100 Days of I Spy Dice Designs: Celebratory Wrap Up & Reflections on Design Inspiration

Crossing the finishing line on these 100 Day Projects is always bittersweet. There is a sense of excitement in celebrating the successful completion of 100 consecutive days of creative play, sense of  relief to have a bit more time to myself, but also a sadness as each journey concludes. It usually takes me some time to reflect and there is so much I want to share from this project. So I've decided to celebrate with two blog posts starting with this first one focused on design inspiration. 

Finding 100 sources of daily inspiration can be a bit intimidating. Thankfully, rolling the dice provided a focal point for my daily I Spy explorations. 

1. Color - 22 rolls
2. Contrast - 12 rolls
3. Line - 16 rolls
4. Pattern - 15 rolls
5. Shape - 17 rolls
6. Artist Choice - 18 rolls

Each roll provided a lens for exploring the world around me and helping me see my surroundings in an all new way. Oftentimes, it was taking delight in seeing extraordinary color, contrast, line, pattern, and/or shape in everyday, ordinary objects that get overlooked in the hustle and bustle of life. Below are all 100 discoveries that inspired my daily play, although I took nearly 1000 more photos throughout the duration of this project that I kept in a back up inspiration folder.

Many of my I Spy inspiration photos were taken here at home. Despite living here for 13+ years, I discovered new delights on a daily basis.

The daily dice rolls also helped me to seek out and find new design discoveries throughout our neighborhood as part of our evening walks with the pups. Special thanks to my pups who patiently waited while I took lots of photos, and to many of my neighbors whose gorgeous gardens provided lots of inspiration along our walking route.

As the world reopens, I find myself venturing out more and more. Many of my travels ranged from an hour or so away from home to include trips to California destinations such as Palo Alto, Pacific Grove, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Fresno which included visits to museums, exhibitions, teaching, and judging. And then there were two big trips to Toronto for the SAQA conference and Kauai for much needed relaxation. Each of these trips provided a wonderful boost of design inspiration as there was always something new, different, and exciting to photograph!

Regardless of location, I noticed a few themes to my I Spy inspirational photos. Nature was by far the biggest source of inspiration, especially in the form of flowers and plants. Mother Nature provides such rich design inspiration in the form of colors, lines, patterns, and colors! Having this year's 100 Day Project dates coincide with our Spring season provided plenty of new discoveries as the landscape shifted with new daily plant growth and lots of brilliant blooms!

I also took great delight in celebrating the artistry of human-made creations, especially related to architecture, engineering, and interior/exterior decor. 

Several I Spy Dice Designs were inspired by food, whether they were the raw ingredients or sights seen while dining out and picking up to-go food orders.

One final genre of inspiration was related to travel: tires, vehicles, roads, and airports. This was especially fitting as there was lots of travel involved throughout this project!

It is important that I also honor many of the artists and teachers who inspired many of my daily creations:

• Wendy Solganik aka Willa Wanders and her fabulous mixed-media courses. Her "Love Your (Imperfect) Letters" course definitely helped me to improve and gain confidence with my hand lettering. The course concluded with 30 daily challenges, which I completed as I incorporated those designs and techniques into days 6 through 36 (as shown above), before repeating several of my favorites in subsequent days before going rogue towards the end! I also incorporated inspiration from several of Wendy's other classes including Watercolor Leaves & Florals, Wonky Bits, and of course Fodder School (all shown below).

• Drew Steinbrecher especially his free online class, Build your Creativity: Board Book Basics! which provided lots of tips for using the small kids board books for all 10 of my I Spy Dice Design books. His Print Your Creativity: Exploring Gel Plates! course also inspired many of my gel plate printed pages. 
• Jane Sassaman and her incredible Abstracting From Nature course that I took in November 2018. The exercises and lessons learned in that course continue to influence my artwork, especially these pages inspired by nature!

• Jennifer Wilkin Penick and her 1-hour Art Play classes which included Collage Valentines, Color Wheels, and Gel Plate + Stamps (as shown below). 

• Ali Baecker's Block Printing Classes as I carved several block prints used in this project.
• Coach Tammie Bennett's Dare to Show Up Group Coaching which inspired me to keep showing up in my art practice and inspired the playground-themed spread.
• Jane Dunnewold's Confident Color Class which inspired the color wheel play!
• Natalia Khorover's use of single-use plastic to create art.

In my next post, I'll share more about how sources of Fodder influenced my daily play, along with my favorite materials, techniques, and tools, along with how I organized all this fodder within my studio and what I packed for travel!