With the Library’s ART-ober Challenge underway, I decided to play around in Creativebug this week, to explore this Library eResource!
Creativebug was just added to our library resources this May, so it is still fairly new. You can create an account with your library card and have unlimited access to online classes, multi-chapter courses, and techniques.
Creativebug content focuses on arts and crafts – with instructional videos on drawing and watercolor, as well as knitting, sewing, crochet, jewelry making, and food/home. You can browse by category, or search for specific interests or instructors. There are classes for all ages – from adult professional to projects to do with kids.
Click on a class to learn more about it – see a description, what materials are needed, notes, PDF downloads, and transcripts, as well as discussion and galleries of input from other students. Looking at the gallery of member projects done in the Crocheted Beanbag Frog with Lily Pads course definitely has me interested in grabbing my crochet hooks! If you are interested in a class but not ready to do it yet, you can add it to a watchlist for later – a feature I really take advantage of!
Some classes are short, and some have multiple parts or chapters. You can spend hours with an entire project or series of projects to work on, or get a 2-minute tutorial on a specific technique or tool – like how to pick-up stitches along a curved edge in knitting, or how to use a bone tool. You can learn how to master chocolate making at home, make paper pinwheels, do sashiko stitching, or improve your portrait drawing skills – the choices are plentiful.
There is also a “Daily Practice” collection with nearly 50 courses all emphasizing turning art/crafting into a regular habit – make a card a day, start a gratitude journal, do a daily practice of color meditation, or, take up the Inktober Daily Challenge and do 31 days of Drawing and Painting with ink in the month of October.
I grabbed some leaves on my walk recently and used them for inspiration to do some of these chapters and warm-up for ART-ober, and had a lot of fun! Though I still struggle with watercolors… should have just made the leaf green, instead of trying to get fancy with the browning spots.
Grab your library card number and go to Creativebug to check it out for yourself! Look under the “Research” tab on poudrelibraries.org – either click or scroll down to the C’s, or you can find it in the Arts, Music and Theater category. And for more information on ART-ober, see our previous blog!