Heart of the Day

Anette Bäck of Skövde, Sweden is creating one heart daily in 2019 for her project Heart of the Day...

Why did you decide to do this project? A few years ago I got the book 365: A Daily Creative Journal by Noah Scalin from a dear friend. A perfect opportunity for me to challenge my creativity. In my professional life I am the head of an IT department, which is a fulfilling and challenging job in many ways and I think I'm pretty good at it. But it isn't the most creative job.

I wanted to start the project on January 1st. But... for several years I had forgotten it, but not this year. This year I started my project. I am going to continue as long as it is challenging and fun. Hopefully I will reach the finish line at December 31st. But if the "want feeling" is replaced with a "must feeling" I have promised myself to change the plan. I don't need any more musts in my life!

I chose hearts as my project for two reasons:
1. It's quite a simple shape
2. I associate it with positive feeling and hope that it will help me carry on if (or rather when) the inspiration comes. 

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? I have just started my project and so far I have learned that I can't bring myself to destroy books. This project is also teaching me to settle with "good enough". Normally, I am kind of a "good girl type" that always wants to do the best (preferably to perfection), but the time restraint when creating one heart every day while working and taking care of everyday stuff doesn’t leave room for perfection. It is a really valuable experience for me.See all of Anette's project on Instagram at @heartoftheday and on her site HERE

Food 365

Darci Lenker in Norman, Oklahoma is creating Food 365...

What is your project about? I am embroidering a tiny piece of food every day for a year and giving them all away in exchange for a donation to helping hungry people. People can follow the link and sign up to receive one in the mail. The donations can be anything from dropping food off at a shelter or Little Free Pantry, donating money to a food bank, helping with a community garden, paying off school lunch fines, helping a food insecure family, or whatever else someone can think of. I wanted to encourage others to also give what they could. It is unfathomable that there are so many food insecure people.

Why did you decide to do this project? I was really unhappy with the outcome of the last election, and felt I needed to do something to feel like I was helping make a better world in some way. I did a 365 project last year with embroidered circles, so I had some idea what I was doing, at least when it came to preparation, and I had some idea of what would be involved in completing my goal.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? The project takes a lot more time every day than I anticipated, but it's incredibly rewarding to feel like I'm making some small difference in the world. I had no idea it would spread as far as it has. So far I've sent foods to 33 states, 10 countries, and 5 continents. Connecting with people all over the world through social media and then again through the postal service is really fun for me. I'm almost halfway through this project and have already started plans for next year.

Follow the project HERE and sign-up to be a part of it HERE!

Want to experience the benefits of your own daily practice? Get the book Creative Sprint: Six 30-Day Challenges To Jumpstart Your Creativity.

Art-Food-Wine-365 Follow-up

Katerina AKA Plateresca in Madrid, Spain spend every day of 2015 creating her Art-Food-Wine-365 project...

What are the biggest lessons/skills you learned from doing your project? 2015 was a difficult year for me. I finally had to accept the changes I had been trying to ignore for a long time, and that was painful. In those difficult circumstances, I managed to do two things on a daily basis: draw and write. This made me realize these two activities were not just something I did for fun, but rather something that I needed to do constantly. This has influenced my life and work decisions a lot, so, in a way, my own blog became my compass.

The other lesson I’ve learnt from creating this blog is that minor things matter. When I had seemingly absolutely nothing to write about, I could find something beautiful and art-food-wine-related in my own apartment or in my neighbourhood in less than an hour. It made me think a lot about how beautiful my life is, and enjoy it more, even when my worries made it difficult.

In what ways did the project change your life? As much as I tried not to write about myself, my personality was present in every post, and at some point I couldn’t hide it from myself anymore that I was a) making art, b) gaining my main income with it, i. e., that I finally became what I had dreaded so much becoming: an artist. I had spent years shying away from this idea, but when the results of what I did lined up in a series of daily posts, it was impossible to keep ignoring them. The impact of this is huge; and, well, I do hope that the following years will prove that this was a good thing.

