Stretching your Creative Boundaries
- Helen Colebrook
- Jun 6
- 4 min read
One thing I've absolutely loved doing over the last few years is finding new ways to stretch my artistic boundaries. I find it easy to get stuck in a rut and remain in my creative comfort zone unless I purposefully find ways of stretching myself.
For me, my "typical" style is quite neat, tight and detail-orientated, yet I often long for the freedom of loose expressive art-making in a more abstract style. The truth is, I feel that I need a bit of both in my creative life, but I need a little nudge to move me in the right direction sometimes.
I find great pleasure in creating collage papers, using my gelli plate, adding mark-making in chubby pencils or ink and then trying to find a way of making it all work together on my pages. Through this type of creating I learn more about what feels good to me, what colours I like seeing together, what marks I enjoy making and how my different art supplies react with each other. Even if these pages don't feel like exactly "my style", I always find something that I can take forwards into my other journal pages and creative practice.
I've learned that different styles and techniques appeal to me on different days and that each of these have a valuable place in my life. On some days I want to create pages rich in texture and layers where I can spend hours losing myself in the process. On other days I just fancy creating something simple, not messy, that maybe only uses one or two art supplies and that can be finished in a short amount of time.
I even find that I'm drawn to different colours on different days and this can change throughout the seasons too. Sometimes I love soft vintage earthy colours and on other days I want to use bright vibrant colours that bring my senses alive. For too long I tried to focus on just one style, but now I recognise that it's absolutely fine for my creations to be as varied as my feelings and that there is huge joy to be found when you just let yourself play.
One thing that I've found really valuable in stretching my creative boundaries is exposing myself to new teachers who encourage me to create pages that I would never have thought of by myself. Through this process I've learned so much about what I enjoy and equally importantly, what I don't. Each page provides a valuable source of feedback that I can take forwards in my journey of continued creative learning.
Last year I decided to sign up to Make Create Express which is a year-long mixed media programme, with new lessons released each week by a wide variety of different teachers. All of the pages above were created by following along with these lessons and are completely different from the type of journal pages that you usually see me share. It was just the type of encouragement and inspiration that I was hoping for.
I loved the whole experience so much and was absolutely thrilled when I was invited to be a guest teacher for Make Create Express 25/26 which starts in July.
The year-long programme starts off with a free online creative retreat on the 12th and 13th July 2025.
Over the weekend, you will have access to 26 lessons offered by 26 different artists. I had so much fun with this last year which is what encouraged me to sign up for the full year programme.
On the sign-up page for the free retreat, you can also find information for the year-long programme which is currently available on an early-bird offer.
If you sign up to the full year you get to keep life-long access to the lessons from the creative retreat weekend, along with receiving a new lesson each week. This gives you a total of 78 lessons throughout the year. I will be trying to keep up with the weekly lessons, but I'm sure I will fall behind at some point. However, there is never any hurry as you retain access to all of the lessons for life so they are there whenever you are ready.
I will be offering a lesson throughout the free creative retreat weekend, along with another two lessons during the year-long programme.
My classes reflect my love of finding different ways of representing nature in my journals alongside including writing somewhere in amongst it all.
The free creative retreat weekend will give you a really good feel for all of the teachers who will be providing lessons throughout Make Create Express 25/26.
I would love to have you join me in another year of stretching our creative boundaries together and perhaps learning that we are capable of more than we ever imagined. Learning as part of a community is something that I value deeply, it just brings a whole new level of fun and connection into the mix, Helen x
Oh I would love to be able to join you Helen, I notice that you have done some of the lessons already above 😉and they are absolutely brilliant! I am going to do the free weekend, but the course itself is simply too expensive for me at the moment, even at the early bird price. But it certainly looks amazing. It is so awesome that you are doing 3 courses - thanks for letting us know. At least I will be able to take in the free one 😍