Making an inspiration board? Here is a beautiful example...

You have probably heard me talk about inspiration boards. I make them periodically to illustrate a particular color combination, or some event ideas. They are a great tool to organize your thoughts, and your visions. Plus they keep you on track when you are distracted by the multitudes of great stuff out in the universe.

One of my favorite color artists is Leslie Shrewring from A Creative Mint. She is amazing at gathering a collection of colors, textures, shapes, objects and flowers. She then takes a photo of her real life collages and shares them with hungry souls like me. I love to imagine Leslie, carefully poking through her stacks and drawers, selecting just the right items like a yellow pencil and popping them with  satisfaction into a basket at her side. ;o) *sigh* What I wouldn't give to be a calm soul sometimes instead of the crazy distracted girl I am...but I digress.

This is her most recent work, guest posted on Decor8. Obviously, she was focusing on yellow with some craft brown and gray. Catalog pages, letter stencils, rickrac, buttons, old tags and wallpaper...awesome! I'd like to point out her added random inclusion of the color swatches in other colors below. I point that out (mainly to myself, but I happen to be talking to you too) because it is easy to get obsessed with ONLY CERTAIN COLORS must be included. It's important to pop something different to keep your mind working I think.

For the sake of time conservation (I do have my clients, you know) I usually do inspiration boards on-line. I do covet the time to do one with real objects and take photos for myself. Here is one I did for by blogging class "Blogging Your Way" which shows not only what I wanted my blog to feel and look like, but what the content would include. I enjoyed the exercise immensely.

Do you have drawers of random but beautiful objects that deserve to be curated into a collection?