inspiration day

Yesterday, Melissa and I went on an inspiration photo shoot day. I had been wanting to do something like this, ever since I worked my way through "Finding your Muse" an online class by Alisa Burke that Melissa had told me about (it's free and well worth your time to explore!). I also watched all of the lectures from Craft Con on Craftsy (yes they are free too!). They were all so inspiring. I especially loved David Butler's lecture on Homemade Lifestyle Photography and Heather Jones Everyday Inspiration in Modern Quilts. Well worth my time.

So back to our inspiration day. Melissa and I tossed around a lot of ideas. In the end we decided to spend a good bit of the day at the Dallas Arboretum for Dallas Blooms. The fact that it was 70 and sunny here yesterday just might have had something to do with our decision. The flowers were beautiful. I found lots of color inspiration in them...

But I really tried not to focus on just pretty flowers and color. Between Melissa and I, we took well over 300 pictures.

 Can you see the two of us taking pictures here? That's my shadow taking Melissa's picture while she was taking a picture too. Pretty clever. I wish I could say I planned that but alas it was a happy accident.

I did focus a lot of my attention on shadows....

I also tried to find interesting architectural elements...

I plan to do more blog posts on how these photos are inspiring me. Oh, and there was a photo shoot of my latest quilt too. More on that later. 

We left the arboretum hungry and tired! I dragged (ok, she went willingly) Melissa to my favorite gluten free restaurant The Company Cafe which was not far away. I really did intend to take a picture of the incredible sweet potato fries but before I knew it the bowl looked like this...

As you can see, we enjoyed them. I'm looking forward to more inspiration days in our future.