2024 Creative Spark Newsletter, Annual Subscription

A year round companion for exploring and cultivating your creative practice!

Let's make 2024 the year we embrace, explore, and cultivate our creativity! The Creative Spark Newsletter is designed to help encourage, inspire, and motivate you to create in the pages of your sketchbook (or outside of them!) all year round.

Through thoughtfully curated prompts and ideas, a flexible and loose schedule, and gentle encouragement, we'll fuel our creative practice and see where our curiosity and interests take us. This will all happen via email so you can join from anywhere in the world! You don't have to sign up for another platform or be active on social media (unless you want to be :))

Here is an example of a prompt email and a check-in email.

I am passionate about encouraging creativity and adding more of it into our lives in a way that's easy and fun! I hope you'll join me and get creative in 2024!

THIS NEWSLETTER IS FOR:

• Anyone who has an interest in the arts and creating!
• Those of us who may be stuck in a creative rut
• Those of us who may create consistently and are open to new inspiration
• Beginners who have picked up their first sketchbook (or want to!) to seasoned hobbyists to creative professionals and everyone in between!
• Teens and adults
• Anyone who is scared of beginning or revisiting their creative journeys
• Everyone who finds joy in creating, working with our hands, minds, and hearts, making ideas tangible, and is OK with getting a little messy sometimes!

YOU'LL RECEIVE:

• Emails with prompts along with ideas, inspiration, and examples to help you interpret the prompts in your own way and spark ideas
• Check-in emails to keep you motivated and exercises to help get the creativity flowing
• Examples from our community (including you!) to keep us connected and inspired
• Access to the PDF Library with free printables you can download and use
• Access to the Resource Library where you can find a collection of videos, posts, podcasts, and more on a wide range of topics and techniques
• A snail mail and holiday card swap with our community (optional)
• I'll also be going on this journey with you! You'll be able to email me to share your ideas, work through prompts, and brainstorm if you'd like.
• Forever access to all emails and prompts, organized in a library for you to easily revisit when needed.
• A few other little surprises :)

WHAT SUPPLIES WILL YOU NEED?
I love the idea of using what we have and looking at them in a new light. You don't need to buy new supplies for this (unless you want to) and if you do need to pick up a few things, there are very affordable options. You'll receive an email with recommendations of what to use and some of my favorite supplies but all you really need is:

• A surface to create on. I suggest using a sketchbook to keep everything in one place, it's easy to carry, and it's really fun to flip through when you're done! However you can also use scratch paper bound into a book, paper on a clipboard, a canvas, etc.
• Tools to make markings with such as pens, markers, paint brushes, and mediums such as acrylic paint, watercolor, inks, etc.

2024 SCHEDULE
The first email will be sent out in January 2024.

The schedule is based on the different levels and flow of energy we have throughout the year. We'll be mixing more intensive 5 week series with less intensive months in between to keep things sustainable while still gently encouraging a continuous flow of creativity.

• Jan: Prep email to help us get ready
• Mid-Jan to Feb: 5 Week Creative Kickstart (1 prompt + 1 check-in email per week for 5 continuous weeks)
• March, April, May, June: 2 prompts + 2 check-in emails per month (1 email per week)
• July-Aug: 5 Week Summer Un-Slump (1 prompt + 1 check-in email per week for 5 continuous weeks)
• Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec: 2 prompts + 2 check-in emails per month
• Dec: Final wrap up email 

If you are a student: please email a copy of a valid 2024 ID and you will receive a refund to reflect a rate of $48/year. 

Refer a friend and you both receive $5 off your subscription! Just enter the name of the person who referred you in the provided box.

This newsletter is a unique, thoughtful, and fun gift that truly keeps on giving for an entire year! If you'd like to gift this subscription to a loved one, please select the option in the drop down menu. You will be emailed a gift certificate that can be printed out (pair it with a new sketchbook!) so you have something physical to give or you can email it to your recipient.

SUPPORTING CREATIVITY IN OUR CLASSROOMS:
5% of proceeds will be used to help fund a classroom and support arts education through DonorsChoose.org. I will let you know all about the teacher and kids we are helping once the donation has been made!