10 Creative Daily Practices to Make Your Own 

The creative spirit and creativity are not reserved for special moments or formal art-making; it can be nurtured every day through intentional, small practices. 

For makers, artists, and craft lovers, cultivating every day creativity transforms ordinary routines into sources of inspiration and joy. 

In this second part of the series on creativity in daily life, we explore ten practical practices to help you see life through a creative lens, while connecting these practices to inspiration, restoration, and community. 

So how will you make these creative practices your own? Each of these ideas can be adapted and transformed into actions that bring you creative joy each day.

1. Creative Morning Observation

Begin your day with five minutes of mindful observation, noticing colours, shapes, sounds, and textures around you. 

This simple ritual encourages noticing what often goes unseen and demonstrates how every day creativity emerges through attention. 

Observing the morning light on rooftops, dew on grass, or the movement of birds can spark new ideas for projects or journaling. 

Just as rest is important for creativity, so too stillness and mindful attention provide fertile ground for inspiration.

2. Intentional Sketching

Keep a small notebook or sketchbook to capture fleeting ideas, patterns, or moments from your surroundings. 

Intentional sketching turns ordinary sights into exercises in imagination, showing how every day creativity grows through playful documentation. 

Sketching a favourite street, view, plant, or café corner cultivates visual literacy and personal expression. 

The sketch itself can be anything from exploring abstract compositions to a rapid two minute response, a continuous line exploration to a colour play sketch. The scope is anything that you want to explore.

3. Creative Sensory Exploration

Engage one of your senses deliberately each day—smell, taste, touch, or sound—then record your impressions in a journal or sketch. 

This exercise reminds us how every day creativity involves noticing subtleties that enrich life and inform creative work. 

For instance, exploring different herbs in the kitchen or listening to rain on rooftops can inspire patterns, textures, or narratives. 

Combined with morning observation, sensory exploration deepens engagement with surroundings.

7. Reflection and Journaling

At the end of each day, reflect on your experiences and note moments that surprised, inspired, or delighted you. 

Reflection demonstrates how every day creativity grows through conscious review, connecting experience with insight and future ideas. 

Journaling can include sketches, short stories, or observations, offering a space for playful exploration. 

This need only be done in a few moments. Evenings are busy times for many of us who run households as well as everything else. 

But allowing yourself to take a few moments to reflect and be mindful about your creativity can give a lovely sense of being present with your creativity. It can be done on the compute home, a couple moments taken in the garden or on the deck, while getting your dinner or clearing away. 

8. Collaborative Creative Projects

Engage in small collaborative creative projects with friends, family, or community groups.

These shared activities highlight how every day creativity thrives in social spaces, combining ideas, skills, and perspectives in exciting ways.

Whether arranging a local exhibition, creating a shared journal, or exploring group storytelling, collaboration fosters innovation and connection.

This can also lead to collaborating with a charity that aligns with your ethical values and creative intentions.

9. Play with Constraints

Set small limits on time, materials, or subject matter for a project to ignite ingenuity.

Constraints demonstrate how every day creativity emerges from challenge, encouraging resourcefulness and problem-solving. 

Limiting yourself to a single colour or a short time frame often sparks surprising and innovative results. 

We all have constraints in one form or another, and sometimes we feel limited by them. To shift this balance, embrace some set constraints to create within.

This can lead to a very liberating sense of being able to make in any environment.

10. Mindful Observation of the Ordinary

Spend intentional moments noticing routine objects, every day routines, or familiar environments.

Mindful observation shows how every day creativity thrives when attention is given to what might otherwise be overlooked.

Sketching a teacup, recording the rhythm of a commute, or noting shadow patterns can generate inspiration for future projects.

Western Australian artist Philippa Nikulinsky creates stunning works based on noticing the every day details of flora and fauna in her detailed paintings that highlight the immense beauty of nature.

While artists like Jeffrey Smart have had huge success with focusing on the ordinary of urban life. It can be around celebrating the everyday to questioning what is taken for granted and everything in between.

Integrating Practices into Daily Life

These ten small daily practices demonstrate how every day creativity is not a distant ideal, but an accessible part of life when approached with curiosity and intention.

By combining observation, play, journaling, collaboration, and reflection, makers and artists can weave creativity seamlessly into ordinary routines.

Bringing more creativity into daily life routines allows us to live our lives with more purpose, more connection to what lights us up.

As much as we’d love to, we can’t go to workshops and classes every day, nor to exhibitions and open studios. But we can bring into each day creative acts that enrich our lives, giving us joy and allowing us to find our own paths to creative fulfilment.