So Christmas came and went again, and while I’m not entirely sure about it, I do believe I complained at some point about how I hate shopping for gifts and how it stresses me out. Somehow, I managed to a fine job of it this year and had ideas for everyone by around Thanksgiving. I still haven’t received the gift I ordered for my sister’s boyfriend yet, but given the estimated delivery date of December 13th to December 31st, I still have some time to wait.

I’m not going to go into what I got people in this post, and I’ll really only cover one thing I got for Ellie later this week. Additionally, look for my yearly wrap up to come later this week as well. Today, I want to talk about one of the gifts I received which is shockingly simple, yet exactly what I didn’t realize I wanted.

Ellie got me this:

For those creative types out there who have lost the time or energy to be creative to their fullest capacity, I highly recommend getting this book for yourself and to use it as a jumpstart. Why, you might ask? Because the book gives you the topic to doodle, and even starts the picture for you. Then, you can take it in any direction that suits your fancy. All you need is a decent pen and some time to kick back and relax. In about thirty minutes, I spit out these gems:

The heading for this page said something about a copycat and the first image was of a young tiger followed by a bunch of these white cats. There really wasn’t any direction on where to take it and since I’ve been on a dragon drawing kick lately, I decided the cat needed to be a fierce dragon. I plan on replicating Marley on one of the remaining cats. Maybe I’ll make one a superhero as well. The boundaries of the page are the limit!

I apparently creeped out the girlfriend by sending her the above pic. She thinks, for some reason, that baby-dolls shouldn’t be dressed up in Daisy Dukes. I don’t think it’s creepy at all. At least she’s wearing clothes. And she’s owning the heals like a Slavic woman.

Ellie also picked up one of these kind of books for herself, but her’s is geared more towards kids. The problem with Ellie’s, though it’s still usable, is that a lot of the pictures are very dark. Keep that in mind if you grab one for yourself, dark pictures are hard to draw over.

On a related note, I had seen a similar book while at Anthropologie with Ellie, except instead of drawing, it’s 642 things to write about. It’s a workbook with space to write about all 642 writing prompts. While downtown yesterday, I broke down and picked up a copy of it for myself. I think, throughout the years, I’m going to work my way through these books and post the results here. Maybe they’ll inspire you as well.