Anyone who has been visiting Planet Penny for a while will know I sometimes struggle with inspiration, as I’m sure we all do from time to time.  I thought I’d share some of the thought processes which have wombled through my head over the past weeks.  From my point of view it might just help to put it down in writing to come back to when I next get stuck.  Or it might just reveal to the world the scarily weird contents of my brain!  Who knows?

Anyway, I know it all began with the disaster zone which was my studio.  I was struggling to make anything because every time I needed something specific I wasted half a day looking for it and getting cross, with myself and everything else.  And while I was making excuses to myself about how I didn’t have the time to tidy the studio because there was so much else to do, I wasn’t doing any of the stuff – because the studio needed tidying!

Add starting the New Year with losing poor old Henry, and then the fun and games with the fire…need I go on?

So gradually I got to grips with the chaos.  And started looking at the sheer amount of things I have got squirrelled away which rarely if ever see the light of day.  And that’s where the idea of sharing some of this treasure via the Box of Delights came into being. Sliding off on a tangent from this we come to the stack of magazines.  I know I got bogged down by the feeling that you have to buy the magazine that everyone else is reading to keep up with what is going on but there is so much out there now and I realised that Mollie Makes just wasn’t pushing my buttons any longer.  It’s the magazine I would have loved when I was in my 20s and 30s,  but that was then. So, in the market for something completely different via a series of happy accidents (all my best things seem to arrive via a happy accident!) I discovered Flow Magazine. Now Flow is published in the Netherlands but produces an International version in English four times a year.  I loved the look of the Paper edition, such a pretty cover… …and was very excited when it arrived.(Ed to add: it may be out of stock but it’s worth contacting Flow via the website to see if it will be reprinted)   It’s full of postcards, envelopes, wrapping paper, gifttags, pop-up landscapes, paper bunting and lots more. It was this little project which took me off in another direction…

…covering and lining matchboxes.  The projects in the book started me off although I had to be a bit inventive as Dutch matchboxes are a slightly different size to UK ones.  Once I’d made my own template I was off.  (We have so many loose matches in our house now I think I’ve become a fire risk again but I’ve now bought a supply of blank boxes!)

I now have a tray filled with the wherewithal to create a little box whenever I have a pause in whatever else is going on, or a sticky patch in the creative flow.  And not only does it ease me through the stickiness but I have yet another little box…

…which is perfect for filling with a miniature selection of little treasures for the promised runners up prizes for the Box of Delights giveaway.

This is just a snapshot of what has been going on, very often the contents of my brain are as chaotic as the studio was, but like the studio, it pays to tidy up!

I’m very behind with my blog posts (I’m blaming our awful internet connection amongst other things) so I hope to be back very soon to catch up.  I have an important announcement about the Planet Penny Cotton Colours amongst other things, so…

See you soon…x

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