It is all about the inspiration..

This past week in my new online course, The Art of Felting, we began with one of my favourite topics — inspiration. Before any designs are made or materials chosen, there’s that first quiet spark — an idea, a feeling, or even a small detail in nature that captures your attention and starts slowly making its way to your felting table..

For me, inspiration often arrives during my walks outdoors. I notice how light touches a patch of moss, the rhythm of grasses moving in the wind, or the way colours blend in a foggy morning landscape. These moments don’t immediately become artworks — they rest somewhere in my mind until they grow into something I want to express in my creative practice.

"Autumn colours" are my colours, which I have been using in my creative work for years.

Last week, I encouraged my students to explore their surroundings and start noticing what truly draws their eye or stirs emotion. Even though we’re only at the beginning, this stage is so important — it’s where every creative journey begins. Finding inspiration, your central theme, your focus point, is the first brave step towards your finished artwork. It is the beginning of everything. This moment decides the whole direction of your artwork!

If you’d like, you can try this too:

- Take a short walk (or just look around your home) and notice one thing that makes you pause — a texture, a colour, a form?

- Capture it in a photo or a sketch. Keep your ideas together in a safe place (box, sketching pad, journal or digital album), so you can easily find them for your future projects.

- Ask yourself what feeling it gives you — calm, excitement, nostalgia — and imagine how you could translate that into your creative work?

Inspiration is everywhere — we just have to slow down enough to stop, look around us, notice it and feel it. It is always inside us; we carry it everywhere, but sometimes lose the ability to connect with it.

Nature offers endless possibilities of inspiration for us.

Being creative souls can be and is challenging. Sometimes we have so much energy and inspiration that we simply cannot stop working.. Other times, we have to fight with our creative blocks and take time to find our focus again.

This is our never-ending battle to be able to live a fulfilling life as an artist. Feeling stuck is a completely normal stage in our journey, but it is worth remembering that growth only happens in the moment of crisis.

This part of the creative process has always been very close to my heart. Many years ago, I even wrote my diploma work about inspiration and turning textures & surfaces found in nature into a whole collection of machine-knit and felted scarves. Isn't it funny how certain choices, decisions made more than 20 years ago, still set your path and guide you through the darker times when feeling lost and unmotivated?

Remember this feeling, when you were flowing in your studio and nothing stopped you? When you totally lost track of time because the creative process carried you somewhere new, exciting, and unknown? Think about what triggered you before this experience. Might this work again?

Let's embrace it, see the beauty in it and move forward with our heads up and ready to always look into possibilities to feel inspired and motivated, it is worth it!

Be kind to yourself and be inspired,

Reena

If you’re curious about how inspiration becomes a finished felted wall hanging, you can read more about my course "The Art of Felting" here. Doors are open until the 31st of October, still time to join us and find your spark again!

If you have not received your free copy of "7 ways to find inspiration", you can get yours here, or my 40-page "Inspiration Notebook" is available here.