Staying Inspired

(Photography by: Jill Doty) 

A common question that a lot of us get in the creative industry is, "How do you stay inspired?" It is so easy for us to get stuck in ruts where our work becomes dull and honestly loses our interest. To have creative businesses, it must be fueled by a creative life. So, while we do not claim to have all the answers to this question and we do still find ourselves in this dry place every now + then, we have found a few things that keep us inspired that we wanted to share!

A misconception that we hear of often is to be inspired for floral design, we should study flowers or visit a flower farm to 'fall in love again' with their beauty again. Maybe for you as an abstract painter, someone told you that you should study other abstract paintings. Maybe you are a musician and you were told sitting in symphonies because that would be your best teaching. This simply is not true. As creatives we find, see, hear, smell and feel art all around us.  One of our favorite things to study at Bloomin' is line composition. The lines and angles of a floral design are so incredibly important. For this we study art, we see the way things grow naturally in the wild, we see lines and shapes all around us. For a musician, you might study music by stepping outside and hearing the wind blow around you. For an abstract painter, you might study feelings and the way emotions can be evoked in humans.

A woman that we highly regard in the creative industry, Joy Thigpen, once said that staying inspired can look like eating pre-packaged food versus whole foods. The pre-packaged foods being magazines, Pinterest, the Internet and whole foods being people, traveling, and nature. Both are necessary and offer great benefits, but just as our bodies gain much more benefit from eating whole foods, so our brains gain the same in creativity.

Another simple technique we (try) to practice is planning creative days. This is fun to do with friends, but it is also fun to do on your own. If you have time to do this once a week, you are doing something right, but for most of us this usually happens once a month or once a quarter. This is something that restores your soul. It can be a trip somewhere, a hike, a cocktail class, or an art museum visit. The options are endless on this earth for having a creative day. We would love to hear your feedback of what you have done th left you inspired. I think we can all share in this together and it might kickstart some ideas for others!

Our last tip is to keep things simple. A lot of times we find when we become overwhelmed which leads to burn out which leads to lack of inspiration and wanting to quit (haha), it is because we have overcommitted ourselves. By keeping things simple we are able have to create space around us to think and have time to plan those creative days. Sometimes staying inspired as a creative is not just so our business can benefit from it, it is so our well being as a creative can flourish. Our creative businesses would not exist if us a creative did not exist.