My Book of Inspiration

We all have lists of projects that we want to do. Some we find in magazines, others come to us in dreams, many more flood from blogs that we follow or blogs that we love 🙂 I have an ever growing list of projects I want to make but I find that most of the times I forget about the ideas because they are in many different places, in word files, on sticky notes, in sketchbooks, all over the place and when creativity strikes I don’t want to dig for ideas, I just want to create, altered books, artist trading cards, smash books, upcycled treasures…

Therefore I have resolved to make a book of inspiration. Have you noticed that since the new year has started I have been all about making scrapbooks, organizing memories and generally getting my crafting life in order? 🙂 I love the new me, hope it lasts… My book of inspiration will have clippings from magazines, sketches of ideas that I dream up and printed pictures of anything that is found on the WWW. Finally I will have all my ideas in one place complete with notes and doodles so that I can start on a project whenever the mood strikes.

You can choose to have a physical book or sketch book or you can also take pictures of anything and everything that catches your fancy, and that you would like to try your hand at, and make a folder on your computer desktop. That way you don’t have to carry a physical book around. I love books and looking through them. That is why I will use an actual book or sketchbook to make my book of inspiration.

Now that I think about it I will probably use an old hardbound book. I’ll try and look for one which has thicker pages so that it can withstand a lot of things being stuck to it. I will alter the hardbound book and turn it into an altered/smash book. Yes! That is what I will do. I can’t wait to start work on it 🙂 I am so excited already.

I have already made quite a few altered books and loved the experience every time. Till now I have mostly altered hardbound books and children’s board books to serve as scrapbooks for vacations. I have never tried making an altered book asanything like an idea book or an artist’s sketchbook before

I am going to alter the cover of the book. Maybe make a few pockets and alter some of the pages. Add some paint to the background pages… I want to use one page for one project. Affix a picture to the center of each page and make notes, add doodles and suggestions on the sides. In the end I’ll have an altered smash book of inspiration. Super cool!

Well I’m off to look for a book and to start my project. In the meantime take a look at this awesome post about a visual idea journal: http://looking-glass.typepad.com/looking-glass/2011/10/visual-thinking-mixed-medium-playtime.html