My first book many many years ago was a little notebook, A6 size stuffed with scribbles, notes and images all collected from basically anywhere, kept on my desk or carried around with me to help inspire me with ideas.
I progressed from this into a hand made journal, bigger, spiral bound to allow the pages to lie flat and filled with colourful pages of images, paint swatches and textures. It was the perfect place to store colour schemes and if I was stuck for an idea it was the first place I’d look. There was no Pinterest in those days to scroll through. Back in the day I wrote an article for Scrap 365 about it, I was so passionate about the idea.
A lot has changed since those days but the way I keep inspiration has remained the same, it’s the place I refer back to time and time again keeping my swatches and colour schemes in one handy place.
At the moment I’m working on some botanicals for a workshop later in the year and picked a few wildflowers with the idea to sketch them. As they were out on my table I wondered if I could match the colours to papers and die cuts and then started to pull out other bits too.
I really like the colour graduation on this plant below as well as those curly stems.
It didn’t take long to gather a little pile of papers and die cuts from my offcuts box to match the theme, and thought a collage in my inspiration journal would perfectly preserve this moment.
For this exercise I took the colours and used them on my gel plate. I found it helpful to stick to only three or four colours and it prevented me from making a muddy mess.
These gel prints will be used in my journal or as card backgrounds perhaps, what ever they become they’ll be a reminder of a morning walk.
I hope you found his useful and try it for yourself.
Jaine x
