"Steps to success include having direction, remaining focused and taking action." — Lyne Marshall Inspiration and Incubation from an Artist’s Perspective

...Thou tree most fair and lovely!
By Chris Dunmire, Publisher

As you've come to anticipate, the Merry Christmas! Desktop Christmas Tree Kit is the newest printable offering from my Creative Slush Web site. The colorful "pre-lit" trees are a forest of fun to cut out and give away to family and friends, and with a quick snip of the base can be modified for scrapbooking cut-outs, gift tags, and more!

Download and print the Merry Christmas Desktop Christmas Tree »

Desktop Christmas Tree Kit Giveaway!
If you're feeling festively feisty, try winning one of my Desktop Christmas Tree Kits in the next few days. I'm giving away copies to the first 12 subscribers who send me their own original parody lyrics to the "12 Days of Christmas" song. No cheating on this one now, Google will tell me if you've been naughty or nice. Need some Chris-piration? Here's my parody lyrics to the song I've re-titled The Foodies 12 Days of Christmas.

Send your lyrics to me (the last stanza with all the days included will suffice) with the subject "12 Days of Christmas Parody Contest" by December 19, 2007.

Well, get composing!

Get to Know Me: Rockford Register Star Newspaper Interview
Sometimes, affirming your creativity means first affirming your life. Affirming your life can happen in a variety of ways, but works best when it's an action you initiate through the belief that no matter what kind of adoration or popularity other humans experience, your life, your experiences, and your creative expressions count just as much as everyone else's in the endless ethersphere of human potential.

One of my latest life-affirming actions is in the form of a newspaper interview published in the Rockford Register Star on November 13, 2007. I enjoyed an open forum to answer questions about my work and community involvement and promoted my upcoming 2008 Kid's Art & Creativity Workshops at Womanspace in Rockford based on the material in my playbooks.

I know you'll enjoy the interview, because as one of my dearest friends recently commented, "It's so you." If that means I capitalized on the the opportunity to allow my sense of humor shine and vivid imagination to run free, then yes, it IS me. It must have been that comment about the time machine...

Merry Chris-Mus!

Chris Dunmire
Creative Director and Publisher

P.S. Don't miss my BONUS Nit Wits Christmas Orangaments (orange ornaments) project fun! Orange ya glad I told you?

Creativity and Wellness
Body Blissmas and a Happy New Rear ... A New Adventure with Jill Badonsky, M.Ed.
By Jill Badonsky
When I was writing my second book I noticed something very interesting. I started taking better care of myself. I had to in order for my brain to work creatively.

Multicultural Muses
The Dancing Stones at Cornwall
By Molly Anderson-Childers
“The megaliths and standing stones of Cornwall have always been surrounded with legend and mystery, one such tale being that they can rise up and walk, dance, and sing." Huge stones that can walk, dance, and sing?

Art of the Song Creativity Corner
Should I Quit My Day Job?
By Eileen Kalinowski
This question, when it arises now, needs to be immediately replaced with the more telling one: How will I make time to write today?

Inspiration and Incubation from an Artist’s Perspective
Excerpted from the book Gleaner or Gladiator: the struggle to create © 2007 Lyne Marshall

Without inspiration, the obvious tools of creative production are of little use. Sparks that ignite creativity are found everywhere, and can arise from unrelated sources in the most unlikely places. New information triggers a desire to explore, that it will somehow link back to original ideas, that will resurface with a difference taking us closer to a desired goal. More »

Intuitive Painting as a Journey into the Unknown
By Chris Zydel
In our day to day lives we like to think that we know what is going on, but in actual fact we live steeped in a world of mystery.

Orangaments Project Fun: Full of Vitamin "C" for Creativity!
By Chris Dunmire
C what happens when the blossoms on the Nit Wits Orangaments Tree get a little fruity. Print and color the Nit Wits comic AND construct your very own paper model "Merry Citrus! Desktop Orangaments Tree."