What inspires me?

I thought, as a kind of get-to-know-me kind of post, I would talk about what makes me tick when it comes to making things.

1) Color. Oh how I love colors. Just like words, they seem to have mental connotations. One shade of yellow makes me think of dusty corn fields, but another shade is bright like a sunflower. They also have flavors, and when the right colors come together, it just looks scrumptious! I like to come up with color combinations or mini palettes when I'm feeling particularly inspired. Lately my favorite colors have been bright yellow and robins egg blue. there is a really awesome website that I just found that posts a picture, and then extracts some of the main colors from the picture to use in coordination with each other in whatever you want. I could look at this site for hours!

2) New supplies.
When I have this much yarn <- why buy more? Who knows, but I do...

I have a problem with buying too many new supplies. I am taking the first step toward fixing this problem by acknowledging it, so I'm working on solving it. There is something about walking into a craft store and seeing all the raw materials - I start thinking of all the different ways things can be used and then my mind goes into overdrive! I especially have a hard time with sales. If something is on sale I feel like I am doing a disservice to myself not to pick it up. I buy things I know I don't have a use for (yet) and I have even bought items whose identity and purpose were not clear to me just because they were 50-70% off. What makes it even harder, is that I do end up saving the day for myself on occasion when one of these sale binges pays off and I have just the right stamp/yarn/cardstock/ribbon to finish a project that I wouldn't have had if it weren't for my obsessive shopping... So in the end, it's a work in progress.

3) Pinterest. For those of you who haven't checked it out, Pinterest is a site that allows you to bookmark (pin) cool internet finds via images onto virtual pin-boards that can be categorized however you want. I both love and hate pinterest. I love how many awesome ideas there are and how easy they are to browse and then tuck away for drooling over later. I love that the links are imbedded in the pictures so there's no messy copy/pasting to deal with, and I love that it's all through images. However, I have been known to spend whole afternoons browsing pinterest and therefore being much less productive than I should have been. I have also been slightly deceived by both myself and the pinterest community - into thinking that I am an all powerful craft-ess. I have taken on projects with such magnitude and variety that I have simply gotten lost in them. It has taken a great deal of will power to limit myself to projects that are familiar and easy enough to actually accomplish, while still fulfilling my craft-devil-ess's needs to challenge myself.