Merry-go-round - Inspiration...

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).

If they haven't posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month's theme:

What inspires us: a peak into journals, pinboards, folders or wherever we keep our little snippets of inspiring stuff...

I wonder.

O.K. This is as much as I could find time to write yesterday.

Now for photos. They will tell you a bit more...

I look around a lot: streets, flea markets, magazines, antique shop, the world WIDE web... But I don't keep many traces of all this really. I don't keep a style notebook, as many designers and artists do. Maybe I should, but, on the other hand, I think it's part of 'my way' to just let it ripen in my mind. Some of it will stick and evolve into some idea, at some point. A lot will vanish.

However lovely some of the stuff I see, it is crucial to me that I do not plagiarize it, consciously or otherwise. So my "designs" (if you can call them that— still shy about the grandd-sounding names here), must be triggered by my ideas and desires. Or made to order. I love custom work.

What I have learnt to keep a trace of is those ideas— if only because I usually get them at the most inconvenient time, like in the middle of a meeting or at two in the morning.

So, at home, I have a beautiful litte notebook on my bedside table— full of ugly, clumsy drawings and notes. Some of these are turned into something right away, others have to way for six months or so and others still are still waiting...

Here, it's the stack of Muscha notelets that you can see on the photos.

When I'm in a meeting, it's my beloved Mulberry organizer. Makes me look very serious, I'm sure, when I start scribbling furiously. Provided no one is looking over my shoulder, I'm fine.

Now, what I'm afraid I really do hoard is materials. They make me tick. I just did a workshop learning mosaics, a skill which I definitely mean to adapt and use 'my way'. When I came across those lovely pieces of wood, glass and clay, my head began to be filled with spectacular pieces of jewellery! Nearly drooling I was.

And that is just the latest...
In my tiny second bedroom, "the room formerly known as a study", I have, well just about everything: fibers, fabrics, paper. AND it's creeping into corridor and living-room.

My cat doesn't mind. Provided she still gets all the seats. And the carpets.