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We are so thrilled to have Kelli Stuart sharing her new project with us today. Kelli blogged here at 5 Minutes for Mom from 2009 through 2012, and we were beyond excited to introduce you to her first novel in June. Now, she’s got another fabulous announcement…
There’s a fascinating movement happening right now, and it’s run entirely by women.
Open up Instagram and scroll through your feed, and you will likely be greeted by photo after photo of beauty. Women are capturing life in unique ways, but that’s not really new – we’ve been doing that for a long time.
No, the interesting thing about this movement is that it’s showcasing the artistry of life in ways that are entirely fresh. Women, particularly those with a creative bent, are blending life and art in such a way that those of us watching can’t stop staring.
We want to see more.
Yes, there’s something interesting happening right now. It’s a Renaissance of sorts, an artistic movement of creative women, many of them mothers, and it’s fueled by the power of online social media.
A few years ago, a friend and I had an idea. What if we pulled together a group of creative women for a long weekend and just offered space to create? There would be no agenda, no timetable to fill. We simply wanted to give these women space to spread their creative wings.
We convened in the hills of northern California at a lake house that hummed with creative inspiration. We were writers, photographers, teachers, and play writes, and we had one thing more in common: we were all mothers.
Creativity and motherhood are funny bedfellows. They don’t always fit neatly together. Motherhood steals away at the cracks of time in which creativity would normally flow, and yet there’s something oddly inspiring about raising children. The world is suddenly ripe with imagination, and what is creativity without a bit of imaginative play?
Our little band of creatives grew over the course of a few years, and something quite fascinating happened in all of us – we found joy in our art again.
The photographers tried new tricks with angles and editing. The writers finished books, and expanded their online reach.
Plays were written, books read, good food eaten, and confidence grew. We found ourselves embracing the pieces of us that had been long tucked away beneath the mound of motherhood.
After five years of annual gatherings, we began to dream bigger. How could we bottle this precious time and give it away to other moms? How could we take all we’d learned and offer it to creative women who were trying to fit motherhood and art together?
We wrote a book.
Life Creative: Inspiration for Today’s Renaissance Mom is the story of creative women – creative mothers – who are blending life and art together into something beautiful.
The book doesn’t tell one story, but rather many stories of women who have wondered what on earth God was thinking when He made them creative, and then gave them children. It’s the stories of women like Lisa Leonard, Angie Smith, Ellie Holcomb, Maggie Whitley, Miquillyn Smith, Melissa Michaels, Danielle Smith, and so many more.
It acknowledges the years when art has to be put aside so that we can focus on the children. We call those the Dark Ages.
And it shows the path toward a new day – a day when the children get a little older and space frees up in which to dive back into creativity.
Life Creative is a celebration of creativity and motherhood, and the way that the two work messily together to produce something fantastic.
It is the stories of writers and bakers, of painters and photographers. It’s the stories of home decorators and handmade artisans. Life Creative isn’t one story, it’s thousands of stories. It might even be your story.
We would love for you to join in our Renaissance!
Life Creative: Inspiration for Today’s Renaissance Mom is now available for purchase. And if you get your copy by the end of September, we’d like to offer you a free gift: 5 Steps to Turn Your Creative Hobby Into a Thriving Business is a short pdf filled with practical tips on how to take your creative hobby to the next level.
For more information on Life Creative: Inspiration for Today’s Renaissance Mom, visit our website.
We’d also love to have you join the developing community on Instagram where we daily celebrate the creativity of moms around the world.
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