Now what?  I hope to be able to keep my drawing daily, but I’d like to be quieter about what I do, showing only the best images, recipes and texts once in a while. And I definitely will do my best to keep enjoying Madrid, and sharing its special atmosphere with my readers. 

Read Katerina's original 365 interview HERE.
See all of Katerina's project HERE. 

 

ArtFoodWine365

Katerina AKA Plateresca in Madrid, Spain is creating ArtFoodWine365...

Why did you decide to do this project? The funny thing is, I decided to get into a large and time-consuming project because I was overworked. I knew that such a project would make me find that ever-eluding time to spend with my art and writing, and when my husband gave me 365: A Daily Creativity Journal as a Christmas present, I plunged into it that very evening, and by New Year we had my website up and ready for the first 'real' post and the first prompt!

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? I have only been doing the project for less than two months now and I hope that you ask me again in a year and I can boast some significant career changes owing to this project... But right now I can tell you that it is true that if you can stick to one habit, it makes it easier to go on with all the others. I was trying to draw daily last year, but missed several days almost every month. Since I've started my ArtFoodWine project, I haven't missed a day of drawing, though my blog doesn't always require me to draw something for it!

I do hope to find new friends via this project.

I think that daily blogging teaches us humbleness, too, because you have to share something even if you don't really think it's great, and it's not a bad side effect.

And I just like doing it, I feel more whole when it is my daily task to create and share something. Starting this blog was like coming back home for me!

See all of Katerina's posts HERE.

Food Faces

One of the 52 techniques for getting your creative juices flowing that I feature in my book Unstuck is called Meal Emotions. This project encourages you to play with the leftovers from one of your meals to make a face. I recently had a chance to put this technique into a project for one of my clients at  Another Limited Rebellion.

The Broad Appétit food and art festival in Richmond, Virginia had me eat meals at eight of the featured restaurants and create faces from the foods I was served. It was an extremely fun way to create art for a client and a great excuse to eat out at some wonderful restaurants. In addition we made a ninth face at FeedMore, a local food bank, which gave me a chance to visit and learn about something new in my own community.

Why not try making a food face from your next meal? It's not hard to do, pretty much anything can be used on your plate. Just experiment and have fun. Be sure to take a photo when you're done so you can share it with me. And hey, if you're in the Richmond, Virginia area add the tags #FoodFaceRVA and #BroadAppetit to your image when you share it on your favorite social network and you could actually win some free food at the forthcoming event!

Nourish 365 Project

Jenna Powers in Boston, Massachusetts is celebrating what nourishes her life: photography, food, friends and family in Nourish 365 Project...

Why did you decide to do this project? Turning 35, preparing for a wedding, moving to a new city and moving in with my fiancé… oh, and 60+ hour workweeks that involve being away from home two or three weeks a month…

Photography is a passion, but it was becoming too easy to go long stretches without picking up the camera.  The Project was a way for me to connect with my creativity and my passion, even if it is just for one iPhone click a day (though I have found myself schlepping the Nikon around more often!)

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? I knew I could do the photography part, but to my fiance and I's pleasant surprise, it turns out I can actually cook!  (Did I mention that prior to starting my food-based Project I didn’t cook at all?)  Don't get me wrong, I will never be a Top Chef, but after years of ordering takeout and watching any one of a dozen cooking competition shows, it looks like I actually learned some things.

It’s also been a great opportunity to connect with foodies, photography lovers, and culinary geniuses in my neighborhood and in cities around the country.  Having a blogger “like” my post, or a restaurant retweet me or post one of my photos on their Facebook page helps me feel connected to my surroundings, something that’s generally a challenge for me—I haven’t spent more than two consecutive weeks in the same city in more than two years!

I really look forward to what the next ten months has in store for me, my camera and my stomach!

See everything that nourishes Jenna HERE.

Bicoastal

Kizz Robinson in NYC & Chris Deitner in LA are doing a collaborative 30 day food photo project called Bicoastal...

Why did you decide to do this project? I had done a 365 project and, while I enjoyed it and found it helped me learn a lot about my camera and my creative brain I didn't have it in me to do another one so long. My archiving skills aren't that good.

