By Holly Mcguinness
Keeping creative and crafty later in life has been proven to be great at improving cognition function and memory, so if you’ve got a little extra time on your hands, picking up a new project could be a great idea.
We’ve pulled together a few of our favourite creative activities that can be done on your own or for those with particularly helpful grandchildren, they might make for a great assistant.
Art therapy is great for brain function, cognitive development and a really fun way to spend time with your grandchildren, especially if they’re particularly helpful.
It’s easy enough to pick up a paintbrush and get started but not all of us have the confidence to do so and there’s so many other projects you can try out if that’s not your thing, especially if you’ve got helpful grandkids around who want to get involved.
Flower pressing is a wonderful way to immortalise a garden, especially if you’ve grown the flowers yourself. You’ll need some heavy books, a newspaper and a bunch of your responsibly picked favourite flowers.
Carefully lay the flowers in the middle of the newspaper, putting them flat and arranging how you would like them pressed, lay another paper on top and sandwich this in between your heavy books.
Once done, carefully put the books in a dry place to press the flowers, it will usually take a few weeks so check in and see how your flowers are doing after two weeks as the newspaper will draw out the moisture from flowers.
When the flowers are ready carefully remove them from the paper and you can turn them into a neat greeting card, arranging them however you like onto craft board.
Just one idea of many options out there, if flower pressing isn’t your thing, you could try mindfulness colouring in, birdhouse making, scrapbooking and a million and one other options to try.
Your local council may even host arts and crafts sessions where you can come along and get creative.
