How do you exercise your creative side?

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Lately, baking! But what else is new?

I really, really, like really, want to get into watercolors. I took a watercolor floral workshop some time earlier this year/last year (gosh, I can't even remember, that's how bad I am!) and really liked it. There's a book, called The Field Guide to Color, that is a watercolor workbook I've been intrigued by for a while. I just darned need to make the time for it!

I also really want to get into sewing, a la @csb, but I don't have a sewing machine. Signs are pointed to me taking this more seriously, though, as I have created a separate Instagram for my future sewing habit... This is a big step for me, because the things I have my separate Instagrams usually turn out to be legitimate hobbies for me. Cases in point: fitness IG account and baking IG account.

Honestly, I've always thought that if I had a creative side hustle, it would be creating fonts, or maybe doing some sort of modern calligraphy. I have a couple hand-written "fonts" if you will, that I employ for writing cards in my personal life.

 
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I bake. And once our desk is done, ill be painting ceramics again. And im gonna sign up for a pottery class. 

 
Here's the first prototype. Spalted maple body and neck with a rosewood fretboard and mother of pearl inlays. Medium Jumbo frets. Seymour Duncan P90 pickups with vit q caps. Chrome hardware. 12" Fretboard radius with C shape neck.

I think this would look really good with a tortoise shell pickguard or solid black/white/black. 

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This looks awesome. My husband has been wanting to move into guitar building. How long did it take you to get to this point? I imagine quite awhile.

 
This looks awesome. My husband has been wanting to move into guitar building. How long did it take you to get to this point? I imagine quite awhile.
I think I spent a couple of months designing it, then my buddy spent a couple of months making jigs, building, then finishing. Then I spent a couple of days doing the electronics and setup. Start-to-finish it was probably over a year, but if we did everything back-to-back it would only be 6-8 months. But now we're all ready to go and can probably push out a guitar every two weeks or so.

 
You make bicycle frames?
Yeah, I just make onesy twosy  bikes for friends. It's been a little while, but I have a jig, oxy-acetylene torch, and a bunch of lugs (I primarily do fillet brazing, but I can do lugs, it's just more of a pain so I don't prefer it). I'd like to get into metal sculpture at some point. Right now I'm thinking of doing a carbon steel fence for my front yard (and let it rust, I saw a cool configuration at these modern apartments downtown so I want to copy it). Too many hobos digging around my recycling bin.

Edit: this is the fence I want to clone




 
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I used to play trumpet back in school, but haven't really since.

I dabbled in writing poetry back in the day. It was terrible.

I don't listen to music as much as I used to.

Does playing the occasional video games count?

Um, I like building and fixing stuff.

I help my wife with her balloon decor business. I do all her framing and rigging.

Sometimes reading ... but it's mostly nonfiction.

Damn, I need to do more creative stuff.

 
Tbh, I gave up a lot of creative stuff when I lived in NYC because I was working such crazy hours.  Now that I'm in Indy, I kinda want to look around and see if I can start vocal lessons again.  The vocal lessons...I wanted to join a choir around here, but I def want to brush up on my sight reading and range.

I also really enjoyed doing metal sculpture, but sculpture in general has been something I really wanted to get more involved in.  Not ceramics - making pots, but ceramics like slab-sculpture?  Glasswork has also been something I'm ultra interested in...but terrified of getting glass in my lungs.

I mean, I really liked building gundams when I was younger/doing model kits, but I stopped in middle school because it def was not cool.  I really liked building that Shelby for my dad.

*Edit* Actually, because I was thinking about this, I really liked volunteering.  Like, with animals (I used to work with a therapeutic riding company and I enjoyed it).  I might make that one of the new year resolutions, to get more involved with animals again since I'm not sure I want to adopt anytime soon (I'm going to be traveling too much during the next year and it wouldn't be fair to them).

 
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I play the saxophone some

Sing at church some

Read fiction some

I suck at being creative.  I like rules and structure and typically have a hard time thinking outside of the proverbial box.

I imagine my creative side is starving for attention most of the time.  Too much design work to be done...

 
We have some more guitars coming along. I wanted to try headstocks with Lichtenberg instead of an inlay. I think they came out nicely.

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