154: Gathering Inspiration in the Slow Seasons

When I'm in Summer mode. Yes, I have a summer mode. I'm currently in it. Whether it's on a trip somewhere or snuggling in the hammock with my kids, or laughing at my ducks splashing in the creek, or spending time in my garden. My computer screen is dark, but my mind is so bright because I'm very much living in the moment. I'm unplugged, but I'm not disengaged. And I know these, these moments are so important and also ripe with inspiration and exactly what I need to not only be present where it matters most, but also what will help me thrive when I'm ready to put pencil and paint back to paper. If you've ever felt stuck in your creativity and unsure maybe where to find inspiration or how to gather inspiration, maybe the key lies in the slower, quieter moments of your life. In this episode, we're going to explore how to gather inspiration during the slowest moments of your life and why they're crucial for your creativity.

I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi city seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life.

But when I first set out to

become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience their same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

As creatives, we often face the challenge of finding inspiration, especially during those slower periods when we're not actively maybe in the studio or working on projects. It's so incredibly easy to feel unproductive or stagnant or maybe uninspired. But I want to share with you today how you can use these slower seasons or moments to your advantage. There's a way for you to very intentionally begin to collect ideas, things, photographs, no matter what you're doing with the lens of inspiration on. And so even if you're feeling uninspired, even if you're not creating work right now, you can kind of have this lens on anyways. And what it does is deepen your relationship with the moments that you're in. And it also means that you're stockpiling inspiration to reference when you're ready for it. So even if I'm maybe months away from working on a big project or a fabric collection, I'm gathering inspiration all along the way, everywhere I go. And it really, really makes the whole world, like, all of my memories feel more vivid. For instance, instead of going on a hike, I will go on a hike, literally, like, looking for inspiration, looking at the moss and the ferns and the trees and the patterns and the textures, and I'll just snap pictures along the way, or maybe I'll pick wildflowers along the way. And this also is such a beautiful thing to do with your family. It means that you're productive, right? Gathering inspiration is something that you need to do. Technically, it's work. I don't know how we call that work, but technically it's work. And it's also such a fun thing to bring the people around you in on as well. So before I move on, I want to make sure that you know about a free download that we have for you today. Over at the Show Notes, we have a free inspiration blog which will help you kind of capture your field notes on the go. So this is just a great kind of pocket guide to keep with you in your backpack or in your pocket or in your purse. And then you can collect inspiration and keep them in this field notes. It's beautiful. On the go again. You can go grab that@Propriecreative.com at the show Notes for today's episode. So I want you to just imagine kind of transforming those seemingly unproductive times. Times into rich, fertile periods of creative growth. And it's going to help you really kind of embrace the slower seasons if you struggle with that. And you can continuously fuel your creativity and ensure that you're ready for your next big project when the time comes. You all know this about me now. I love my work. I love what I do. I love my time spent in the studio, and I love really every aspect of the work that I do. And so I can struggle feeling unproductive when. When I'm kind of out of my routine. So during the summer, especially with my kids out of school and taking trips, I can often feel just unproductive. And I love to feel productive. I know some of you are with me. So I discovered that using these slower periods were perfect for gathering inspiration. So, for instance, we just spent two weeks in Iceland together. And along with just purely enjoying this vacation and the time with my family, I also intentionally gathered inspiration from everything around me. Taking photos, sketching some scenes, noticing all the colors and the textures and the sounds, jotting those things down. This practice, it not only rejuvenates me and kind of fills my creative well, but it also helps me feel productive in a really beautiful way. Makes the entire trip feel more vivid. Like I mentioned, it's something that my daughter loves to do with me. And so we kind of just log inspiration everywhere we go. And so we're constantly talking about the textures, the patterns in the sky, the wildflowers and how they differ everywhere we go. And I think the best part is that I'm just building a library of inspiration so that when it's time to put that to use, I have this enormous library to pull from. So here's how I want you to get started. Go ahead and just identify whatever your slow season is. I want you to think about the period of the year where you naturally slow down. For me, it's summer, but it could be completely different for you. And here's what I want you to hear. For years, I felt like my inspiration, my creativity kind of ran dry in the summer, and I let that always make me feel like, oh, no, I'm done. Like, I'm out of ideas. I. I'm out of that drive that I usually have. Oh, no, I don't know if it's ever going to come back. And again, this happened for years until one time I finally realized that it happened every year at the same exact time every year. And so it was just my kind of annual cycle. Because for me, if it's summer, when fall arrives, I get this huge rush, regaining energy and drive and ideas and creativity and productivity. And so it was never going away for good. It's just a season, a cycle of my year. And so I think that we probably have these cycles on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and on an annual basis. So I think the more aware you can be of it, and the more aware you are of it, the more able you are to trust it, to trust that this is happening now, totally normal and completely fine, because you trust that it's going to come back in the morning or in the early part of next week, or in the middle of the month, or in the next season, whatever it is for you. So go ahead and just think about, what is that for you? Do you have a slow season? Do you have a time in the year where you just feel less driven and think about if it happens at the same time every year. And if so, maybe that's a cyclical thing for you as well.

