Starlight 365

Aliza Bignami in Sacramento, CA is creating a star themed daily project called Starlight 365...

 

Why did you decide to do this project? As a gift for my 30th birthday my amazing godmother gave me the 365: A Daily Creative Journal.  I had looked at similar journals over the years and always thought “maybe next year.”

Well it’s 2013 and I’m not getting any younger

So why stars? “Reach for the stars,” they say.  Throughout the history of man we have looked to the stars.  Whether searching for the answer of where we came from or how to get where we’re going, stars inspire us to expand our horizons creatively.  I’m hoping this “Year of Stars” will do just that.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? While I'm only two weeks in, this project has already started to bring me out of the funk of my quarter-life crisis.  I feel like I'm more creative than I've been in years, not just in my "Year of Stars" but in my life as a whole. 

And by sharing it with others, it inspires me to keep going.  Friends, family and now even strangers  look forward to seeing what I'm going to come up with next, giving me a sense of purpose again.

So here it goes.  Fingers crossed.  Wish upon a star for me.

See all of Aliza's stars HERE.

365 Days of Star Gazing Follow-up

Lena Josfeld in Germany recently completed her 365 Days of Star-Gazing project...
 


When did your project start/end? My year of stars began on September 6th 2011 and ran through September 5th 2012. The date for beginning my project had no significance at all, it simply felt right to start NOW. The end, however, turned out to be perfectly timed without me realising it until it was merely a week away: It sent me off into one of the best holidays of my life, closing the project with one of the best concerts I’ve ever had the privilege to attend.




What are the biggest lessons/skills you learned from doing your project? Never ever would I have thought I could commit to a project like this and actually finish it. So there’s one big lesson for me. I also learned (rather by force) to compromise and lower some standards I had for my own work which were way too high to be comfortable. Lesson number two: I cannot rush creativity and I cannot force it to pay me a visit whenever I want to. It simply is not possible to suit perfectionism every day for an entire year – so I had better forget about it right from the start! ;-)
Lesson number three: It can be so incredibly easy to get people to participate in the weirdest things... Often they would become really enthusiastic to help me with my stars. This came as quite a surprise to me and made me feel incredibly glad and grateful.
I can’t say I acquired any particular new skill. But I did some things I had never done before like carving a pumpkin, making a bead figure, Chinese calligraphy, encaustic, marbling candles, rolling sushi rolls, modeling with papier machée... Basically, this project gave me a very good reason to try whatever I wanted to try – really cool!




In what ways did the project change your life? There were times when it didn’t really matter at all and I almost forgot about the next star. At other times, my days seemed to revolve around those stars and I felt a crazy rush of energy that let me accomplish things I would never have thought possible before. I don’t see any profound changes having happened to my life, but this project did make me a little more bold and daring (out of necessity for some of the ideas I had). It also enforced a kind of playfulness, thinking-outside-the box, and ignorig-the-usual-rules, which I have always liked but tended to lose rather easily during the grey, everyday life. I hope I can keep some of this attitude even without daily stars.



Now what? Now, I definitely need a break. Towards the end of this year of stars, I couldn’t help but consider all kinds of ideas for a potential next project. However, right now is not the time for anything like this on a daily basis. But I have now tasted blood, so who knows...? If I’m going to start anything else soon, it may quite possibly contain a lot of food... my latest obsession. :-)
As for the stars: I really need to give them a little more substance than only the virtual images and writings that might disappear with any server crash or hacker attack or whatnot... I’ve grown way too fond of them to not have them somewhere close to my bedside table. ;-) Still thinking about the best possible way to make that happen...



Read Lena's original 365 interview HERE.

See all of Lena's stars HERE.

It's Full of Stars

Brian Givens in Newark, Delaware is creating the yearlong project It’s Full of Stars...

Why did you decide to do this project? I ran across a review of your book 365: A Daily Creativity Journal some time back and decided to get it for my wife for Christmas. I ended up reading it myself and decided to try it out. I strongly identify with the “Maker” movement but recently I feel I haven’t been doing much making. Also, I am a mechanical engineer by trade and have always been more comfortable with things like electronics and woodworking. I would like to stretch into more “artistic” and “crafty” areas. I hope that this project will help in both areas. Also, the book was a big hit with my wife as well and she has decided to start her own project.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life?  I am over a month into the project and I am already starting to see some of the benefits I had hoped for. It’s really nice to be producing something everyday; that’s really been making me happy.. Also, the daily nature of the project is forcing me to make quick decisions and go with my gut, not agonize over getting just the right idea and product. I feel like that will be helpful to me long after this project is finished. I’ve gotten to do some things that I’ve been interested in messing around with for a while. Two in particular that stand out in my mind are Day 25 - Light Painting  and Day 33 - Bokeh It was nice to have an excuse to mess around with those techniques and get a feel for them.

See all of Brian's stars HERE. 

Starry Nights

Jack in Connecticut is using the moon and stars as inspirations for the yearlong Starry Nights project...

Why did you decide to do this project? I need the discipline. If I can find the time to create every day I will be able to find the time to what I really love and write. 

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? I'm only on my sixth project but I'm already facing obstacles. Silly ones, like I think of an idea and decide it's not creative enough or I missed two days in a row already. On the other hand it's so much fun to watching my three year old daughter make her own "project" while I'm working on mine. It makes me really want to finish this year out to be an example to her. 

See all of Jack's Starry Nights HERE.

365 Days of Star-Gazing

Lena Josfeld from "mostly" Jena in Germany is doing 365 Days of Star-Gazing...

Why did you decide to do this project? Lately, I have felt a great urge to be creative in some way, but no matter what I tried, nothing seemed to work for me. In times like that, at some point, my brain always discovers the 'emergency switch' - and once more, like so many times before, the idea surfaced to start a long-time project. (To tell the truth, I was not very enthusiastic about it, then.)

I spent some time pondering different subjects for this project, many of them sounding quite fancy: I liked the subjects as such, but they didn't exactly trigger creativity. Then I thought of stars. And I thought what a boring, predictable subject that was. Until my brain suddenly started working on ist own accord and bombarded me with ideas, keeping me awake until 3 in the morning. For some reason, those stars got me really excited and I was completely taken. I didn't ask why. I simply accepted the challenge.

Later, I found some very good reasons why I should pick stars as my constant companions for the next year. Here are some:

• It's a subject that may be simple enough to make it possible for me to work on it every day for an entire year.
• It also offers a lot of possibilities to make this challenging and creative for when I feel like it (and when I find the time - full-time university student, me).
• I have actually been interested in stars (those real shining objects out in the night sky) for years which even got me to learn some physics along the way.
• They are always there - whether we see them or not. I like to be reminded of that.
• Then again, many stars are not there anymore. What we see is really a window to the past. - Also a very interesting notion.
• You cannot have sunshine in your life every single day. But how about a little more starshine? After all, there isn't much of a difference.
• There seems to be no limit. No human mind could possibly conceive the limit of the number of stars out there - should there be one at all.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? With a whole lot of excitement! There are moments when I cannot sit still, I just have to work on it. On the other hand, I'm beginning to relax more and not be as perfectionist about my work as before - which is a good thing! And I'm just getting started...
 

What I really love about this challenge is how many different and new techinques I can try now - and I don't have to spend hours wondering what exactly I'm going to make using these techniques.

See all of Lena's stars HERE.