50th Piece Celebrations Plus My Accountability Partner

The Effect of Accountability Partners on Your Creative Practice

Celebrations Time Com’on

Pop a champagne and bring out the confetti.  I made it to the 50th piece in my Stitch the Sketch series, woohoo!! I challenged myself to create 52 pieces of work with stitch as a design element and I’m well on my way to completing the challenge.

It’s hard to believe I’ve come this far and I’ve got only two more to go.  When I started out, I wasn’t expecting it to be so intense, so much fun, such hard work and long nights. But in all of this, the biggest takeaway has been the confidence boost and growth.  I’m creating things now that I thought would have taken me several years of practice to be able to do.

I’ll definitely like to take a break after the 52nd piece to regroup and decide on what I want to do next. Being in a challenge has been great for me.  It has kept me focused and given me something to work on each week.

It’s a little scary to know the challenge will be ending soon.  The challenge became a safety net for me  – a treasure trove of inspiration ideas. It became a place where I could go to get an idea to work on. And you, this community, became my accountability partner. The two of you together, made me show up each day in my studio.  

The Importance of an Accountability Partner

My safety net – my endless source of creative inspiration  – will soon be gone with the challenge. But you, my accountability partner, will continue to be here with me.

You guys in this community have been very supportive, you’ve been my cheerleaders and I knew that you were always here waiting for me to show up with a new episode of Stitch the Sketch. You were here to celebrate and to encourage me to go create some more.

Starting a creative project is hard but when you get started, it can also become hard to finish. When the novelty wears off, which can happen real fast, (for creative people), you need something to keep you going back there to work on it.  That’s when an accountability partner becomes helpful.

Whether your accountability partner is an individual or group, or professional organization, they help keep your focus on creating and finishing, so you’ll have something to show as evidence of your efforts. There were many times when I encountered challenges along the way.  Like the time when I had trouble with my sewing machine or when I fell ill, or when my studio got flooded.  

Yes, there were many reasons for me to have stopped along the way but your friendship and partnership pushed me over the hump.  Thank you.

Here’s why everyone must have an accountability partner as I had you.

Benefits of Having An Accountability Partner

An accountability partner:

• Supports Your Progress
• Helps you Stay Focused
• Ensures You’re Being Consistently Creative
• Makes You Gain Confidence
• Keeps You on Track with Your Goals
• Becomes a Sounding Board for You
• Encourages You

If you don’t have a friend, or community serving as your accountability partner, find one now. A good accountability partner will help you achieve more than you’re doing now. This here is a great supportive community.  Share your projects and creative struggles with us and you’ll get support for them just as I did for mine. We’ll encourage you and celebrate you.

In the meantime for the month of March, I’ll be the Resident Artist on a blog called … “And Then We Set it on Fire“. I know I said I was taking a break.  Yes, I did say that.  But I’m going to be the resident artist just for one month. The blog is a techniques based blog.  Most of the techniques featured are surface design techniques.

To my knowledge, no one has done anything with thread sketching or drawing with thread on the blog before. It’s intimidating although somewhat good to be the first. I’m really excited to share my techniques with The Fire blog community and to help them be their creative best. 

Here’s the video for this week.

50th Piece Celebrations

Last week, I told you I was going to recreate the piece I made and add a little circle to the upper right corner. Just to satisfy my inner critic.  I got to do it in the 50th piece.  It is the small orange circle at the top.  It didn’t quite appear on the right-hand-side.  But it made it to the top. You can compare this week’s piece and last week’s.

Thanks guys for being my accountability partner.  I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to recreate another piece just to add a small circle to the top if I hadn’t promised you I’ll do it. And if I didn’t know you were expecting me to.  You guys are the best.

Warmest Regards,

 

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