Organize Your Inspiration
Today I want to share a TOOL, TIP or TRICK to enhance your creative life. With a wave of my Magic Wand, I hope this tip sparks something within to bring you some ease or joy in your creative journey!
Ok creative friend... here it goes... ORGANIZE YOUR INSPIRATION. Ugh, I know. Organizing can be very difficult - especially for the creative mind! I have been battling this for years. The funny thing is that I am very organized when it comes to running my household. I can find important paperwork and know where the manual is for the small appliance we probably don't have anymore. But the truth is, I'm all over the place in my creative world.
One culprit? My addiction to notebooks. Specifically starting a NEW notebook/sketchbook and leaving the old one incomplete for all time and eternity. Sorry old friend, look how pretty THIS ONE is! Since I love notebooks so much, I have tried to keep one notebook for writing, lists, etc. and another notebook for quick sketches on the go and a different one for more detailed drawings and yet another one for mixed-media art journaling. It just doesn't work for me. My packing list then becomes a part of a drawing session that morphs into a stamp test page... I spend a ridiculous amount of time searching through my notebooks for that one brilliant idea only to be swept away in a different direction when I rediscover a long forgotten project. Is this just me?
I don't think I will ever get my notebook chaos under control. But one thing that I am doing much better is organizing my photos and artwork into albums. It's a digital filing cabinet that makes sense to my analytical side. I have created albums in my Google Photos app - you can do this in whatever cloud based system you use - and drop new photo inspiration into the appropriate one. If a photo will fit into multiple folders, you can create a copy!
Here are some of the categories I use:
Flowers
Trees
Textures
Shadows
Negative Space
Architecture
Color Inspiration
I also do this with sketches that I imagine growing into a pattern one day. I have been adding post-its to pages that I want to scan and then doing a batch of scans at a time. Some of my scans are collected bits of nature or trash (it's true - I have found dirty, trampled, smudged paper and glued it into an art journal because it just spoke to me).
Here are some of the categories for my scanned work:
Textures and Backgrounds
Artwork ready to use (this folder has a sub-folder of type of artwork: animals, floral, mark making, outlines....)
New scans to be cleaned up (this also has sub-folders)
Real Items (not drawn)
Hand Lettering
As I continue to collect inspiration, I am figuring out new categories to add. When I sit down to create a pattern, I have more elements to pull from and I know exactly where to find them. No more searching in a million notebooks!
I’d love to know if this inspires you to organize your inspiration differently or if you have a method you already use. Send me an email here. Have a whimsical week!