How do you find inspiration?

At the last Design Blogger Meetup, Tommy Smythe gave a presentation to the crowd showing pictures from a recent trip he and Sarah Richardson took overseas. One of the lessons he wanted to share was that he and Sarah took photos of the lovely architecture and scenes to provide themselves inspiration for future room designs. That story had a lasting impression on me and I also realized that what he did for his interior decorating wasn't far off what I do for looking for inspiration for stationery design. You realize that as a creative you turn to many different things to inspire.

For example, one photo that I snapped on my blackberry inspired a good portion of my new collection for The Penny Paper Co.  I was walking home from Starbucks with Oscar and as I approached the school near our house I noticed on this day, that the chain link fence had a lovely pattern - It looked like tear drops and  had a Moroccan vibe. I have walked by this chain link fence hundreds of times, but it was on this day that the pattern stood out. I took out my blackberry and snapped a (bad) photo of it and e-mailed it to myself.

It was the inspiration for some stationery.

I sometimes miss school for this reason - learning how to look at things in different ways. You were forced to try new things, push your boundaries. I often debate going back to school to get back into thinking creatively in different ways.

Anyhow, sometimes it's fun to see how people get inspired. And although I still turn to magazines and blogs as my main source of inspiration for the home, you can see that inspiration for certain things can be in the unlikeliest of places.

Top Photo: By Leah Kirin from Forever Moments