I want you to just imagine what it would feel like to hold your very own custom fabric for the first time. Or maybe it's wallpaper or stationery or gift wrap. Perhaps you use it to wrap gifts with or sew projects with, like blankets or pajamas. If that sounds exciting, I'm so excited to tell you about my new free mini class. It's called Start Simple. In pattern design, it's called Start simple because, well, we're going to do just that. In just five lessons that are under 20 minutes each, you'll learn how to take a simple sketch or painting or picture and turn it into vectors using Adobe Illustrator. Now, don't worry. Even if you've never used this program, I'll teach you everything you need to know to get up and running simply. I'll even show you how to take pictures of found objects like leaves and petals so you don't even have to draw if you don't want to. I'll show you how to create a custom color palette, design your very own repeating pattern, and order as little as 1 yard of fabric or some wallpaper or maybe some gift wrap today. Once you learn how to design fabric, that's the magic. You'll be able to design just about anything you want. So do you have an hour to learn an entirely new skill for free? If so, let's get started. Head on over to bonniechristine.com startsimple Once you register, you'll gain immediate access to all of the lessons and begin learning right away again. That's bonniecristine.com startsimple Come on. I'll meet you there.

Okay, so identify your slow season and then go ahead and set goals for inspiration. I like to be really intentional about it. So maybe you want go travel. Maybe you want to take more nature walks, maybe you want to go visit more museums, or maybe you want to just take note of your surroundings everywhere you go. But this can also inform, especially if you're going on a trip, it can also inform your agenda. So maybe you take a trip and are sure to hit the botanical gardens or you're sure to hit the historical museums. Wherever you find the most inspiration, maybe the used bookstore, the library, or something like that. It can also just kind of mold the places that you visit when you travel as well. Then I want you to think about engaging all of your senses. Look for colors, patterns, textures, sounds that spark your creativity. And then take photos, but also jot down the notes. You know, this is really the beauty of gathering your own inspiration. When, when you gather inspiration on, let's say Pinterest, you've got none of those sensory additions. You don't have the experience, you don't have the memory, you don't have the location, you don't have the smells, you don't have the sounds. And it just runs flat for me. And so when I can take inspiration back to a time and place that I actually experienced, right, it's way more vivid, it's way more close to me in my mind, and thus feels like a deeper well of inspiration. So now I can kind of use what I heard and what I smelled and what I saw in the scenes to inform my work as well. Completely different than kind of just visually gathering inspiration on the Internet. Then I want you to just really focus on enjoying the process. Focus on the joy of creation without the pressure of productivity. Just let yourself be completely immersed in the moment again. You don't have to know even why you're gathering inspiration. Just do it, do it everywhere you go so that you are building this library to pull from when you're ready for it. Finally, I want you to reflect and organize, organize, organize. So after you have done some of these kind of inspiration gathering activities, just take some time to kind of reflect on what you've collected, what you want to keep, what's going to serve you well in the future, and then go ahead and organize them. So for me, if I've taken a lot of photographs, I will put them in an album on my phone, especially if they're from maybe a particular trip or a particular topic, like wildflowers. And that way I don't have to scroll and scroll and scroll when I'm ready for them, I just have them ready in the album. And then if I've taken field notes, I love using pen or pencil and paper. Something about that just mind to hand analog writing. So amazing. But also I tend to lose things. And so I'll also take a photograph of my, of my field notes and put those in the album as well so that I have a digital copy of them as well. So the next time that you're feeling that you're in a slow season, maybe you're feeling unproductive, maybe you're even feeling like you're wasting time and you're experiencing some guilt over it, I want you to realize that these periods are actually really essential for your creativity. Everything in nature has cycles of growth and stagnation. And it doesn't mean that it's not going to come back. Right. It just means that it needs to kind of winter sometimes, kind of hibernate sometimes in order to come back. And so I want to invite you to overcome the fear of wasting time and understand the value of truly rejuvenation and understand the value of true rejuvenation and how it can completely transform your creative process. My friends, today we talked about how to gather inspiration in the slow seasons and how they can be a rich source of inspiration for your work. We covered how to identify your slow season, set goals, engage all of your senses, enjoy this creative process and reflect on what you gathered and get it organized. Embracing these slower times can fill your creativity well and prepare you for your next big project. I know that you're going to be so glad that you've done this when it's time to really get to work. So don't forget to download your free inspiration log. It's available at the link in the show notes over@Propriecreative.com now it's your turn. Take some time to identify your slow season and plan how you'll gather inspiration. Download the field notes, start your discovery walks and share your experience with me. Tag me on Instagram. I'm just Bonnie Christine and know that our slow seasons are not only needed, but they're also a wealth of inspiration. My friends, create the beauty that you want to see. Come alive in the world and remember there's room for you.