I decided that I wanted to learn more about my smartphone's photographic capabilities and I kept coming across projects where people on opposite coasts or in different countries were taking photos at the same time and putting them together. I love those projects! I started to think about people I knew who would think this kind of project was fun and I immediately thought of Chris.

We batted around some ideas about how long we should work, what our theme should be, and how we'd archive it and finally decided on 30 Days of Food on Flickr so here we are.

How has doing this daily project affected your life? I happened to start this project at the same time that I partnered with a different friend to try to lose a little weight (I'm far too cheap to buy new pants). Now much of my day is spent focusing, literally, on food. For a day or so I was afraid that having the photo project would make the healthy eating harder, make me more resentful of some of the harder choices. Happily that hasn't been the case. Taking photos and concentrating as much on how I want to look at the food as on what I want to eat has been really fun. A couple of days I've even said, "Wait, I have to eat something so I can take a picture!"

Also, I took a lot of pictures of my hands in relation to food for my 365 Days Project and would sometimes feel like I was getting in a rut. The project was pictures of my hands but wasn't limited in any other way. It's counterintuitively freeing to have a narrower focus. I'm getting a lot of joy out of that.

See all of Kizz & Chris's photos HERE.

Eats and Reads

Deborah Moore in West Valley, Utah is doing a yearlong project called Eats and Reads. She explains, "Every day I pick a different childrens book and make a snack that goes along with it."...

Why did you decide to do this project?  I've already been doing Eats and Reads, but I wanted to do something more consistent.  I love to cook, make healthy snacks and getting kids excited about current books.  

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? I started doing sporadic Eats and Reads over a year ago as a way to have something to blog about.  It's helped me learn what picture books are out there.  As an aspiring author this is important, but by making treats to go along with the books it's more entertaining for me. I've recorded some of my creations, but I've never been 100% certain how the snack would turn out.  Creating and rushing toward possible failure has given me a chance to get over some of my hang ups and try a few unusual things.  For example, I made a Chihuahua out of peanut butter, graham crackers, and banana's.  It turned out cute, but I had no idea if it'd even work when I was doing it. Other times I'm made a cute looking snack which my kids absolutely hated.  One highlight was when I let S.A. Boden, author of "The Compound" know that I made a snack for her book.  She thought it was a fun idea. 

I wrote my first rough novel (in submission, but it hasn't been picked up by any agents yet) by forcing myself to write a little every day.  This helped me work past the creative blocks and discouragement.  I love the fact that your book provides little prompts and has realistic support for creative and artist types.

See all of Deborah's Eats and Reads HERE.

Lunchbox 365

Joanna in Toronto, Canada is documenting food packed and served in a lunch container and she calls it Lunchbox 365...

Why did you decide to do this project? I was diagnosed several years ago with food allergies and am somewhat restricted in what I can eat, so I became used to packing my own lunch every day. I found that recently, I have gotten into a major rut with what I had been eating, and wanted to push myself to try new things. I find the lunchbox containers perfect for portion control, so I decided to challenge myself to see how many different combinations I could create using my favourite lunchbox set.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? It's a bit of a pain, honestly :) The first dozen or so were easy, but I am having to get more creative now. And I have to remember to photograph it and post it. There are a few times I missed the midnight deadline and had to post a make-up pic the next day, and one I missed altogether due to illness, but for the most part, I have been good about getting up the daily pic on time.

See all of Joanna's lunches HERE.

Photo A Food A Day

Fran Smith in Richmond, Virginia has made Photo A Food A Day her project for a year...

Why did you decide to do this project? Read your book, liked your philosophy, thought a break from my work related blog postings and various academic tasks would offer a nice (and creative) break.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? I've had some followers and that seems to grow :) I've found that some days it is a delight to carve out time for this and on other days it can be a burden if I have too much to do. However, I believe that making time for creative expression is very important for us all and am committed to keeping to this task!

See what food Fran has been photographing on her site HERE.