Do you ever feel like being creative, but are too tired or wired to start from scratch? Then you force yourself and you end up hating what you’ve done? The flow just isn’t there? I like to be prepared for those moments, because I hate hating my creations. There are no mistakes in art I keep telling my daughter, but tired and wired (at least for me) only strengthens my inner critic.

When I sit at my art desk and am not sure where to start, I like to play with stamps and create some custom artwork. Below I used Dina Wakley’s bird stamps and Dyan Reaveley’s leaf border stamps. I added branches with Golden acrylic ink in Quinacridone / Nickel Azo Gold #2301, one of my all-time favourite colours. I got a lot of oohs and ahhs as I was working on it, but I promise you it’s really quite simple to do! And man, do I love these birds!