One of the things that I really think is important in life is to find those little things that make your every day a bit more special and to indulge in them. One of those little things for me is having fresh flowers in my home. Yes, there are good reasons to get house plants instead. Yes fresh flowers could be seen as a waste of money. However, I enjoy the whole experience of going out to find the right flowers for the week, arranging them in empty wine bottles and setting them up throughout my house. I also enjoy seeing and smelling them whenever I enter certain rooms. To me, this experience is worth the cost.

Of course, not everyone wants fresh flowers in their home. Some people would rather decorate with flowers in other ways through putting up floral wall paper or having flowery furniture. And for other people, flowers just don’t do anything at all. I’m not saying that having flowers in your home is the way to enjoy life. What I’m saying is that you should ask yourself what your equivalent is of the every day joy that flowers are for me and you should aim to bring that into your life on a regular basis. In the end, it is these little things that brighten our days that add up to a life worth living.

Tags: creativity, decor, floral, flowers, fresh flowers, home, Interior Design, life

I’ve been thinking a lot about art lately and about what draws me to different types of art. There are many different mediums that I like and many different styles of art work that appeal to me but I’ve been trying to see if there is a common theme in what I find myself most attracted to. Although it doesn’t hold true all of the time, I have found that I particularly like artwork that depicts people.

I suppose that people in general really fascinate me. I am interested by human emotions and human psychology and human relationships. The artwork that I’m drawn to is artwork that manages to capture those human things in images and to convey them to me somehow without words. (An example that is at the forefront of my mind right now is the work of Kenney Mencher, a San Francisco artist who is showing his stuff in the city this week.)

I am certainly attracted to other types of art at times. Mobile phone art was an example I talked about here recently. And yet, even with that, I tend to be interested in the statement the art makes about humans. I relate object art and landscape art back to the people who aren’t in the image. Is that true for you as well? Do you create stories about art that include people or is there something else in art that draws you in?

Tags: art, creativity, kathryn vercillo, paintings, people

I really adore creative things of all kinds and particularly love learning about how technology has advanced the ability of individuals to be more creative. For example, I love that there are so many people now making their own videos thanks to the popularity of YouTube – it’s a form of creative expression that the average person wasn’t engagin in twenty years ago and I think it’s great.

Another thing that I think is great is the availability of online storefronts like Zazzle. These are places where you can upload your own creative designs and easily turn them into T-shirts and coffee mugs and other items for use or for sale. This allows people to be flexible in their creativity and also to be productive with it.

I really like Zazzle and the sites that are like it so I’ve been trying to spread the word about it. I wrote a piece about Zazzle on this blog not that long ago. And I also answered a Yahoo! Answers questions about Zazzle which covered the basics of what it is and how useful it is. That answer was chosen as a best answer for the question.

Tags: art, creativity, design, kathryn vercillo, online design, questions, store, Yahoo Answers, zazzle

I am interested by almost all types of art. I’m just as happy to browse through a small independent gallery as a huge art museum, to attend a dance event or a live music performance, to fingerpaint or take a sewing class. I believe that exposing yourself to art of all kinds broadens your perspective on life and enhances your creativity.

But there are some types of art that capture my attention more so than others, of course. Found art is one of those types of art, as I’ve mentioned here on the blog before. And another is art that is combined with technology. One such type of art is mobile phone art.

There are a lot of different types of mobile phone art out there. People actually take recycled mobile phones and use them in sculptures and found art pieces, creating mobiles and structures that are visually stunning despite the ordinary-ness of the mobile phone. Other people use the phone as the means to make art, creating interactive audio and visual performances from the phone or filming videos on the phone and turning those into art.

I find this all to be really interesting. We use our phones every day but most of us don’t think twice about them in terms of their potential for creativity. As mobile phones get more and more advanced, that potential just opens up even wider. I think it’s inspiring … it makes me look at my own cell phone in a whole new light!

