Inspiration

Even the wildest dreams have to start somewhere. Allow yourself time and space to let you mind wander and your imagination fly.”
-Oprah

When planning an event, anything from a small dinner party to a larger gathering of friends, my favorite place to start is by creating an Inspiration Board. This is a time where I can explore my creative ideas and imagination. I usually start by looking at blogs, books, fabric, etc. to start collecting photos, color swatches, designs and other things that inspire me. Once I have all of my items together I start to arrange them either in a creative software on the computer or if they aren’t photos on the computer I clear a space in the living room and start laying all of the photos and items out. By doing this a theme and usually a color scheme starts to build and you also realize some of the things you have in front of you don’t go together or fit together well. Once you separate out all of the inspirational items either post them on a board together or print it out to have.

Building an inspiration board will help you get your thoughts together and streamline your vision for the event. Carry around your board, or at least a photo of it, while you are shopping for decorations, picking out flowers and any other planning trips that you take so that you will know you are staying on point with the vision for the event.

What does an inspiration board look like, you ask? Well it’s your lucky day because I have examples of some inspiration boards below. First, is the one that I built for the baby shower I’m throwing for my Sister. I will be talking a lot more about the shower and different ideas and planning details later, but here you can see the inspiration that I am building off of. I started with so many different ideas and themes but by making this inspiration board it helped by hone in on my vision for the shower and come up with some great ideas. It helps me keep my thoughts and ideas organized. If you are like me when you are planning you think of so many great ideas but they are at opposite ends of the spectrum. You have to wrangle the creativity in a bit and decide on one vision and the inspiration board is a great way to do that.

Here are some other great inspiration boards that I found:

This beatuiful board from Canvas & Canopy Events‘ blog shows the color scheme, patterns and look that they are going with for this event. You can tell right away from looking at this exactly what the feel and style of the event is going to be.
Beautiful inspiration boards like this make me want to be a guest at these events!

Here is another great Inspiration board from Paper Doll Romance blog. This board is very specific on the color scheme for the whole event. This will really help the planner and all of the vendors stay on the same page with the colors of every aspect of the event. This is a great example of picking actual items, like the fruit at the top, to base colors off of. It’s something that everyone involved in the planning process can relate to and envision right away in their heads.