January – birds, birds, birds

There is nothing like a new year to bring about a sense of re-set even if a complete fresh start is not really needed.

Some years I don’t want to celebrate the passing of one year into another, some years I need the blank page/fresh start feeling that a new year can bring, some years I need to feel like I can write something new into existence.

This year I just wanted to spring clean and re-set my creative system.

So I spent two whole days last week removing all the old to-do lists, old inspiration material and old designs etc from my board and filing them away without a telling off from myself if they never came to anything – everything finds a time and place eventually, this I am learning.

Birds have been on my mind for a while now. I often find that I am percolating inspiration when I’m working on other things and collecting towards the beginning of a project.

And how! When I started filling up the board (which is huge) I found I didn’t have room for everything without taping stuff to the walls and hanging a mini-washing line up too.

I love it. It is a creative volcano of birdy inspiration.

My friend Dana had been painting birds just before Christmas.  I was so taken with this Blue Jay and so delighted when he came to live with me here.

And what serendipity that he arrived in the mail on the day I was finishing my pinning up. She has such a talent – have a look in her shop if you’d like your own bird.

I also had a new teapot for Christmas and some new bird tiles and when I got out my collection of bird books I could see just how long I have been percolating this collection.

I’ll show the books on their own one day as this is already a photo heavy post and the books deserve to be seen close-up as the illustrations are beautiful.

And then as if to seal the deal, this weekend I opened my Country Living magazine to find even more inspiration in the form of this…

I could be here for some while!