Tags: art, cell phones, creativity, found art, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, mobile phone art, mobile phones, phones, recycled art, tech art, Technology

I am head over heels in love with San Francisco. I am passionate about the city where I live. I have known since before I first came here that this was the place where I was going to make my life and create my world. When I tell people that I have found “the one” and they learn that I am talking about a city, they have one of two reactions.

The first reaction comes from those people who have also had this experience, often from people who also live in San Francisco and feel this same way about the city. They get this knowing look in their eyes and we don’t have to say anything more about it because the understanding is just there. It’s the same as when you find “the one” person that you want to love forever and you tell that to someone else who has had that experience. You both just relate to each other through that common shared human experience.

And then there is the other reaction which comes from those people who have not found the city that resonates for them like San Francisco does for me. It is an amused reaction or a befuddled reaction. It comes along with statements like, “yeah but it’s so expensive in San Francisco” or questions like, “don’t you think you’ll want to try out other cities someday?”

To someone who has truly fallen in love with a place, these reactions just seem ridiculous. Yes, the rent is expensive and there are a dozen other things that aren’t great about San Francisco but don’t you see that I love everything about her despite some flaws? And why would I look for something else when I feel so incredibly absolutely safe and at home here in this city.

Not everyone gets to find “the one” – in romance or in a hometown. But nobody should ever stop looking because if you do find it, your whole life is altered. This happened to me with San Francisco. I got the chance to write about it a bit for a collaborative photo project that I was a part of here recently. The project is called I Live Here: SF and it’s photos of the people who live here and mostly love it here. Check it out to see the cool creative people that live in this city, the collaboration of those people’s words with the photographer’s pictures and the passion that exists when people truly do fall in love with the place where they live.

Tags: cities, creativity, i live here sf, i love sf, kathryn vercillo, love, photography, projects, San Francisco

I read a lot of books about creativity. I read a lot of memoirs by artists and writers. And I know a lot of people who make art their living, their way of life or an important hobby that they would never let go. What all of this intake of information about art has taught me is that most creative people have blocks that they have to deal with when it comes to their creativity. And like most of our issues in life, those blocks were often built during childhood.

Spend any significant amount of time with children and you will see that they are naturally imaginative. It isn’t just in the way that they play – although it’s clear there with their fantasy games and make-believe. It is in the way that they approach life, with the curiosity and wonder that we associate with being a kid. It is in the way that they solve problems and in the way that they negotiate friendships.

Adult artists know that they can learn a lot from kids about all of these things because kids don’t just ‘think outside of the box’. Kids don’t even see the box. Or they see the box but what they see is a potential fort or ship or space for drawing on.

Unfortunately, it happens all too quickly that kids are taught that the box is a box. They are limited by life and education and experience. Their imaginations begin to dwindle. This happens as a part of life. But it also happens directly as a result of the failure of parents and teachers to encourage the ‘not-just-a-box’ thinking that kids naturally have.

I’ve written an article today with 20 tips for encouraging your children’s creativity. I hope that you will read it and add to it because I think that one of the most important things that a parent can do is to encourage kids to continue to be creative. It isn’t about being artistic, although that’s a nice side benefit, but rather about being creative in life so that it always seems that problems have solutions even when they aren’t obvious to them. It’s about celebrating life and the wonder that it holds. These are things we all need more of and things that we shouldn’t take from our kids earlier than life gives it to them.

Tags: arts, creative home, creativity, expression, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, kids, Parenting

Found art is a topic that I come back to again and again because it is something that I really love. There are so many reasons that I find found art to be fascinating and important and worth writing about.

A look at the bare bones of the reasons that I enjoy found art includes:

• The creativity always impresses me. I love that people can take a look at a series of seemlingly unrelated objects and then put them together in an artstic piece and make them suddenly make sense together.
• It’s green. Ultimately found art is a green art because it involves the recylcing and repurposing of objects that would likely otherwise have ended up in the landfill and which instead are used to create art. Admittedly, some artists and greener than others depending on the other materials they use but it’s basically an eco-friendly art most of the time.
• There is so much variety in this area of art. Because people are using found materials from all regions and walks of life, the pieces often differ so much from one another even in the gallery of a single artist. I love this variety.
• It’s accessible. Anyone can get into the work of doing found art because it’s all about taking what’s already around you and turning it into whatever you think is beautiful.

