Mindfulness is all about being in the present moment and living in the here and now. When you’re mindful, you’re more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. This can be a great way to relax and de-stress. In this blog post, we will discuss mindfulness art activities that you can do to help you get in touch with your inner calm. These activities are fun, creative, and relaxing!

What is the concept of mindfulness?

In mindfulness, we take the time to live in the moment and to notice our experiences. It involves paying close attention to your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings, without allowing yourself to get caught up in negative or stressful emotions.

What are the benefits of mindfulness?

Some of the key benefits of mindfulness include reduced stress and anxiety, improved focus and concentration, and greater overall well-being.

Additionally, mindfulness has been shown to improve sleep quality and reduce symptoms of depression.

Overall, mindfulness can be a great way to relax, de-stress, and improve your mental health.

What are some popular mindfulness art activities?

Now that we know what mindfulness is and its benefits of it, let’s take a look at some mindful art projects we can do and different ways we can use art and creativity to bring our mind back to the present moment.

Using art is a really fun way to introduce mindfulness practice into our days.

Set up your environment in a peaceful relaxing way, so that you are in a safe place where you won’t be interrupted, and feel at ease. Burn some incense or diffuse some essential oils, and get started with your chosen art project.

1. Adult coloring books

This is a popular mindfulness activity, as they promote mindfulness by helping you to focus on the present moment and stay in the moment.

You can also try drawing or painting from nature, which has been shown to help with stress relief.

Other Mindfulness Art Activities and mindful practices include meditating while creating art, using mandala patterns as inspiration, and focusing on mindful brush strokes.

Coloring in adult coloring books has also been proven to relax your body and help you cope with chronic pain.

Try some of our free printable detailed coloring pages from the list below.

• Adult Coloring Pages for Autumn With Inspirational Quotes About Change [Free Printables]
• Inspirational Word Coloring Pages
• Major Arcana Tarot Coloring Pages
• Today is Going to Be Awesome Coloring Page
• Mehndi Hand Coloring Pages

2. Art journaling

Art journaling is another mindfulness activity that can help you to quiet your mind, relax, and tap into your creativity. If you’re looking for a mindful art activity that is simple but effective, try simply taking some time to just sit and focus on your breath while you create beautiful artwork with watercolors or colored pencils.

Whether you’re an experienced artist or a complete beginner, Mindfulness Art activities can help you to relax, de-stress, and find your inner creativity.

You can print some free dot grid paper for your bullet journal here, which can help give you a structure to work off for your art journal doodles.

3. Word Mandala

Think of a word that you want to focus on, and doodle this onto the page for the centre of your mandala. The word could be something like peace, safe, content, tranquil or whatever you need to feel.

Once you have written your word, work outwards in a circular direction to create your own word mandala, perhaps incorporating more words into the patterns as you go, writing each one multiple times or adding a variety of words, whatever flows in your creativity.

4. Flower Mandala

Take some flower petals, leaves, sticks and carefully arrange to create your own beautiful nature mandala.

This can be done outside, and while working be sure to take notes of the physical sensations you feel around you, from the sun’s warmth, to the feel of the breeze and the sounds of your environment like the birds, or even the sound of cars travelling in the neighbourhood, which is it’s own type of urban white noise.

5. Watercolor paints

If you’re looking for a mindfulness art activity that is simple but effective, try using watercolors to create beautiful artwork. This requires focused attention and mindfulness as you concentrate on mixing the colors, applying them to your paper, and creating unique pieces of art.

Liquid watercolors are so relaxing to use for me, because of the gorgeous vibrant colors. You can also use a standard watercolor paint palette, and don’t forget to use thicker watercolor paper.

Whether you’re an experienced artist or a complete beginner, this mindful water color art activity can help you to relax, de-stress, and tap into your inner creativity in a fun way. You do not have to spend a long time, even a few minutes on this activity could be enough to settle your nervous system and bring some calm.

6. Oil pastels

Oil pastels can also be a great mindfulness art activity, as they require focused attention to your task. Whether you’re drawing simple patterns or creating complex pieces of art, oil pastels allow you to tap into your creativity and relax at the same time.

So if you’re looking for a mindfulness activity that is simple but effective, try using oil pastels to create stunning artwork and take a moment of peace.

Actually, it doesn’t even matter what the end result looks like. These mindful activities are more about the process, so let go of all judgement or preconceptions about how your finished art work should look, silence your inner critic and just enjoy the feeling of creating, playing with colour and being in the moment.

7. Mindfulness stones

Mindfulness stones are another simple mindfulness activity that you can do to reduce stress and help manage anxiety levels.

