Finding Inspiration Part 1 by Alex

Hello lovely Flair Enthusiasts!

Alex here with the very first Design Team project and blog post.  I love that the four of us have different strengths and passions and we all bring something different to the table.

Today I thought I’d talk a bit about inspiration or “mojo” (in particular lack of it!) as it’s known around the crafty community.  We’ve all heard about it and probably all experienced it…but how do we get past it if we want to make something?

Inspiration for a project can start anywhere no matter what you’re making.  It also can come from several areas at once.  Understanding the possible sources and what is likely to work for YOU will hopefully help you get out of a rut and get you making again. 

I may have to break this topic up over more than one blog post so it’s not ridiculously long - and I’m not likely to be able to give you a single project that covers aaaaaall the examples!

Story or Photo

I’m starting here since I’m mostly a scrapbooker (and mostly for the story telling aspect), but I’m sure you can take something away from this even if you don’t scrapbook.

For scrapbookers, it’s often a story or a photograph which starts their creative process.  The photo and story might be the same, but not always.  If not, it adds an extra step when getting ready to scrap.  I actually love it when my photo doesn’t directly correspond to the story and only by reading the story does it all comes together and you make the connection!

Product

Sometimes it’s a product that starts the creative process.  Is it a sheet of patterned paper with a motif that makes you immediately associate it with a photo or story?  Something brand new that gets you excited and your pulse racing, or an old favourite you forgot you had and only stumbled across by accident it as you tidied up in your craft room?

I can tell you that my product choices almost always tie in with the story very closely and I’ll tell you about all the important bits as I go along in this particular example.

Let's Get Scrappy

So what inspired today’s layout?  If I had to break down the MAIN source, it would be story and photo, but for me, product played a part too.  I don’t mean the flair badges themselves, but the specific ones I decided to use.  This ended up touching on colour a little bit too.

As I thought about what kind of project to make, I naturally considered what story I wanted to tell.  Finding a photo to work with it is often a simpler issue (for me) when I already have a story in mind.

Naturally it needed to be compatible with those lovely flairs.  Since I had such a varied selection to work with, I wasn’t overly concerned about finding some to showcase.

Fairly often, I get hit with an idea like a bolt out of the blue and this is what happened this time too.  I can’t tell you how exactly it occurred to me to make a layout using the photo of the whole design team (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them in my Instagram travels occasionally) but the timing seemed to make sense just as the first DT begins its first term, no?

The aqua and blue feathers of the Embellish With Flair logo were a natural starting point.  I remembered I had a light blue paper with a feather print from Shimelle’s Little by Little Collection!  Perfect!  I had a photo, the beginning of a story and a paper I was pretty sure I’d use as the background.

Now that I had a few decisions made, was a good time to go through my flair badges and pick something that works.  I knew straight away these Mirror Ball flair badges were the winners. These colours reminded me of Shimelle’s Head in the Clouds collection.  The playful and whimsical nature of that collection would work.  I could possibly even get away with a dragon or two!  They remind me of imagination and creativity.

Shimelle’s Box of Crayons and Glitter Girl, Paige Evans' Whimsical and crafting themed lines by Echo Park and Simple Stories also had some colours that might work and they all had crafting/inspirational motifs and phrases.  I don’t always go for themed products, but sometimes (especially when it’s about a topic near my heart) I just go for it.  For me personally it’s a bit of an all or nothing approach!

While we’re talking crafty motifs, Virginia Walker has been making some incredible cut files (especially ones which made great titles for craft layouts).  This was as good a time to use one as any and the one I chose seemed to make me think of starting something and the start of a design team working together for the first time connected the dots in my head.

Once I backed the cut file with patterned paper and added dimensional foam to the back, I just had to figure out where the photo, journaling and embellishment areas would go.  Then it was time to commit!  I did some messy stitching to give the paper strips some texture.  It's a simple but effective detail!

You'll find all kinds of little bits in my embellishment clusters,  There are almost always cameras since that's an integral part of scrapbooking, some whimsical critters and even peacock feathers as a nod to Crece's logo!  Speaking of her logo, I used one of the packaging inserts as a base for my embellishment here.

I also used the three chipboard circles from the Whimsical chipboard pack to hold the flair badges.  I didn't want them to get lost and these were the perfect size.  The little sentiments around the circumference are quite perfect and the colours are variations on pink, aqua and purple too. 

Phew!  Thanks for sticking with me after all that and I hope you found it useful.  I’ll be back with another project on 21st May with the next installment in this series.

Embellish With Flair products used: Mirror Ball

Love, and Embellish With Flair!

-Alex xx