In the spirit of researching and enjoying found art, I’ve written an article highlighting 8 Welding Artists. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Tags: art, creativity, found art, green, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, recycling, welding art

I had a really great time yesterday having my picture taken for a cool photo project that’s happening in San Francisco. I’ll be telling you more about that next week but if you’re interested in what it might be then you should check out the website I Live Here: SF which is the platform for the project.

What I want to talk about now is digital cameras. The photographer who came over is a very cool woman who is one of those people that you can tell is just totally herself. And just one simple example of this is that she uses a basic digital camera that isn’t some big fancy schmancy thing.

During the photo shoot, her batteries went dead. When my battery goes dead on my fancy camera, I have to stop taking pictures, take out the battery, recharge it for several hours and then (if I’m lucky) resume what I’m doing. She just popped out her AA batteries, put in new ones and kept on shooting. There’s something to be said for the convenience of that.

Sometimes we don’t need to get the fanciest new gadget out there to create our art work. Sometimes it makes a whole lot more sense to get the item that is right for us regardless of what other people are using or what others think of what we use.

I wrote an article today comparing 7 different 5 MP Cameras. What you can see just from this brief article is that there’s a big difference in the cameras that are out there even when you’re looking at the same megapixel range. There are camera phones, cute cameras, cameras with multiple shooting modes, cameras with cool zoom features … so what matters isn’t that you get the camera with the right megapixels but rather that you get the camera you want.

Tags: 5mp camera, art, cameras, choosing a camera, creativity, design, digital camera, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, photography

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of things that I love about living in San Francisco. It’s hard to say what I like “best” about the city. But I definitely know that one of the things that I really treasure about living here is the fact that I am surrounded by really creative people.

San Francisco is anything but a boring place and the people who live here are the opposite of dull. People here live fully. They create regularly. They embody self-expression in everything from the way that they dress to the events that they attend to the discussions they have over brunch in the Castro.

And many, many, many of them work either full-time or part-time in creative careers and hobbies. Often, this is linked with the DIY movement. For example, there are tons of San Francisco based artists on Etsy, the site where you can sell your DIY crafts of all kinds in really cool little storefronts online.

I feel lucky to live in a place where creativity is valued by so many people. It is my belief that the creative lifestyle is the only one really worth living. However, living it can be hard sometimes because of the pressures of real life. Living in San Francisco, where there is so much support for creativity, makes it so much easier to stay on that path.

Tags: art, artists, creativity, etsy, kathryn vercillo, San Francisco, san francisco is sexy

One of the things that has become really important in my life in the past year or so is the time that I give myself in the morning to begin the day on the right foot. I have found that if I just jump out of bed and start my day, I am stressed out and miserable before noon. In contrast, if I take time for myself in the morning to get my brain in a positive frame of mind, then I tend to have much happier and more productive days.

I’m lucky because I freelance and work for myself so I have a schedule that allows me to take as much time as I need each morning. I realize that other people don’t have that luxury. But I do believe that everyone can take at least a little bit of time each day to start things off right. My tips for doing that have just been published in the article titled How to Start Every Day Off on the Right Foot.

I do many, many different things each morning to bring myself to a place of peace. I journal every day including keeping a separate journal for the things that I feel thankful for that day. I spend time reading inspirational things; (right now I’m reading a book on the Tibetan approach to positive thinking). I work on creative projects like mini-collages or scrapbooks.

But basically, what this article is all about is that I take time for myself in the morning. I give myself the right to have a little bit of time alone, just for me, to create peace of mind for myself. Because really, peace of mind is one of the things that I value most in life. Don’t you?!

Tags: creativity, health, inspiration, life, living, optimism, start day off right, wellness