Elements of A Creative Space

One day in the little house with the long legs down by the creek...
Moongirl unpacked all her arty stuff which had been hiding in boxes and made a "creative space" under the house for it all. Every house she had ever lived in had a creative space and they seemed to end up having many things in common. Following is Moongirl's list of essential elements for a good creative space.

1. Some kind of desk or table and chair.

2. Boxes of art supplies, paints, crayons, pastels, pencils, rulers, glue and all sorts of bits and pieces. These usually end up under the table or desk, in drawers and on shelves.

Draw full of paints, pastels, pens etc

Draw of assorted paper

Box of bits

3. Empty glass bottles and jars and pots of brushes and tools

4. Dangly things for fun and inspiration or just somewhere to put creations.

5. Half created things

The head for a puppet yet to be finished

6. Organised mess. Everything needs to be organised in a way so you can find stuff but not too tidy that is stifles the creative process. You need to have lots of things visible so when you are stuck on something and you start playing with ideas there are things around to inspire you and help solve the problem.

7. Generally positioned in some out of the way part of the house so it doesn't require tidying up

The new creative space has some additions for Munchkin too so we can both go downstairs and make a mess together. It also means I don't really have to worry about what she has decided to draw on, hopefully my walls will now be spared. I love having somewhere to go and create stuff just for the hell of it. There is generally no useful purpose for much of what I make it really is just my way of playing. For example the other day we stuck wobbly eyes onto sparkly pom-poms... Why? Just because we could I guess, suddenly the pom-poms were creatures that started running around and jumping on things. Boing... boing .... boing....

1. Miniature easel with chalk board and large easel set up with butchers paper

2. Mini trampolines (picked up from side of the road for council pickup) for us to use up some energy bouncing together.

3. Crayons on the floor and exercise books