10+ Fun Art Activities For When You Need Inspiration | Boredom Buster Ideas
Hello Archer & Olive family!
It’s Icy of Eye Sea Studio here, one of the Design Team members!
Have you ever gone through a creative block?
Where you just want to create something but don’t know what?
Or are you just simply… Bored?
Because I have prepared 10+ ideas on what you can do!
Here are art focused boredom buster ideas:
- Floral border doodles
- Simple hand lettering
- Rainbow page
- Colorful hearts page
- Coloring page
- Sticker page
- Washi swatch page
- Collage page
- Draw the last thing you ate
- Simple watercolor florals
- Repurpose a box
Materials Needed
For this blog post, I will be using:
- A5 notebook
- Acrylograph pens
- Calliograph pens
- Washi tapes
- Stickers
- Stationery
- Coloring page
- Watercolor
- An old shoebox/Archer & Olive box
I know there are quite a lot of things to gather but feel free to use whatever you have at home! I also highly recommend repurposing some old art materials like scrap paper!
Floral Border Doodles
When I consulted with the Archer & Olive Facebook community, one of the most popular things people do when bored is drawing flowers. And there were even some that requested to do floral borders.
Floral doodles are something that I love incorporating into my bullet journal. Botanical drawings elevate the beauty of any art project!
I know how intimidating drawing flowers can be, and if you asked me five years ago if I knew how to draw flowers, I would have probably laughed and left. But because I am so intrigued and mesmerized by floral forms, I began drawing more often. And after a while, my botanical illustrations have and continue to improve! If I can do it, you can too!
I’ve started with a simple floral daisy form which consists of a circle in the center and five petals surrounding it. And the leaf shapes are basically elongated ovals with pointed ends. I started off with a pencil, so that way I can easily erase parts that I want to change. And once I am happy with how my floral borders look, I finalize with a pen.
You can build up from this by adding more details to the botanical doodles like shading, use different types of flowers and leaves, coloring your drawing, and the creative possibilities are endless!
Simple Hand Lettering
Hand lettering is something that is a common creative activity in the Archer & Olive Facebook community, and I personally love it too! I have been fascinated by letterforms and the different ways a single letter can be styled and decorated.
Like drawing, I used to feel very intimidated by the idea of hand lettering but I absolutely think that anyone can make letters beautiful!
For this blog post, we will hand letter the word that first pops into our head! I have decided to go with a style I like to call “bubble lettering” simply because the letters look like bubbles or balloons. The way I do this is I write the letter and draw around it. As with floral doodles, I start with pencil which makes it easy for me to modify, and then finalize with a pen or marker. I also like thickening the outlines so the letters look bolder and stand out more.
To take your lettering practice further, you can add serifs, or a shadow effect.
Rainbow Page
Are you obsessed with rainbows like I am?
Grab your markers or pens that represent the colors of the rainbow! I used the broad tips of my Calliograph pens for this one.
A fun idea to mix things up for your rainbow page is to get different shades of the colors of the rainbow! How cool would that be!
I personally have used rainbow themes in my bullet journal because they are just so colorful, vibrant and happy! You can build up on your rainbow page by writing your favorite quote in the middle of the page, or add floral drawings!
Colorful Hearts Page
I have always wanted to do a nice pen swatch page but I also want to do something different and fun. So for this colorful swatch page, I thought maybe I could draw hearts and pick an Acrylograph pen at random!
If you want to do something else, you can use different geometric shapes instead of just hearts.
Coloring Page
I love a nice coloring page! It is a nice and simple way to unwind and have a chance to be mindful.
I have used one of the coloring pages from the Archer & Olive March 2022 Subscription Box. However, feel free to use any coloring book you have at home, print a coloring page, or draw something and color it in!
Sticker Page
When I was a kid I used to collect a lot of stickers, and I would stick them in a sticker album. So I thought it would be fun to do a sticker page for this blog post!
I’ve got stickers from the Archer & Olive March 2022 Subscription Box. Firstly, I lay them all out on the page just to make sure it looks symmetrically balanced. Again, your page does not have to be exactly like mine, and feel free to put more stickers on yours! I personally like my stickers with quite a bit of space in between them. And also, if you’re feeling very creative, you can use a wide range of stickers!
Washi Swatch Page
Since we have already swatched our pens, I thought it would also be fun to swatch washi tapes!
I have not really been into washi tapes but since being on the Archer & Olive Design Team, I have Jerica of @jericaplans to blame for my latest addiction!
Swatching washi tapes may be strange because we can already see the designs on the rolls of tape, however, I think it is good to see how they actually look when you stick them on the paper.
As you can see, I swatched almost all of my Archer & Olive washi tapes and it’s so good to see different washi designs next to each other!
Collage Page
Don’t you just love mixing stationery, stickers and washi tapes into a collage? Because I sure do!
I have the notepad, stickers and washi tapes from the Archer & Olive March 2022 Subscription Box. The past Sub Boxes and Monthly Theme Boxes have so many goodies that you can make into a collage! But then again, feel free to use materials you already have at home! I personally reuse kraft paper from online shopping packages and also pages from magazines that are no longer in use.
Draw The Last Thing You Ate
I love fun random doodle prompts! So for this blog post, we’ll be drawing the last thing we have eaten. And mine happened to be a fruit salad. I couldn’t remember the last exact fruit so I decided to do all three fruits that were in it.
A fun thing you can do is you can doodle the ingredients of the food you ate if applicable! This could even evolve into a recipe page!
Simple Watercolor Florals
Using watercolor is something that I’ve been wanting to practice more lately. I know it can be intimidating to learn how to use a new creative medium, but once you get to know to control the color and amount of water, you’re all set!
Sarah of @essjay_florals does a lot of beautiful watercolor florals! Check out her work for a lot of inspiration!
Repurpose a Box
Last but definitely not least, another boredom buster idea is to repurpose a box. Perfect boxes to upcycle are the Archer & Olive boxes because they are just too pretty to throw away!
Ericka of @crafteinated cleverly repurposed the Archer & Olive Valentines 2022 box.
Those are the 11 boredom busters art focused ideas which you can do when you’re going through a creative block or simply just bored!
This blog post comes with a printable which you can find here:
In addition to that, I have also prepared a video for you to follow along with!
Don’t forget to tag us @archerandolive and @archerandolive.community so we can see your work!
Always remember that your art does not have to be perfect, and the most important thing is to have fun and let your creativity run wild!