Making an inspiration board is one of my absolute favorite things to do. It’s not only a fun pastime, but it also is so helpful in getting some creative juices flowing when putting my own personal style together.
Little known fact – I’ve been making fashion collage boards since I was a freshman in college. I used to cover the inside walls of my small dorm closets with photos and photo collections. When living at the sorority, a couple girls asked me if I was a lesbian because all I had were photos of women up in my section. Hilarious! But it’s truly been a passion of mine since I discovered I had a real love for fashion and style.
Here’s another little known fact. When I was fresh out of college, I didn’t have much to show for myself when looking for interning jobs. So, I created a massive collage book of all my favorite trends. It was 20 pages deep each with a different collage story in fashion. How’s THAT for ambitious!
I guess things never really changed. My collage book aptly titled “See Fashion Through My Eyes” is one of my most prized possessions.
So let’s get to the task at hand. If you are signed up for my newsletter, you’ll remember from yesterday that I talked about getting inspired for 2012. (Not signed up? Join the LaurieBstyle network right now! It’s in the upper corner of the website…)
So when getting inspired for style I always turn to magazines. I like tangible things. I want to tear out the outfit idea or jewelry I love, cut it out and pin it up. But there are amazing tools online as well to help you create collage and inspiration boards. Here are some of my tips to creating your very own inspiration board. Online and off!
Offline: Start with a corkboard and go pick up some pushpins. Target carries cute ones so you don’t just have to get the “standard” pin we all know from elementary school. Go with your gut instinct and tear out anything that inspires you from your magazines. Outfits, individual pieces, jewelry, shoes, landscapes, cityscapes or even home décor. It could just be something you love for the color story. Start to pin up your tears. You can cut around the edges or leave them in their original torn state (I personally like the rawness of that). What you end up seeing is that you have similarities in what excites you. This is the start of your own inspired style. Fun right? Fill up the board as you go? Or cover it up in one sitting. Either way you can keep that board near your closet to inspire you when getting dressed every day.
Online: Now again I like tangibility of a collage board but perhaps the time it takes to make one is not for you. There are some amazing websites out there to help you collect your inspiring ideas. 1) Pinterest. It’s like an Internet collage board with photos of everything and anything under the sun. You could spend all day on the site. Trust me, I’m totally guilty. 2) Stylepage. This is more fashion focused but again same concept; you can create albums of photos you see online that you feel represent you. Overtime you’ve built your own online album of your individual style. And last but not least: 3) Polyvore. This is a bit more specific and is set up as mini collages. You can pick and choose clothing and jewelry that is currently for sale online and use those photos to create your own inspiring collages. This also is something you could spend hours and hours playing on.
And really – why not? Getting inspired means you have to take the time to open your eyes to the world around you! I want to see what you are working on! Send me your collages and I will feature them on my Facebook Fan Page!
