7 Easy Ways to Inspire your Creative Space
Have you ever been stuck in a rut with your creative space?
Before I started typing, I was looking at my studio space, then looked at my office space, then looked at Joe’s office space. Holy crap, it’s depressing. It’s no wonder I was in a creative rut. Who could be creative in this space. Ugh!
Now, you’d think this post was about how I transformed my depressing creative space into something amazing… well, no. If you’re like me, we get all inspired to clean up and make our space inspiring in an unrealistic amount of time, but come on, who has the time? Time.. what’s time?
So instead, I’m going to share with you with a list of ideas I came up with to inspire my creative space that are easy, don’t require a ton of thought and if you are a creative, you probably already have all the supplies in your craft room. You can take my list and it’s so easy to customize it to yourself.
Ready?
- First thing to do is go to Pinterest and create a mood board. It’s simply a board where you will place 10 photos. What you call it is up to you. If you don’t have a Pinterest account, save photos to a folder on your computer.
- You’re going to search for the topic I give you and you’re going to pin one photo for each topic to your new board.
- kitchen decor
- bathroom decor
- flowers
- bedroom decor
- livingroom decor
- outfit ideas
- jewelry + style (so you will search for “vintage jewelry”, “glass jewelry”, “silver jewelry”. It’s the topic jewelry for a style you like)
- winter coats or jackets or just coats
- desk or table or chairs
- gemstone or mineral
- Next, go to your new mood board and look at each picture. What one hue/colour is common or similar across all the pictures? Write it down, or better yet, paint a close match to that colour on a piece of 4×6 watercolour paper. We’re going to call this your signature colour.
Now here come the ideas!!!
- Paint one wall in your creative space with that colour. Take your signature colour swatch card to the paint store so they can match it for you.
- Take a whole bunch of your favourite photos, print them in black & white. Buy paintable frames at the craft store and paint the frames with your signature colour. If you can find frames that are already that colour, that’s fine. Hang the photos on your wall.
- If you have a lot of pencils, pens, markers and scissors, paint some mason jars with your signature colour. Now you have something pretty to store all your tools and supplies in.
- Make or buy an inspiration board from cork and wood. Paint the wood frame with your signature colour.
- Make or buy a chalkboard with a wood frame. Paint the wood frame with your signature colour.
- Get the biggest canvas you can find that will fit in a space on your wall. Paint the entire canvas with a contrasting colour (dark colour for a light signature colour and vice versa). Stencil the words “C R E A T E” or “I N S P I R E” or any other word you love as big as possible using your signature colour. If you have time, you can distress, decoupage or embellish the canvas as you feel.
- Paint a peg board with your main colour and fasten to your wall. Now you have a place to store your craft tools and supplies.
- Try this quick and easy art project that can be done in 15 minutes.
You don’t need to do all of these… but pick one or two to instantly transform your creative space using your signature colour. This weekend, I’d like to do #2 and #6, but if I could only pick one to definitely do, it would be #6.
So there are two things you need to do now:
- Check out my inspiration board on Pinterest and tell me in the comments below what the one similar hue/colour across all the photos stands out as my signature colour.
- What’s your signature colour? Choose one item from the idea list that you’d like to create using this signature colour, or share an idea of your own with us in the comments below. I’d love to hear it.
Hhhmmm your colour is a hard one lol. Having looked at your board I realised your whole article has your colour. It’s one of my favourites too. It’s turquoise.
I always end up with an equal balance of purple and turquoise lol, an they can work well together. I’d like to do option 3 and use glitter and ribbons as well as the paint. No one will be able to dull my sparkle then lol.
Thank you for the awesome suggestions.
Hugs and glitter sparkles. Anna Xx
Hey Anna! The colour was easy to pick out wasn’t it 🙂 when I was coming up with my branding colours for Art Place, I checked out colour psychology websites and purple is a colour that is loved by women but hated by men. I LOVE purple, Joe (hubby) hates purple, but his phone case is purple LOL!!!
I like option 3 too… paint the mason jar a flat colour, stencil some glitter on there, ohhhhh how about a chalkboard label and glitter the outside edge of the label! Ribbons I have to be careful with…Chaos tends to want them all to herself 🙂
Thanks for your comments and hugs and glitter sparkles right back at you!
Love creating mood boards and I haven’t done one in awhile. Seems we share favorite colors- purple & turquoise. I do believe most women have these 2 high on their list. Great ideas if ever the time. When I need creative stimulation I either look to nature or Pinterest.
