Creative Activity Ideas

Using our creativity can help our minds stay healthy and makes us happier, it's so important to try and incorporate some sort of activity where you use your creativity as often as you can into your life. Read on to find out about some activities you can try to bring out your creative side.

Photography Scavenger Hunts

These scavenger hunts are a great way to get out of the house, explore somewhere new or discover things you may not have noticed before in your usual haunts. The concept for this Photography Scavenger Hunt is easy, just bring a list of things to photograph, head to your destination of choice, try and find each of the items on your list and take a photo of them. You can think about the composition, the angles, what is included in the frame, the colours and lighting. If you want to take it one step further, you can also edit the photos after and put it into a nice collage or your scrapbook.

You can head on this adventure by yourself or go with friends and challenge each other to see who can get the most original or creative shot.

Get started with the Scavenger Hunt below:

• An interesting shadow

• Something cute

• Something shiny

• A picture with symmetry

• Something loud

• Something that evokes love

• Something colourful

• Something that starts with the letter ‘W’

• A geometrical shape

• Something that reminds you of your childhood

• A smile

• Something that scares you

• Something that makes you want to protect it

• Something alive

Theme inspired paintings or drawings

Get a canvas or piece of paper and any artistic medium you can find at home. Instead of just having a blank canvas, which may be pretty intimidating, you can pick a theme and artistic style and try and create an artwork that features the two. Below are some ideas for themes and styles to get your started:

Themes:

• Choose 3 colours and create an artwork only using those

• Choose an emotion and create something that evokes it or that reflects that emotion for you

• Your favourite memory

• Your favourite movie or TV show

• The most memorable place you’ve been to

• Something that you’d like to experience or a place you want to go to

Styles:

• Abstract

• Illustrative

• Cubism

• Expressionism

• Surrealism

• Japanese

• Sketch

• Pop

Scrapbooking

A scrapbook typically is a way of preserving memories and is a really fun way of doing so as well. You can get any notebook or sketchbook, print out some photographs, get some stickers, magazine clippings, or print out your own decorative pieces (you can find free ones online or buy these digital assets from Etsy too). There is no right way to do it, a scrapbook is personal and a great way of keeping memories that are close to you. You can glue the photographs to the page and add other decorative elements that you think would look good with it or that reflect whatever memory it is on the page.

If you don’t want to source for additional decorative pieces, you can also add your own journal reflections, doodles and sketches. I keep a digital scrapbook which means I do everything on the Goodnotes app on my iPad, making it easy for me to import my own digital stickers and photos straight in. With a scrapbook, just do what feels right to you, and once you finish your scrapbook, you have a piece of memorabilia that you can keep and look back on for years to come.

Crafting

There are many crafts out there for you to try, if you need ideas, Pinterest is a really good resource, full of crafts that people have done and provided the instructions for. You can create something for yourself or make a gift for someone. Below are some ideas on what you can search in Pinterest to get some great craft ideas:

• Easy DIY projects

• Gift crafts

• DIY for adults

• Creative activities

• Easy crafts

• Paper crafts

• DIY gifts

Creative Writing

Writing can be another great way to use your creativity. There are plenty of writing prompts out there and even generators that can help come up with some wacky, fun ideas to base your story on. Whether you open up a Google Doc, or get old school with a piece of paper and a pen, let your imagination run wild. Some places to get for writing prompts:

• https://thestoryshack.com/tools/writing-prompt-generator/

• Search ‘Creative Writing Prompts’ in Pinterest

• https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/

Another idea for creative writing is to create a story with your friends. Google Docs is the perfect tool for this as it allows for real time collaboration. Take turns writing sentences or paragraphs and see how your story turns out!

Create a collage

A collage is a piece of art that is made by putting together images. You can create a physical collage by getting a piece of paper or canvas and pasting photos, magazine or newspaper clippings and small objects or decorative items. You can also create a digital collage by putting together digital images on a digital notebook app (like Goodnotes or Collanote) or even in Google Slides.

The artwork you create can be totally random and abstract, but the way you put it together can take into account the colours used, the way pictures are cut and layered on to each other and the theme. Or you can make something more uniform, for example pictures of you and your SO put together so they form a heart.

Take the time to think about what kind of collage you want to create then have fun collecting images and putting it together.