Inspiration . . .

Long time no blog (at least for me).  Been busy with one thing or another.

One thing:  Beau is officially a St. Louis City Police Officer.  YEAH!  It is truly his calling.  And after 2 tours to Iraq as a USMC and now this job, apparently my true calling is to worry.  I do it well.

Another:  I've been helping re-arrange For Keeps Sake.  It was time to shake things up a bit and shaking things up is exactly what we've been doing.  Not finished yet, but a good deal on our way.  So far, it looks really good.

Inspiration:  I've met up with a couple of people at For Keeps Sake that I hadn't seen for a while.  We were talking about inspiration . . . actually, they were telling me they lost their mojo.  And it got me thinking about finding ideas, keeping inspiration at a high and constantly being able to come up with concepts.

Thought I would share a bit with you.  I am not an out-of-the-box free thinker. I am a rule follower and blame it on 13 years of Catholic school. (Don't write me any nasty messages.  I'm only kidding. But if you went to Catholic schools, you probably know what I mean.) I like things in 1, 2, 3 order.  Line everything up.  When I see someone look at something in a new and different way, I am amazed at their thinking.

 

http://robinshakoor.blogspot.com/2011/04/tim-holtz-configuration-box.html

Never in a million years would I have thought about taking those little boxes out of the configutation box and reworked them like Robin did above.

However, being an instructor and a Design Team member, I do have to come up with a minimum of eight projects a month, not including those things I like to do for myself.  So I look for inspiration from others.

Here's where I go:

• anything Stampington.  I love those magazines and pour over them constantly . . . for hours. I never throw any of them away.  Even the really old ones are still fabulous.
• other blogs.  I follow almost 400 blogs via Google Reader.  I adore Google Reader.  Here's where you can find it: http://google.com/reader   Sign up and you can add *subscriptions*, that is blogs that you love.  Everytime a blog (subscription) is updated by the author, google reader puts that blog in bold letters.  So you only have to go to those blogs that are in bold.  It's so easy.  I visit google reader every morning.  It gets me going.  Now you know what I do at 4 a.m.!  The other good thing about google reader is that I can bookmark those posts that I love.  It's called *tags*.  So I have a number of tags:  greeting cards, mini albums, vintage.  When I want some new ideas/inspiration, I visit my tags. I don't copy (recreate) anything I see unless I specifically ask the original creator and then give them full credit for the idea.  But I do look (a lot) at their work for inspiration.  You can always tweak and make it your own. 
• Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/   This is a fairly new way to scroll through pics.  You can search for people you want to follow and crafts (or anything else really) you'd like to see.  It's all photos.  Very inspiring.  Search for scrapbooks, mini albums, etc and get inspired.
• And the stand-bys:  Flickr, Tumblr, U-Tube, U-stream all offer so many possibilities for inspiration.  One of my favorites to follow on You-Tube is Laura Dennison.  Her mini-albums are unbelievabe.  Here's how you can follow Laura: http://www.youtube.com/user/FollowThePaperTrail  and here's her blog: http://followingthepapertrail.blogspot.com/

So what gets you going? Where do you find your inspiration?

 

 

Comments

[Susan Reaney]

i am with you. M huge collection of Stampington Studio magazines and Pinterest, which is so much fun. I find is really restful at the end of the day. Just a gentle, relatively mindless event when I let those pictures float by and then go to sleep!
Fondly,
Suz

[Lisa H.]

I use Google Reader (you're in my Reader!), but I never knew I could tag posts...thanks for inspiring me to dig a little deeper into Google Reader. :-)

[carolyn k]

I find YOU very inspirational! Also, a trip to FKS gets my gears going. Then, I sit for hours, like you, on the net looking at the blogs. Thanks for the google reader info, I'll get that set up right away! I'll bet it's faster than hopping from one to the other. See, lots of inspiration, right here at Art From The Heart!!

[Barbara]

LOL - Nancy I know exactly what you mean. I was raised to be a good catholic polish girl -