15/04/2015

Inspiration: Mood boards


About six months ago I asked in my blog's Facebook what you'd like me to post about. Of course I shall continue sharing the crafts and DT work I do, but I wondered if there's something more that you'd like to know. Like something about the mediums I use, my favorite supplies, about my process or similar. What was suggested was a post about inspiration. So I decided to start a series of post concentrating on something that inspires me.

Here's links to previous posts on the series:



As you can see from the title this time I concentrate on the mood boards. Actually this theme was suggested by me on the Facebook on Monday and I thought to grab it at once. If you want to read a few lines about mood boards in general, here's a link to Wikipedia, to Shimelle's blog and to a site with tips of doing mood boards.

Mood boards are great and so versatile. They provide a lot of inspiration but as you can see from challenges that use the boards, every single project is different. Everyone sees the board through their own experiences and style and even perhaps the topic they are using for the piece. Usually something from a board hits a button in the brain and ideas start flying.

What I personally see at first from a board is the colors. And usually that's the easiest part to be inspired. For example in Scrap Around The World challenge you don't have to use the colors in the board, but usually they work well with the over all theme as well and like I said, that's probably the easiest way to find inspiration. Usually the elements on a board are combined through a color as well so it's only natural to go with the given scheme. The amount you incorporate the scheme to your project can then vary depending your own style. If you normally use a vintage style and neutrals, you can just add a hint of pink in there picked from the board. Or if you love to use bold colors, you can play with the yellow, pink and purple in the board.

What usually hits my eyes second, almost simultaneously with the colors is the theme. Usually the chosen elements on the board have something in common. It might be hard to put the theme to words, but there's definitely something combining the elements. It can be nautical, ethereal, mystical, funny, joyous, vintage, charming or what ever. For example the board above has a nautical, beachy theme as well as the one below has a romantic, soft feel to it. The separate images on a board make up a story inside your head and you just need to go with the flow. The theme might translate to the way you use products, the style you create your project with or even to the topic of the craft.  


As mood board usually has several images the next thing I do is to go through the images separately. There can be a pattern, a texture or even a supply I can use. For example if the image has lace you can grab a doily for your page. Or if there's sand in the picture, you can use something grainy like embossing powder in your craft. It's really to keep an open mind and let your mind wonder and make connections. What you can do is to actively train your mind or actually train to keep it open. You can choose what ever a picture and just come up with things you could do in a project using that as a jumping of point. 

As we all find inspiration differently there's number of ways to be inspired by a mood board. If you are taking part to a challenge it might be good to write a few words about your inspiration to get the message across to the team visiting your blog. It might be obvious to you how you used circle stickers inspired by the M&M candies in the board but the same idea might not jump to everyone's head.

What might be also good to add is that there's absolutely no such thing as interpreting a mood board wrong. You simply can't do that! We all make connections differently and have different history behind us. It might be that auntie always served pears from a fish shaped bowl and that's why seafood tablewear inspires you to scrapbook about your garden where the pear tree has just started blooming. To someone else the same seafood tablewear means something kitschy and they make up a page dedicated to Andy Warhol. 

March mood board zpsac42de64

Here's just a few ideas if you want to use mood boards as an inspiration. Please feel free to add other ideas!

- browse Pintereset, choose a mood board and create something inspired by it. Create also a new board for future inspiration and pin a few interesting boards there

- take part to a challenge using a mood board, for example Scrap Around The World

- go through projects done with same mood board and before reading the text try to notice all the things that were inspired by the board. Make a list and use some of the listed things in a project.

- make a mood board self and invite others to play with you (please leave a link here if you want me to play also!)

- choose a mood board and use the color scheme in your craft

- challenge yourself and use the same mood board as a jumping off point to three crafts. Try to do one of the projects using a completely different color scheme or one of the projects in a completely other format as the others, like two layouts and a canvas or two cards and an art journal spread

- go through your blog feed and try to find mood boards or even pictures of supplies that inspire you - create something inspired by what you find

- take a subject or theme of a mood board and turn it into a project 

- study a mood board and draw inspiration from a small detail in the board

- choose a mood board and analyze it, try to think as many ways to include it in a project as you can

- pick a mood board and make a mind map out of it - then using the map make your project

I hope you found this post interesting or perhaps even inspiring! I'll post another source and a few ideas how to use it next month. Please also remember the "Inspired by" posts as I usually try to open up my process in them!

Thank you for stopping by today!

2 comments:

kjjc said...

very clever idea. ingenious

Riikka Kovasin said...

Thank you!

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