrons with coloring pens and distress stain, remove stencil. Sew various chevron pieces to card with gold thread. Stamp sentiment and emboss.

So, back to the mojo-less-ness. I have tried numerous things to try and find some inspiration;

1. Blog challenges - There are so many great challenge blogs out there, I read the prompts, look at the DT inspiration then at the entries and then feel doubtful I could successfully pull of the theme.
2. Reading other blogs.
3. Pinterest.

and that's where things went seriously wrong, I can spend hours on pinterest, pinning random things, targeted searches, following link after link, yet still creating nothing. Julie Comstock on the Cosmo Cricket blog summed it up perfectly in once sentence for me in a recent post she made regarding social media.

"Seeing things on Pinterest takes ideas from me because I don't like to copy. I may have come up with that on my own, but after seeing someone else do it I feel like it's not an option."

This is exactly how I feel, I need to step away, try and avoid crafting sites altogether for a few days to recharge my batteries. Its going to be hard as pinterest is universally used on my laptop, phone and iPad, however, just as I typed that I thought "Why don't you just sign out of the apps for a few days" Doh, that's what I will do (because I can't sever ties with pinterest forever!) I am officially giving myself a pintervention.

I haven't really spent any money on craft items for a while and during that time I had amassed myself a wishlist of new goodies, fortunately I have had the funds recently to have a little splurge (thanks ebay!) and I have now amassed quite a little pile of new things to play with in the hopes that I will feel inspired. We'll see how it goes.

What do you do to kick start your creativity?

Ang