a creative retreat

I've been on a creative retreat in Linköping over the past couple of days. When my friend Karin started scrapbooking, she was the first scrapbooker I heard of who was: a student, without children, and had other hobbies (other things in her life) than scrapbooking. Which was comforting, and one of the things that made me start doing it myself. Anyways, we've talked about scrapping together for a while but haven't gotten around to it (as we live in different cities). Last week though, I read on her blog that she felt a little down, so I offered to just go up there to just hang out, do crafty things, and have a great time together. We have been scrapping NON STOP. (Almost - I made a couple of minibooks and a collage, too. I'm not into scrapbooking enough to let all my other creative habits fall apart, duh.)

And now I feel like I have loads of creative energy saved inside (which is good, because the minibooks I made I have to finish at home - didn't have that many photos with me etc., and a couple of layouts need more thinking). A creative retreat indeed. So recommended!



An interesting thing is that when Karin left (she had to leave for school early this afternoon, so I had a couple of hours before catching my bus back to Göteborg), I stopped creating. I couldn't think of anything else to do, I got restless. When we were both of us next to each other at the same desk (a rather long desk, I may add), there was some sort of creative energy going on in the room that kept us going. There were more and more ideas inside to use, all the time. But when I was alone the ideas vanished and self-doubt returned. Weird! Conclusion = I need creative retreats to function.

While on the bus home (a four hour ride) though, since I hadn't anything else to do, I came up with a whole new creative concept. But I'm not going to tell yet. Have to see if it works first.

School starts tomorrow, yay! I'm so excited to have singing lessons again. Ooh, I really have high hopes that this semester will be a great one.