Where do you find your creative inspiration?

Do you look or pin on PINTEREST?  I wonder how many people pin things and refer back to them?  Is it inspiration we find when looking at a beautiful creation, or just admiration? 

Do you look in magazines?  Do you read all the articles or do you look at the pictures?

Do you have favorite blogs?  What keeps you coming back, or do you just keep looking at new ones?

I find a great deal of inspiration from PINTEREST.  I look at it in the morning while having my coffee.  Sometimes I just start coming up with ideas after looking at a single picture.  I tend to pin a lot when I'm working on a special interest like journaling, buttons, quilts, etc.  I do refer back to some categories more often than others.  My favorite refer to category of mine is STITCHED.  I can look at it any time and find inspiration.  Do you have a favorite category?

Magazines!  I love to look, but boy are they getting expensive!  I try really hard to flip through them before I buy one because I hate to get home and feel disappointed by the content.  My favorite magazines are by Somerset Studio (Where Women Create, and Somerset Life, just to name a couple).  I also love Cottage and Flea Market magazines. 

And then there are BLOGS!  I will confess, I use to visit them more before Pinterest came along.  My all time favorite was rebeccasower.com but she hasn't posted for a couple of years.  I like Junk Gypsy, Fancy Windows, Joanna Gaines's Blog, housewrenstudio.typepad.com. and vibekedesign.blogspot.com. These are just a few that I still look at on a regular basis. 
I would love to hear about your favorite sources of inspiration! 

Once I started putting the pieces together I couldn't stop.  I arranged, rearranged, added pieces, took some out, and here is what I ended up with.  I have 85% of it tacked down and now comes the tedious part, stitching the rest of it together by hand.  I'm going to try some pretty embroidery stitching along with whatever works stitching.  I want to add some pretty binding and a unique twist to some of the edges.  I'll try to post along the way, but this finishing will take me some time, but I think it will be worth it!

After I bought the tub of buttons and put them in the metal box the other day, I decided to go through more of my buttons and finish the button cards I started a long time ago.  I spent the good part of a day picking out the buttons and attaching them to the cards.  There really is no point in having all this stuff if it can't be displayed and enjoyed, and eventually sold!

Have you heard the term Make Do and Mend?  Well, a friend gave me a quilt that she thought I could use as a cutter because it had a hole right in the middle of it.  It really was to cute to cut up and so I decided to take a panel of Cori Dantini material and fix it.  The entire project cost about $7.00 and the quilt is almost as good as new! (I did use some little fabric embellishments along with the panel and I put a small piece on the back of the quilt as well.)

Don't you love when you hear a little whisper that says "Go to the thrift store!"  I'm on Spring Break and I was on my way to the gym and I heard that little whisper, and so I stopped at the thrift store. I was looking around and I found a tub full of vintage buttons.  I can not pass up buttons.  I asked how much for the whole tub and the nice lady said $5.00. I politely paid my $5.00 and danced my way out of the store!
Now it doesn't stop there!  A few weeks ago I picked up an old big vintage white toolbox.  I really don't need one, but it was so cool!  When I brought my buttons home I started sorting through them.  Being Spring Break, I thought it would be just fine to treat myself to an adult Root beer.  This was such a FUN way to sort my buttons and decide where I would keep them.  This is where the toolbox came into play.  I'm able to keep the buttons sorted and find whatever I'm looking for easily, because there are nifty little dividers.  I really do use a lot of buttons on my projects, and I want to create some button cards when I open my ETSY. What a fun find!

In 2009 I was watching Oprah, and she had 2 guests, Martha Beck & Cherly Richardson, on her show that were talking about vision boards.  It's a visual and verbal articulation of your goals.  It's a matter of seeing your goals on a board and seeing them in your life and making a connection.  I was skeptical, but I decided it couldn't hurt to make one.  Everything on my board came to be with the exception of a cabin. I published an article in a magazine, paid off our mortgage, bought a jeep, took a big trip, completed a triathlon, etc.
This year I made a new board.  I hung it in my bathroom.  I also put a picture of it on my journal.  It's not as specific as it was last time, but I like the focus.  I decided to share it with you, as well as how I created my 2017 journal.

FUN! This is my word for the year.  Does anyone else do this?  In the past it has been creative, inspire, etc.  Well on New Year's Eve my mister took me to Williams to bring in the New Year.  It was snowing, we were staying at a nice hotel with a guitarist singing, and it was so much fun.  I looked at him and told him, "Fun, that's going to be my word for the year!!"
When we got home, I got on the computer and typed in the word Fun, and selected images, and I found this saying.  Here Comes The Fun!  I pulled out a piece of my favorite vintage embroidered linen and added the saying to it along with the year.  Everyday when I leave for work my husband tells me to have fun.  It makes me laugh, but fun really is a choice!

Hello my friends!  It's been a very busy few months, and I just couldn't find time to sit down and write, so I may have lost some of you out there! 
Where do I begin? The Big Heap was lots of fun.  My first sale was 5 big pieces; the bird chair, a window with a fabric collage, 2 big pillows and my Bits and Pieces quilt.  Yes, I sold it.  That quilt was something that tugs at my heart, but I have been working on a new one.  I've been taking pictures of the process, and will blog about the process in the next month.
Next, my son married a lovely woman, and we feel so blessed!  It was such a fun wedding and so nice to share it with family.  I am a very lucky mom!
In December I decided it was time to seriously consider retiring and in January I submitted my letter of intent to retire in May.  I did the happy dance!  I really am ready to play and have time to do the things I love to do. 
So here I am today, working on some new blogging posts.  I have been making some new things and taking pictures, now I just need to write the posts that go with them.
Anyway, Happy New Year, and here is my first project I'll share with you this year.

It's in the bag!

I bought a bag of vintage fabric so long ago that I can't remember what year it was.  I put it with my other fabric, and basically forgot about it.  Well, as I was making my Bits & Pieces II quilt, I decided to pull it out and see what was in it.  No, I didn't even look at it after I bought it.  Much to my delight there were all sorts of pieces of material as well as a stack of cut pieces for Dresden quilt blocks.  I LOVE THESE BLOCKS!!  I immediately began sewing the pieces together.  I got 3 sewn together in a short period of time, and used the prettiest fabrics in these.  Then I decided to take some of the smaller pieces and form a scrap block.  These will be perfect for my quilt.  The moral of the story, you never know what hidden treasures can be found until you open the bag!