Creative Juices

I hate the term "get your creative juices flowing," but for lack of a better one, I have to say: I have really got my creative juices flowing lately. Usually this means I bring out the glue, glitter and construction paper and make a ridiculous mess. But the below ideas are all technology-related creativity (this means clean-up free.) Also all of the below allow even the "creatively challenged" a chance at originality. However if you are both creatively and technologically challenged, you might have an issue.

Exhibit A: Please tell me you noticed my Halloween-themed blog! It just dawned on me that I can change my themes as often as I want... so you can expect different ones as the seasons turn, holidays approach, or as I get restless. It is a much cheaper alternative to redecorating my living room.

Exhibit B: Polyvore. I can't remember how I stumbled upon this, but it is just too much fun. Have you ever seen an inspiration board? Lots of designers use them to follow a theme when decorating a room, or planning an event (like, ahem--a wedding!) This allows you to pull images off the internet and put them together onto a board. I threw this one together in about 15 minutes... a "fall decor" theme. You can even do this to create an outfit or two, Polyvore will import the prices of products automatically. And it's free to use!

Fall Decor by Laurealism on Polyvore.com

Exhibit C: ColourLovers. This is a great way to pull together a color palette, whether redecorating your blog, living room, or trying to figure out your wedding colors. Let's say you love this Velazquez painting, Rokeby Venus: If you need a Baroque art lesson, we can get to that later. But anyways you love it, so you order a huge print and want it to be the focal point of your living room (okay so maybe its a bit risque for the living room, but just go with it.) With ColourLovers you can pull all of the colors out of the painting and come up with a color scheme for your living room. For example here is five of the colors I specifically pulled:

I would use the left-most grey for three walls, and the dark grey for an accent one (hopefully the one with the print on it.) The middle brown can be represented in furniture, like leather couches. I'd use the dark magenta tone for curtains, and the right-most reddish color for accents (pillows, rug, throws, etc.) And voila! A living room of color based on your favorite painting! ColourLovers is also free!

Exhibit D: Zazzle. This site is a great way to personalize a whole heck of a lot of stuff, as well as shop through things created by others. Here are the first six results (of 33,929) on a search for "vintage postcards." And starting at 95 cents a pop-- it makes for a relatively cheap way to stay in touch. Who doesn't love to get a postcard?

Exhibit E: How Fast Time Flies. I haven't had a lot of time (see previous four exhibits) to play around with this site yet, but it looks like a really cute and simple way to create scrapbook pages. You don't have to download any software, and it is free to use and create. From what I did play around with, it seems really user friendly. And if you want, you can get your pages printed for $5.50. This seems reasonable compared to the time it takes to make a scrapbook page by hand, including the time it takes to remove glitter from carpet.

Sidenote: King has also let his creative juices flow lately: in the form of peeing outside. Yesterday he only peed inside once. ONCE! I won't tell you how many times he peed inside today (ahem-7.) But it's three steps forward and one step back right?

Live & Love!