Finding Inspiration

Today’s Tuesday tip on Flaming Hot!  is how to find inspiration.  This is my quote “Finding inspiration for your beads can be tough. When I get in a slump, one of my favorite things to do is to go to a book store and just browse.  I mostly look at the photography books to get ideas.  There are many books on my bookshelf that were purchased specifically to help stimulate my imagination.”

We have books ranging from aquarium sea life, to space photos, to gardening books.  Not all of them are just photography, although some are.  The aquarium book is all about building an aquarium and things to know about different kinds of fish, fresh and salt water.  There are great photos of not only fish, but coral and other sea creatures.  Greg uses it quite often for his fish murrini and when building his aquarium marbles.  I also have a few books on flowers.  The books are mostly just a reference guide, but has many pictures of different kinds of flowers.  We have a  a Peter Maxx book Greg uses for his 60’s style marbles, a Van Gogh coffee table book, a coffee table book called the Earth, parrot books, butterfly books, a funny faery troll, mermaid childrens book.  All of these were purchased with the sole intent of using them for inspiration.

Granted some of them have been more useful than others.  We both have used most of them.  Lots of times the ideas we have when we choose them never come to light, or get put away for another time.  What is fun to do is to come back to those books and ideas, as our skills progress to see what new things we are inspired to do.  After listing all these books we bought, I’m  starting to think, wow we have a lot of the shelf for lampworking inspiration, but you can be sure it won’t stop me form browsing at my local bookstore next time I feel I need some inspiration.