Hi Roslyn, Turquoise is my favourite… I would say half my jewelry has some type of turquoise stone or bead on it. I just have to be careful not to “over turquoise” my look 🙂
Although I am not on Pinterest (I know, I know. For a visual person like myself that is ridiculous), I was able to see half of your page and saw immediately that you and I are both turquoise lovers. My entire house is colour-filled. Several rooms have turquoise (two shades to compliment each other) walls, and then I have a blue room plus red and chocolate brown in my family room. One bathroom is called “Peace” and is a mauve colour and we painted taupe accents. I always start with the big picture and accessorize from there. I even have a black powder room between my turquoise bedroom and turquoise bathroom. Even when “coloured” walls were not popular, I always had them. Beige and neutral just are not inspiring at all for me.
I love your ideas Giselle, as they are very easy to do and would uplift the room immediately. Hopefully your tips will get others thinking of adding colour to their space by daring them to stretch outside their thinking of what traditional home decor is “supposed” to look like. And maybe some people aren’t even aware of the colour that is their signature colour.
Hi Bev, no, it’s not ridiculous. I think it’s important to use the right social media platform for what works for you. I LOVE your description of your bathroom and the colours.
Beige can look good, but colours can be even better 🙂
My color is purple and black and those were the colors that we selected originally for my website and logo. I found out more about the psychology of colors much later and interestingly it appears I had used colors that reflected the essence of my business and personality.
In fact, whenever I feel the need for clarity or inspiration, I wear my beloved amethyst stud earrings and it makes a difference.
in art, purple and black can have a wonderful look of royalty.
Hi Gisele, this is a fantastic idea! I see your color is turquoise blue, my color is similar, but a little bit darker and more muted. I try to keep a lot of the color yellow in my work space because I read somewhere that it inspires creativity. I’m going to have to give this a try, I’d like to start with #1 and #4. Now, I just need to find the time to do it! 🙂
Hi Monica! Yellow is a colour that is inspiring, cheery and just full of sunshine! With so many variations of yellow, you can go for something neon, canary yellow or sunshine yellow. It can be used in so many ways. I’d love to see what you create with #1 and #4 when you find the time!
Hey everyone. I had originally chosen project #6 and did something a bit different. In light of recent events, I’m going to delay posting it. It’s a design featuring a stencil for a Cafe in Paris and I will be giving away the written lesson/project to my newsletter subscribers. So look for that in your next newsletter.
HI Gisele, Looking at your board, I immediately was overwhelmed with awe at that beautiful shade of turquoise! The walls in my craft room are gray-blue, and just this spring I painted my old wall unit (from 1980’s) an off white with pink interior. I thought I was being economical for using recycled paint at $20 a gallon. What is in that stuff!!! I managed to paint my table too and the rest we had to bring to the eco park as I was sick for a month from the ghastly smell. Thank goodness summer was nice and aired the place out! So now I have one wall unit left to paint – there were 3. But I did buy a good brand of pink for the interior and went around painting my accessories with it even some picture boxes that were just too plain!! I was going to buy sheer pink curtains but the sun would probably burn them….so I am keeping my gray silver ones for now until a find a more solid pink. One day I will find a light fixture to my liking and have it installed…the room isn’t very big or maybe it’s because I have so much stuff! We had our house built 6 years ago but finally finished the basement 3 years ago. When you work, there is no time to do stuff, when you are retired there is no money to do stuff! It’s a vicious circle. But I have to keep my stuff for mixed media!!! Even hubby looks at things and asks me before disposing of it so he doesn’t hear me yell!! ….but it’s a cereal box!!! yes honey a wonderful paint palette!!! LOL!! Love the turquoise – love the pink!!
Hi there, loved the turquoise did you 🙂 glad to hear it.
The colours of your craft room sounds absolutely wonderful. How old was the paint? newer paint has “low VOC” labels on it, which doesn’t smell and is safer. If it’s new paint, you may want to go back to where you bought it and ask them.
For the curtains and light fixture, what about checking some 2nd hand stores or consignment shops. Sometimes you might find something vintage in there that just might be what you’re looking for. The only drawback is the lighting fixture, needs to be at current CSA codes.
The good thing with art is you can be frugal and really creative. My latest “blue box” finds include the cardboard packaging from protein bars, I cut them up into 2.5″ x 3.5″ rectangles which are perfect for miniature art. Cereal boxes, cut some pieces into shapes, glue onto another larger piece and you have an instant stamp to create abstract backgrounds.
And your hubby and my hubby must be secretly linked.. my hubby does the same thing. Isn’t it nice when they are trained well 😉