Mood boards are useful ways to test out ideas, display your intentions, set goals or to showcase ideas.

Maybe you are planning a creative project, or you want to display of all of your favourite things.

You can use a notice board, piece of card, a notebook page or any space that works for you. Spend some time gathering images, photographs, colour swatches and have some fun creating your own mood board.

A junk journal or scrapbook is a space for you to explore your creativity using memories, art, collages, magazine snippets and more.

Use a book you already have, or make a new one using a cardboard cover, a collection of different folded papers and an elastic band or ribbon to hold them in place.

Fill it with doodles and favourite things or fill it with junk!

Make household objects come to life in their own collage art. Create your own unlikely story by using found words and speech bubbles. Think stop motion animation, but without the motion or the animation.

Perhaps you could make a comic strip story, or play around with the personalities of your chosen objects.

What secrets do the objects in your home hold? What would the walls say, if they could talk?

This idea incorporates natural and man made items to explore the relationship between the two.

Create your own ‘layout sculpture’ by choosing different items and having fun playing around with how they fit together.

You could use colour, size or just collect a random assortment of items. You could empty a drawer, box or bag and see what you can do with the contents.

A chosen word poem is an easy way to write creatively without the pressure of a blank page.

Find a selection of words, phrases or sentences in newspapers, books or by writing them out yourself and then play around with the order and layout. Is there a story within your chosen words?

You could pick a theme or stick to a random selection of words and see what happens.

Explore the connection between your imagination and your hands with this fun activity.

It is great to start a piece of art knowing it is absolutely not going to be perfect. Rid yourself of the pressure of perfection by using your non dominant hand, or by looking away as you make your marks.

Even better, have a friend nearby who can laugh with you as you draw silly portraits of each other.

Create your own window of opportunity. Find a picture you like the edges of and cut the middle out, to create a simple window shape.

Using your new window, play around with different backgrounds to see if you can find one that feels right.

Try contrasting images, colours, shapes or perhaps different blocks of colour. Maybe you would prefer a circular window or several windows on one page. What can you see?

See your true colours shining through with your own colour study. Make your own rainbow, or focus on a few chosen colours.

Pick your medium. Collage is great as you can spend some mindful time collecting colourful snippets before laying them together.

Mixed media projects include different materials, so if you feel like splodging some paint or scribbling in crayon, that’s fine too!

Be your own muse. Play around with the different ways you can express yourself through self portraiture.

In the age of the Selfie, make your own work of art by combining paints and photographs.

If a full self portrait feels too daunting, try focusing on your main features, or the aspects of you that make you who you are. Don’t try to create a masterpiece, just have fun with your own identity.

Not nearly as scary as it sounds, quilling is a fancy word for folding paper strips.

Start with a selection of thin strips of paper and play around with curling, rolling, folding, squeezing and bending them into different shapes.

Use your new quills to create a textured picture, or to fill an empty space like an old gift box or even a jam jar lid. You can stick them down with blobs of glue as you go. Voila!

Nature is a fantastic source of inspiration. Why not add a little artistic sparkle to your next walk?

See what interesting shapes you can make out of sticks, twigs, leaves and any other of mother nature’s treasures.

You could collect found items along the way and create your own shapes. Or you can spend your time looking for the natural beauty that already exists.

Decorate a matchbox and use it to keep a selection of miniature collages, prints, objects or other tiny pieces of art.

You could choose a theme, or keep each one different. You could tell a story, describe a recipe or use it to house your secrets.

If a matchbox is too small, why not use a gift box, shoe box or even a giant cardboard box! There are so many different things to try.