Time, or rather lack of it is one of the main obstacles to creating/crafting/DIY mentioned by readers who completed our Reader Survey last month. Most of them also indicated that creating gives them:
- a sense of accomplishment
- an enjoyable way to spend time, and
- an important way to de-stress.
We hear ya! With all of life’s commitments (work, family, kids) there’s often little time left to create something, either for ourselves or for someone else. However, in addition to being a seemingly luxurious pastime, creating and taking part in favourite hobbies is important for our mental health and well-being. Studies have shown that such activities can lower the odds of cognitive impairment and help us retain our spatial ability performance as we age, give us a sense of personal growth, development of physical and cognitive skills, and reduced agony and stress, and helps to increase mood even for those with severe mental illness.
With so many positive benefits, expressing our creative side really should be a priority in our lives.
So we’ve been thinking recently of how we can help you find the time to create. Also, while we love making new projects and sharing them with you we feel like there’s something important missing: being better able to interact and communicate with you, our valued readers.
So we thought we’d try something new! We’ve come up with the “Simple Daily DIY” challenge. Every three days over a 15 day period starting June 1st, we are going to make something new together. We are going to make it super easy for everyone to take just 10 minutes each day to make something beautiful for yourself, your home, or a gift for someone else.
Not sure it can be done? Well we’re hoping to have you covered. Over the past weeks we’ve been scrounging the internet looking for the best and most beautiful projects that can be accomplished in under 30 minutes: that’s just 10 minutes a day over three days. And to make sure that we can achieve this goal we’ve tested each of the projects out ourselves.
How will the challenge work?
Starting on June 1 every three days we will send you an email for an idea to use in a 30 minute or less project. It could be a material you have on hand (i.e. a piece of paper, coffee filters) or a technique for creating (i.e. painting, gluing) or even an end-product such as a centerpiece for your table. The goal is to make something in just 30 minutes over the three days (so that’s 10 minutes a day) using the materials that you already have available to you.
It’s your choice whether you want to go freestyle, make a project that you’ve had on your to-do list for a while, or follow-along with our step-by-step instruction broken down to be doable in just 10 minutes over each day. And if you want to do something completely different, go ahead! We just want to get creative and do so together.
That’s the best part! We’ll all be doing it together and sharing our creations along the way using the #SimpleDailyDIY in our amazing and supportive Facebook group and Instagram community.
We really hope you’ll enjoy the challenge so that we can create together and get to know you better. Through this challenge we hope you’ll give yourself just 10 minutes each day to create something new, to unwind to feel productive and happier.
To join the challenge and receive the Welcome Kit and challenge emails just enter your email address here.
You can also find more information on the challenge here and join our Facebook community here.
This challenge is done but you can see the simple daily DIY recap here.
We are so excited and looking forward to creating with you.