4 Ways to Boost Your Creativity

It has been so freaking dreary for the past 36 straight hours in Maine with the kind of rain that makes the weatherman excited. Like many of you I’m sure, my  mood is but a puppet to the weather. When the skies are gray, I feel “blah.” I don’t really have time for “blah” though – I am in the midst of temporarily relying solely on my Etsy shop for income, and I have a bunch of orders to fill (and designs to create!).

I have a few go-to tricks for boosting my mood and simultaneously my creativity:

1. Find your musical muse and make it loud:

Mine happens to be “Middle Eastern-psych-snap-gospel” (Yeasayer) and the likes of Passion Pit, Matt & Kim and Ellie Goulding. I listen to a Pandora mix or an iPod playlist that I made 3 years ago that still does it for me. I prefer it loud enough to almost get lost in. I like a lot of different kinds of music, but this kind of music specifically makes me feel more energized and creative, whereas, say, music like Madeleine Peyroux’s makes me want to relax and drink tea and watch the rain out of my little French window panes.

2. Revisit your inspiration boards: 

I haven’t been pinning much lately, probably because I haven’t been keeping up with my blogs lately either. However, I have a great stash of beautiful images on my boards that inspired me enough to pin them – I need to remember to go back and look at them. I have one board called “Nicely Done” that I can reference for images I’ve found around the web of artwork or craftsmanship I really admire. I have a board for fabrics (for pattern and color ideas) and one for photographs (for composition inspiration…composi-ration?). Type samples and cool fonts that I’ve pinned are on a board of their own as well. I also tend to find good stuff perusing the “Art”, “Design”, and “Prints and Posters” boards under “Everything”…but I have a very discerning eye at this point.  I am most certainly preaching to the choir here. This isn’t an enlightened thought, that Pinterest’s Inspiration Boards are, in fact, inspiring.

3.  Flip through great books:

I used to have a giant collection of books before I purged everything and moved out West. Now I’m back East, and back East just  feels like it needs more books, damnit. I do have some great personal reference books that spark creativity:

Taschen Style Books are 100% graphic, which makes them perfect for flipping through to see what catches your eye.

My aunt gave me this wonderful book, You Are Here, which is a collection of “Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination.” It’s filled with good examples of thinking outside the box.

4. Take a walk with your camera:

Or your iPhone. If the weather permits, I like to go for a walk around my neighborhood or down by the docks and get snapshots of whatever happens to “speak to me” (as weird old lady as that might sound.) And yes, sometimes, I Instagram them.

The creative process is different for everyone, so I imagine you have other ideas.  Can you relate to any of my creative habits? What do you do when you need to jog your imagination? Where do you turn for inspiration?