I’ve written before about my inspiration binders and inspiration boards, and the resulting outfits such projects inspired. But now that you’re unemployed (see all unemployment projects here!) you have time to go crazy with your inspiration binders and achieve something else equally important — getting rid of all of those magazines I know you’ve been saving.

I had stacks of Print, Oprah, Real Simple, Nylon, Teen Vogue, Good, and ReadyMade (between Oprah & Teen Vogue, try to guess my age!) piling up in my shelves and taking over my life. I am a packrat, so I couldn’t just throw them away.

I made multiple binders with the following categories: Fashion (with tabs for: hair, makeup, professional clothes, socks, and awesome outfits); Recipes (real food, desserts); Crafty Inspiration (Cool Page Layouts, DIY, and Home).

Here are some excerpts from my fashion binder:

Here are some Tips & Tricks for your binder making:

• In my fashion binder, I chose to cutout my fashion inspirations and mix them together on blank white paper under clear sleeves, but because most of the recipes I found took up entire pages, I just hole punched them and put them directly in the binder (with a blank sleeve at the front so I can take one to the kitchen and not ruin it).
• For my fashion binder, I only put in items I could feasibly make with my own wardrobe, this way the binder would be really useful when getting dressed (its purpose!).
• But I was too sad to leave some awesome fashions in the recycling bin, so I labeled one clear sleeve “Love Em” for outfits I loved but couldn’t see making with what I already owned.
• I also made an “Archives” sleeve to stuff in things that started to get old. This way, I can cycle through inspirations as my fancy strikes.
• I actually use my binders for reference! And you should too! Sometimes, I take out something cool and put it on my inspiration board (ie bulletin board hanging in my room reserved for inspiring things).
• If I like something on both sides of a page, I don’t use a white background in my sleeve. If something takes up too much space, but I think I might like to see the whole thing or if there is more info I might want to reference, I fold it instead of cutting it out. Sometimes I’ll tape extra info about a product onto the back of the picture if I think I’ll want to reference it later.
• Yes, you can probably do this project while watching reruns of everything you already watched reruns of on Hulu.

Finally, a crafty reader named Ann sent me the funniest email and an awesome project. While you’re going through your magazines, cut out little squares of solid colors and use them to make or decorate something you need, like a CD rack. I’ll give you her instructions:

“After many rounds of somewhat lame cross-stitch projects, I needed something different to do, so I decided to attack my mysterious Vogue subscription (mysterious because I have no idea why they’re being sent to me because, obviously, I can’t afford anything advertised there) collection. I needed a storage solution for my cds and whatnots, but since I couldn’t find a cool box that i liked from target, I decided to grab my scissors, magazines, and glue and get to gettin.”

“First, I cut down my Quaker Oats jumbo box to about 5″ high. Then I started ripping out pages from my magazine, focusing on those pages that were mainly of one color, or of fun pattern (stripes, plaids, and flowers). Then I started cutting out 2.5″ squares from those sheets of paper. THEN I folded in the four corners, glued, flipped over, folded in the four corners again and glued, to make mini squares. THEN I sorted them into ROYGBIV order, then glued them onto the box. I cheated a bit on the long sides, but I like the finished product well enough.”

With both of these projects in hand, you should be busy for at least two days!

Another page from my fashion inspiration book (see yesterday’s peek here). The eye section is actually one of my least used sections. There aren’t many places you can wear a giant silver lightening bolt over your face and it’s much harder than you’d imagine to not look like a freak with a big splash of gold glitter slathered around your eye or lime green eye shadow slicked under your eyebrows. But it’s fun to imagine what you could do, had you the talent or the time.

Since I recently posted pictures of my work outfits this year, I thought it would be a good time to post about my fashion inspiration binder. When I get dressed, I’m not so good at just going at it (especially not early in the morning). Despite the two-pound models (ugh, it does get me though!), I love fashion magazines, and can’t help peaking through Teen Vogue and Nylon (I have found that these two generally have clothes of the brightest colors), and sometimes others, like In Style or Lucky. I even get inspiration from catalogs, like Urban Outfitters, or pictures of styled celebrities in interview articles.

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE IT LARGER.)

For my inspiration binder, I cut or tear out pictures of fashions that I really like. Unless it’s something I’m totally in love with, I try to only pick things that I could make with my own wardrobe. I shop very, very thriftily (think generally less than $20 an item), so I don’t always have the exact latest styles, but usually you can layer something to make it look similar. Sometimes I’ll tear out a picture for the hair style, a good layering idea, a cool color combination, or seeing two patterns work together that I wouldn’t have expected.

In my binder I have a small hair and make-up section (the eye section is fun, perhaps I’ll post that another day soon), but it’s mostly full of fashions, and I even have a pocket in the back for “retired” pictures. Some things just get old or aren’t really your style anymore. Anyway, my binder is bursting now. Also, as you can see, I’m even actually a total dork when it comes to getting dressed!

