Inspiration

I, like most creative people, tend to spend most of my time on the right side of my brain. Which, in my opinion, is a wonderful place filled with vivid colors and ideas. It is where great art and beautiful music first develop and I think it is often a magical place filled with child-like wonder. For those of us who get to play in our very own grown up playground for a living know how lucky we are. What happens though when we need to produce an idea and we have lost the way to our creative wonderland? What do you do when you can’t find your inspiration?

Bridgette’s Creative Energy:

Walk away. The first thing I try and do when I am working on a project and get stuck is to set it down. Just getting away for a few minutes allows me to start fresh once I get back. A quick run (which I probably needed anyways) or a snack break is usually just what I need to get back in the swing of things.

When that fails I know I have to break out the big guns.

What is everyone else doing? I am blessed to be surrounded with several people in my life whose creativity is still surprising to me each time I encounter it. I spend some time looking at other people’s work. Appreciating other creative solutions often inspires me with ways I can change or adapt something in my own work. This is also how I end up in the throngs of Pinterest on a Sunday afternoon instead of actually working on my endless list of DIY projects.

Bring on the chorus line! There almost always comes a time during my projects where I need to turn up the music and sing along. This is generally accompanied by some flawless dance moves regardless of the fact that I never took dance as a child. My general rule of thumb is the worse the music the better my design. I can confidently say I am one of the worst singers I have ever heard and I believe I am as close as you can come to being tone deaf. As long as the music is louder than me I can drown myself out most of the time. My cat is very tolerant.

Grab a pencil. After I have danced around my studio, blown bubbles, surfed the internet, and gotten my cardio in and I am STILL looking at a blank page I just start to draw. It does not even have to relate to my project although I try to. Sometimes just some good old fashioned sketching is what I need to get my brain on the right track. I grab my colored pencils and my sketch book and just begin. I am not particularly good at sketching but that is the beauty of it. It is an idea forming. I once had a teacher describe it to me as,”loose and fast like a lady of the night”. Slowly but surely the ideas begin to flow.

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