About:
I started this project nine years ago as a challenge to myself to create some art every day for one month and post it on my blog. I was inspired by Nanowrimo and wanted to do something similar with art, and thus Art Every Day Month (AEDM) was born. Posting art on my blog every day helped to keep me accountable and it was fun to share my creations. The following year, I invited people to join in and each year since I've had great groups of creative people committing themselves to more creativity for the month of November with me. I've met some fantabulous people through AEDM and I'm thrilled to have anyone who is interested join in! I've added an optional Survival Guide to help any one who wants some extra support through the process, which you can read all about here!
The rules (which were made for breaking):
I keep the rules for AEDM really simple and very loose. I encourage people to make something every day, but my goal is to foster more creativity, so if you make just one piece of art per week or just one for the whole month, that's fine with me. The idea is to bring more creativity into your life, not to make you feel overwhelmed, pressured or guilt-stricken. Art is also loosely defined here. I mean art in the sense of anything creative, whether that be painting, drawing, knitting, sewing, cooking, decorating, writing, photography, clay, jewelry-making or whatever!
Look at AEDM as a soft nudge to add more creativity to your everyday life with a bit of group support. It's the group support that makes it so lovely I think. Every year, I meet new, wonderfully creative people through the process, which was an unexpected, but amazing benefit! Because my focus is on mixed media art, I tend to work on drawing, painting, and collage and I challenge myself complete a piece of art or do some work on a larger piece every day and post an image of what I'm working on on my blog.
I keep a link to a list of bloggers participating this year in my sidebar, so that you can check in on what others are up to and I'll have a Mr. Linky widget posted daily where people can leave a link to their blog posts. I've also created a Flickr group where people could share their creations (it's free and fairly easy to use.) You can join up with the flickr group here and post your images there if you'd like to, although it's not required.
If you want to join in:
- You can sign up for Art Every Day Month 2011 here!
- You can join in any time during the month. So if you find this and November 1st has passed, don't worry, you can still participate!
- You can add your blog or Flickr page to the list of links or email me to list your name if you don't have a blog. Find out more here. If you're interested in starting a blog, you can get a free blog through blogger or wordpress or typepad.
How to participate:
- The most basic way to participate is to sign up and have your name in the list of participants. This can be your way of committing to creativity for the month.
- Other optional ways of participating: You can share your creations on your own blog (simply posting about what you're up to), you can post images on the flickr group, you can use the Mr. Linky widget I post each day on the blog (creativeeveryday.com) to share a link to a specific image or post, or if you don't have something to link to, you can use the comments on the daily post as a place to share a bit about what you're creating. Below is an image of what the Mr. Linky widget I post each day looks like. This is just a snapshot of it, so you know what to look for:
- To leave a link to your daily creation in the Mr. Linky widget, you will put your name (in my case I put "Leah - creative every day") in the name box and the url to that day's blog post or flickr image in the url box (for example: http://creativeeveryday.com/creativeeveryday/2009/11/pond-reflections.html), then press enter.
- There is also a Flickr group where you can share your creations.
- If you use Twitter, you can tag your tweets with #aedm2011 to connect with others doing the challenge.
- I think it's helpful (and fun) to share your creations, even if it feels a little scary at first, but it's not required, so do what feels best for you!
- Take some time to stop in and visit some of the other bloggers who are participating (see the list in the sidebar) and help cheer them on. You're bound to meet some inspiring people in the process!
- If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to ask me.
Quick notes: in order to use the AEDM button located in the sidebar (and above), simply right-click on the image and save it to your computer. Different blogging applications have different ways of adding images to your blog, but all have help sections which should be able to direct you to instructions on how to do it.