See all parts of the Luke Williams interview here!

Okay, so, I hate to say it, but there is a little bit too much coolness packed into this post. I am sad to think that some of you will not click on every single inspirational link I provide you with!

Alright, so hopefully you’ve examined Luke’s “Thanks for Nothing” cards and read about his work. Now, read about who he’s inspired by (um, plus some other great links that didn’t fit in Part II):

So, who is Luke inspired by?

• His mentors & professors, including the fabulous Ellen Lupton (whose book Thinking with Type I spontaneously bought NEW one afternoon, something I hardly ever do).
• His parents, who are both artistic. His dad even owned his own graphic design studio before he had a family.
• Jessica, who I can only imagine is his girlfriend: “To be around someone with such charm, goals and motivation is contagious,” he says.
• The “fellow designers” of his generation, including Alex Trochut, Emil Kozak, and Christopher Cox. (You will be sorry if you don’t visit the web-sites of these fellows, their work is so cool!)

By the way, Mr. Cox runs the graphic design blog www.changethethought.com, to which our new friend Luke is a contributor. (It’s a well-designed page with great content, and cheap art for sale.)

Other links to visit: It’s Nice That (exhibition where Luke’s work is being shown), and Destroy Today (in case you are wondering: “To destroy today is to make the most of the day — destruction as a form of creation”) the web-site of a fabulous web-designer I have come across many times before, who is apparently working with Luke to re-do Luke’s web-site!

If you can’t get enough of Luke you can order prints which will be “happily produced upon request.” Just send him an email at luke@lukelukeluke.com.

In this post, I’m going to explore just a few (okay, a lot) of A Print A Day illustrator Yasmine’s inspirations (read about her blog and her life history here (scroll)!). In the following few images, an “inspiration” image will appear on the left while a few A Print A Day images will appear on the right.

I think my inspiration comes from everyday things, from the weeds that grow on my lawn to breaking into an old abandoned mill and finding a treasure trove of decaying awesomeness. I like “pretty” things, but what I find even more attractive are the layers underneath. — Yasmine

LOCATION

Yasmine has lived all over the world, and is frequently inspired by her location. San Francisco offers everything from “the cute little mushroom grafs on the ground to the gorgeous Victorian architecture,” says Yasmine. While her other home in Arizona is more relaxed, she still finds inspiration in everything from “the tiny scorpions to the crazy amazing skies, especially during a thunderstorm.”

Yasmine has several mushroom prints, the one on the far right (Red Caps, a notepaper and label version can be downloaded free here) is one of her favorites.

COMICS

Yasmine was obsessed with comic books growing up, and still loves them now. From them she sometimes borrows a graphical pop-art aesthetic (middle) or classic comic panes. (Little-known fact: Yasmine’s blog was initially going to be an online comic! She says she still might make a printed comic or a zine one day.)

Some comics Yasmine loves (left to right, then top to bottom, click on image for larger version): Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, Blankets by Craig Thompson, Uncanny X-Men, Tank Girl, Archie, Tekkon Kinkreet (and other Manga), and Ghost World.

FOLK ART

“I get a majority of my inspiration from folk art: America, Russian, Filipino, or otherwise,” says Yasmine. “I love Amish craftsmanship and lines. I LOVE Pennsylvania Dutch images. I love ikat and batik patterns.”

FAMILY

Yasmine says she learned a lot of both the art and business of her work from her family. Her mom was an animator for Jem & the Holograms, and, in similar bright-color fair, Yasmine later worked for Lisa Frank. Some of her work still shows off such bright colors and cartoon-flavor.

OTHER ARTISTS

Yasmine admires a lot of illustrators, especially fairy-tale artists & self-taught artists (hence the folk art, which I’ve collected in the lower left hand corner of this image).

Left to right: Henry Darger (Check out this guy’s life story on Wikipedia! He was a recluse and his work was discovered posthumously, & his work is now one of the most famous examples of “outsider art“.); Edmund Dulac, who drew beatiful fairy tale images (she also loves Arthur Rackman, who also drew fairy tale art); Beatrix Potter; Gregory Blackstock, a man diagnosed as an autistic-savant who draws with amazing detail (Yasmine pointed me to a youtube video of him here); Folk Art: Pennsylvania Dutch, ikat and batik fabric patterns; Vera scarf (cool patterns on these).

This is the sad but true end to my Yasmine interview! You can view Parts I-III of this interview here and, of course, you can visit A Print A Day for more prints from Yasmine!

Yasmine, illustrator & owner of the blog A Print a Day (see previous post for more info), has, thus far, had an incredibly interesting life. Here’s the short version. (more…)