Hello friends! First of all thank you soooo very much for all of your wonderful feedback on the KELOLAND Living segment. I could feel my village rally around me as the day went by. You all are the very best, and I would not have the courage or confidence to do all of this without each of you. I read every comment, text, message, and email and they melted my heart! The entire experience was an absolute blast and I look forward to working with their team again someday!

We have had the most beautiful fun packed fall.  I cannot believe November is here already. The days are long, but the years are short is an understatement of the century.

This mama has been a little emotional as my last little turned three last week. I can see his little body and mind transforming before my eyes. Both my boys were chubby little babies with rolls for days. I can see my youngest is starting to stretch out. His little cankle wrist are starting to disappear and he is developing an opinion of HIS OWN, ha! Soon he will be towering over me like his big brother. If you are looking for me I will just be over here bawling my eyeballs out with my chocolate covered coffee beans and coffee.

Sigh

On to one of my favorite topics….Inspiration or Mood boards. I recently had a request for a tutorial on how I create my Inspiration boards. I have always had my little pinterest boards going for whatever room I am working, but in the last year I started creating Inspiration boards for specific rooms I am working. I love using these when I am working with others on designing their space. Some of them use the board to make purchases for their room. This has been especially helpful when I am shopping online and I want to see how things play off of each other. I can easily pull different pieces in and out of the look to make my final decision.  This tutorial today will focus on the technical steps I use when creating a Inspiration board.

Tools

Snipping Tool

Canva

Sherwin Williams Color Tool

Get Started

Capturing Images

I use my laptop to create these, because I find it easier to have multiple tabs open. I am also typically doing this while I shop on line. The first tool I use is the snipping tool on my computer. This is a very easy program to use. Once opened you just click new, then click and drag to capture the portion of the screen you want. Once I have the image I want I hold down CTRL + S to save the image to my computer.  I usually have a folder on my computer for the project I am working on.

When I am shopping online I like to use the product image with no background vs the staged picture. This allows for a cleaner look, see the example below.

Sometimes I don’t have a clean image like this. For example when I have an item in my home I and I cannot find something similar online. In this situation I take a clean well lit photo ideally in the room the item will be placed in. Sometimes I have used an image then opened it in paint to remove the background. This is definitely a personal preference, but I just like my boards pretty clean and crisp. You can see a sample below where I did this.

Capturing Colors

 

I use the Sherwin Williams Digital Color  Wall to formulate my color pallet. I absolutely love this tool for this purpose. When it comes to picking out wall colors I still do use a swatch and sample. Colors can vary dramatically due to screen settings and lighting.

To use the color wall just click on the specific color. If you want to see a larger sample select  “view details”.  Once you do that they even have an example pallet as well as similar colors. I usually take a snip of the color swatch including name, then save to my project folder.

Creating a Inspiration Board in Canva

Now that you have your images you are ready to create in Canva. If you haven’t used this web based product before it is absolutely awesome. I not only use it for this purpose, but for most of my graphics including my logo. I love that it is web based and the free version has a ton of functionality. There is even a mobile app I have on my phone. Typically I only do simple graphics on my phone and do larger projects like these on my laptop. You can even save projects or make copies to have multiple versions.

To get started you will follow the steps on the website to create a log in. Then Click Create a design on the upper left hand side of the screen.

For my design boards I typically select the pinterest graphic option.

Then you will have a blank slate  like you see below.

On the far left side is the menu for all of the items you can add. I start in the elements section, third from the top.

Once you click Elements a secondary menu appears. I like to have my color pallet in each of my design boards. The grid option allows you to organize images in a nice even fashion. I select that first to create place holders for my colors.

You can see I typically use the one highlighted below in red, because it has 5 color slots. I have found that to be the perfect amount for my color pallet.

Once you click your grid it will populate on the blank project. To begin it takes up the entire page like you see below.

 

First you will want to select the image by clicking it. Then the size buttons appear on the corner and the rotate appears on the bottom, as seen below.

I begin by sizing the grid down to make it manageable. You do this by clicking the corner and drag the image to a smaller size.

 

Once the image is sized down I use the rotate button indicated by the small circular arrow, to rotate the grid. You can move the image by selecting it and dragging it to the desired position.  I like my colors at the top of the page when I am using the pinterest graphic layout.  Like you can see below.

Now that you  have the foundation you can upload your colors and items in the upload section location at the bottom of the menu on the left side of the screen.

Once you click upload another secondary menu will appear. You have the option to upload images from your computer, Facebook, or purchase them on Canva.  I typically upload them from my computer by selecting the green “upload your own image” button while upload is selected.

Like most uploads a box will appear for you to locate your files. You can upload multiple files at once, and access files you  have used on other projects.  To use the image simply select it from the menu of images, or you can also drag and drop them into the collage.

Now that you have the basic functionality down you can resize and move your images around the screen until you have the desired look. I have an example below.

Once you have  the image completed you can download to your device by clicking the download  option in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

I typically use the drop down to select JPG for my image type.  Then the file can be found in your downloads folder on your pc. Below are some more examples of other inspiration boards I have done. You can click the image to see the post related to each of them.

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial. Once you get the hang of things this really is an amazing tool. If you create your own inspiration board don’t forget to tag or message me. love following your projects!