Simply choose some smooth, colorful stones and then set them out in a beautiful arrangement. You can then sit with the stones and focus on your breath, allowing yourself to be more mindful as you relax and de-stress.

You can also perform this activity using other loose parts, or crystals, for example if you want to focus on crystals that help with social anxiety, or use rose quartz for self love, then tap into those messages while creating your patterns.

Check out these sea glass art works to give some beautiful inspiration.

8. Rock Painting

Another popular little project for creative mindfulness is to paint the stones. Painting each mindful stone gives you a small canvas to work with, so it’a not overwhelming and can be very calming since the stones or rocks are such a tactile material.

9. Vision Board

Another mindfulness activity that you can do is create a vision board. This involves collecting images and words from magazines or the internet that represent your goals and dreams.

You can then arrange these images on a large piece of paper or poster board to create a personalized vision board that represents your hopes, dreams, and desires.

You can find some positive affirmations here and a vision board template to use to help you get started.

10. Creative blocks

If you’re looking for mindfulness art activities that are simple but effective, try using creative blocks.

This meditation-inspired mindfulness activity involves simply sitting with a set of colorful wooden blocks and creating beautiful patterns or structures.

This simple activity is a wonderful way to kick start your creative process, and you can start with just a couple of minutes.

11. Zen garden

A mindfulness art activity that is simple and extremely calming is creating a Zen garden.

This mindfulness activity involves arranging small rocks and sand in beautiful patterns to create a calming, peaceful space in your home.

Once you’ve set up your zen gardens or miniature peace gardens you can return to the sand box over and over to ground yourself or just take a mindful moment to create patterns in the sand, using sand stamps or a zen sandbox tool like a small rake. This is also a beautiful way to meditate.

12. Make a Snow Globe

You can create a snow globe or calming jar with glitter, then use this as a mindfulness tool as you shake it and focus your mind on observing the snow or glitter fall and settle. As the snow falls and settles, breathe and allow your emotions to do the same.

These can be made quite easily with a recycled glass jar, filled with water and glitter. Add some glycerin to the water to slow the fall of the glitter or snow.

Mindfulness Art Activities for Young Children

If you have young children, there are also mindfulness art activities that you can do with them to help foster their mindfulness and creativity.

Building up these mindfulness skills from a young age is so valuable, so if we can do that for the younger generation, this is a beautiful thing.

When talking about children, we also have to acknowledge our own inner child and often by giving our selves space and opportunity to indulge in these type of creative projects, we are doing some valuable healing work for our own inner child.

Some popular mindfulness activities for children include creating mindfulness stones with them, butterfly symmetry painting, painting mandala beautiful patterns together, or simply sitting quietly together and focusing on your breath while doing some coloring in a favorite coloring book.

You can incorporate a mindfulness activity into your daily life on a regular basis. Creative activities like these are great for stress reduction. You can work on these alone, or with a family member.

What are some art materials for mindful art activities?

Some common art materials used in mindfulness art activities include watercolors, oil pastels, stones, colored pencils, and a variety of other decorative materials.

Additionally, you can use tools like paintbrushes, pens, or other types of crafting equipment to create unique pieces of artwork or abstract patterns.

Other popular mindfulness art activities may also involve creating a Zen Garden or mindfulness stones with small rocks and sand. Ultimately, the choice of art materials will depend on your preferences and desired results, so you can experiment with different art materials to find what works best for you.

For younger children you can purchase things like finger paint, a large sheet of paper makes a great canvas for finger paint. To try to reduce the amount of mess they create, you can supply a paint brush as well for the pain.

Children of all ages, and even grown adults can benefit from the great sensory activity of painting and finger painting. Taping the paper to the table with masking tape also keeps it from moving around, helping to reduce mess as well.

Whether you’re looking for mindfulness art activities to help reduce stress and calm your mind or are looking for ways to encourage mindfulness and creativity in young children, there are plenty of options available.

Whether you choose to use paints and brushes, colorful stones, or other types of materials, mindfulness art activities can be a fun and rewarding way to practice mindfulness and de-stress.

With so many mindfulness art activities to choose from, you can find one that works best for your needs and preferences. Many of these can also be used for a group art activity, it doesn’t need to be practised alone.

So why not give mindfulness art a try today? You may be surprised at how relaxing and inspiring it can be!

More Mindful Practices

Take a minute to read one of these articles to help on your mindfulness journey

• Best Incense for Meditation: 11 Scents To Try
• The Best Crystals for Meditation and How to Use Them
• 50 Self Love Self Care Sunday Ideas To Recharge Your Soul
• 10 Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation

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