Senior News Line: Unlocking your creativity

Creating art can be emotionally healing and freeing. Who among us can’t use a little of that nowadays? Once you get started, you’ll wonder why you didn’t begin sooner.

Here are some ideas:

Collage Wish Board: Collect pictures of things you miss and hope to have or do again. You’ll need a poster board, school glue, scissors and magazines, or print out pictures you find online.

If you hope to travel, gather travel magazines and snip out pictures of places you want to go once the ban on travel disappears. Paris? Add the Eiffel Tower. London? Add Buckingham Palace.

If you plan a garden for next summer, collect gardening magazines or look for pictures on seed catalog sites. Add in a small plan of your garden.

A collage wish board can be made for nearly any interest and topic. Mine is a mixture of all the things that didn’t happen this year: the annual music festival, square dance classes and monthly museum exhibits.

Coloring: There’s something very relaxing about taking a handful of fine-point markers and filling in the designs on a page in front of us. Search for “adult coloring books” online and print out the free pages. The topics are endless. I’m a fan of the Celtic knots and mandalas.

Crafts: If creating things is more to your liking, search online for “craft kits for adults” and see what appeals to you. Stained glass window art, jewelry-making, macramé, birdhouse kit, origami, wind chimes, mosaics, oil painting or watercolor — the kits are endless.

Look at the website for your local hobby and craft store. Chances are they have curbside pickup. I’m in the middle of a 1:250 scale model of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Have fun!