How to Inspire Creativity – Part I: How the Internet Can Help Inspire Creativity

I am starting a new blog series on creativity and inspiration. I haven't yet decided how often I will add to my series (probably once or twice a month). My first installment is How the Internet Can Help Inspire Creativity. I have included a number of web links to sites that I feel can be helpful.

Color and Texture

Color Matching
There are a number of websites devoted to color blending/matching. These sites are wonderful  when you are trying to find colors that coordinate with another color. Some of these sites will allow you to save your custom-created palette. Here are some of my favorite sites:

• http://www.colorblender.com/
• http://www.colourlovers.com/
• http://kuler.adobe.com/
• http://colormixers.com/

  

Photos
Photos are great for inspiring creativity. A photo of a flower, for instance, can help inspire a new project based on color and/or texture. There are many sites to find photos, but here are three popular choices:

• http://www.flickr.com/
• http://photobucket.com/
• http://www.webshots.com/pro/

  

Words and Fonts

As someone that writes descriptions for jewelry, I sometimes find myself looking for new adjectives to describe a pair of earrings, for example. When I need to get ideas for writing my descriptions, I will sometimes visit one of the following sites. The first two links are good sources for finding the names of particular colors.Words

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_color
• http://chir.ag/projects/name-that-color/
• http://thesaurus.com/
• http://descriptivewords.org/
• http://www.momswhothink.com/reading/list-of-adjectives.html#Adjectives

Fonts
Let me start by saying, I love fonts! I have been downloading free fonts for a long time now. There are so many styles to choose from, and then you have the dingbat fonts. If you have a photo-editing program like Photoshop, you might already know all the fun things you can do with fonts and special effects.

• http://www.1001freefonts.com/
• http://www.dafont.com/
• http://www.searchfreefonts.com/
• http://simplythebest.net/fonts/