Teeny Tiny Wins
Finding joy in small masterpieces and blending new skills with creative habits.
Behind the Page
Slow day back today — I’m still pretty exhausted after yesterday’s medical stuff, so I went with something pretty simple for today.
I painted the background on a gel plate — this background was inspired by this post about Teeny Tiny Masterpieces by
.
Instead of a word for 2025, I decided that I’m going to level up my drawing/sketching/illustration skills. I’m doing this digitally (it’s perfect for headache days, nights on the couch, and art on the go) in Procreate with the Apple Pencil.
One of the things I decided was that I needed someone to tell me what to do in order to successfully kick off this journey (I’ll talk in an upcoming newsletter about how I’m making this new habit work with the rest of my creative practice). So I decided to dive into Wendy’s January challenge and do ten minutes of drawing each day this month.
Technique of the Day
One of the best ways, for me personally, to reinforce new things I’m learning, is to turn around and take the skill or technique I just learned, and duplicate it in a form I’m a little more comfortable with. This really helps me bridge the gap between “shiny new thing” and “everything else I use on a regular basis”. Additionally—while doing it, I also get a ton more ideas for how to incorporate this stuff in even more ways.
So today, I took the idea from Wendy’s post and translated it into Daily Pages. If you’d like to see what my digital drawing looked like, check out the footnote below.1
I started out taking some washi tape, and masking off my surface, just like in the challenge and added some paint to my gel plate. The resulting print was very similar to the marked off page in the sketch challenge. I had a cute background with a bunch of little squares to create my page around.
I added stickers, stamps, and just had a fun time with the stuff I had lying around my desk. I love this idea of little masterpieces, and it’s definitely something I’ll be returning to throughout the year in my Daily Pages notebooks.
How It’s Made
Supply List
Paint — Blick
Gel Printing Supplies
Stickers — Brandi Kincaid
Stamp — Ali Edwards
Ink — StazOn
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Tips & Creative Wisdom
Translate New Skills Into Familiar Practices
Taking a new skill/technique/idea and recreating it in a medium you’re already comfortable with is a great way to make it stick. This can be especially true if you’re taking a class or workshop where the finish project is not necessarily your style, but you want to learn the skills. Whether it’s a digital drawing translated into a gel print or a long-form journaling prompt adapted for your Daily Pages, trying this out helps bridge the gap between experimentation and routine.
Pro Tip: When you try a new technique, ask yourself, “How can I use this in Daily Pages/my creative practice?” The number of answer might surprise you.
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