Creative Every Day Theme for January: Past, Present & Future

December 31st, 2013


At the end of each month I will announce the totally optional theme for the following month. For the month of January 2014, the theme will be Past, Present & Future

I thought this might be a fun theme to explore as we reflect on 2013 and look forward to the months of creating and living in 2014! 

As always, this month's theme for the Creative Every Day Challenge is totally optional. Use it if it inspires you, continue being creative every day in your own way if it doesn't, or do something in between. You can sign up for the 2012 Creative Every Day Challenge anytime. More info can be found here and the sign-up page is here.

I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month on the blog to help keep you inspired. You can use the posts here for jumping off points or interpret the theme in your own creative way. If you need some suggestions, here are a few ideas to get you started. You could:

  • *Photocopy images from your family history and use them in your artwork.
  • *Do a stream of consciousness writing about what you'd like 2014 to look like.
  • *Create in the present moment, just letting it flow with no plan in mind. 
  • *Do you have a word for the year? Make a piece of art to celebrate it and help remind you of it for the rest of the year.
  • *Put together a photo album celebrating 2013.
  • *Write down the things from the past year (or more) that you want to release and burn them or release them to the wind.
  • *Move to music from your younger years. 
  • *Take a piece that has been sitting unfinished and bring new life to it. 

How to use the CED themes:

If you're feeling creatively stuck or blocked at any point during the month, use the theme as a source of inspiration to get you moving. Feel free to focus on the theme in your creative activities for the entire month or as much as you'd like.

Using the theme is entirely optional for CED participants. Use it if it inspires you, ignore it if it doesn't. I'll be sharing posts throughout the month around the theme (among other things) to get you thinking about how to incorporate it into your life. I'd love to hear how you use the theme in your creative world.

And have fun with it!

20 Responses

A great theme and a beautiful piece of artwork!

Love the theme (and the artwork!)!
Lets begin :)

OK lets do this thing! I saw posts on this on twitter last year, decided to join the fun in 2014.

What a great theme. Right now I am working on a mixed media piece that incorporates Evelyn Nesbit from the turn of the 20th century and some girls from the mid 1950s.

Can’t wait to incorporate the theme!

Happy New Year to you and everyone. I love being connected to Creative Every Day. Thanks for keeping this going.

Beautiful, inspiring and magical piece. Have a very happy and creative 2014!

Great theme and appropriate for my first experience with the Creative Everyday Challenge!

Happy New Year to you and your family Leah.
Janice. x

Awesome creation and great message ~ Happy New Year to you ~ xxx

This is a great theme for the start of a new year.

[...] Creative Every Day Theme for january: Past, Present & Future. Past, Present & Future [...]

[...] Past Present and Future [...]

Starting the new year with CED January challenge. Thanks Leah for your inspiration!

I find it VERY interesting that the challenge is Past, Present, Future. Most particularly because today I finally took the time to do more and found some work from a class that put on for the local elementary school a few years back. Posted it up (after all my fiddling with my papers and thinking) Then I thought, yep, I’m still going to try and challenge myself to this and clicked in to see if you had a new button, what was new and where to move forward from with this challenge. Low and behold, I had this exact Past, Present, Future on my mind today. Thank you for all you do, it is very, very helpful.

Love the theme. In a lovely synchronicity, wrote a poem on the theme just days ago. My word for the year is Shine or Thrive. Maybe even Flourish. So many words! Sorry about my unintentional double link. Thought one would cancel the other!

Hi Leah – it is an amazing sense of serendipity, Leah, that I continue to “accidentally” discover you frequently as I am out and about in the blogging community! Since 2009, when I experienced a long winter of seasonal illness, until this winter of 2014 (when I a grateful that I am still healthy, in the midst of flu season!) – you have been a source of creative inspiration to me. Thank you for your consistent and generous creative challenge to others, and for encouraging people to express their creative spirit in their own, personal ways.

We are currently snowed in, and expecting much more snow over the next couple of days, so I have time to get going on a few of my projects, and this will definitely be a source of motivation to keep me focused in the coming weeks and months. I’m off to work on a new art journal / personal daytimer so I’ll post photos as I go along. Thanks again, and hope to connect with you frequently throughout the year. Nina @ Vintage Mama’s Cottage aka mamas*little*treasures

[...] can also join the Creative Every Day project by visiting their blog [...]

I have just found your website (mid-January) and have joined up. The January theme is perfect for the project that I am currently planning. And I do try to create in some way every day!

Wonderful theme,very inspiring as all the themes. what a lovely piece of art that I can identify with; really lovely.thanks so much for pushing my creative button.

Thanks Leah for your inspiration! La mia parola del 2014 รจ CHANGE!

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