My Own Inspiration

I find myself racking my brains to create something original at the moment. The popularity of crafting and sewing has brought about so many lovely and wonderful objects of inspiration. There are so many talented designers and makers all over the world that it feels almost impossible to create anything that's unique and I can say "designed by me". What a talent that would be. It feels that the line between using others work for inspiration and (that horrible word) copying, is a fine one.

I want to design a new toy character for Baby Boudoir but when I look at my doodles, I feel sure I have already met the little character in front of me. Where? Where have I met this little dude before; in a children's book, on the Internet, in an advertisement, on the television, in a film? So when your mind is swamped with images, how do you come up with something original? I want to, I really do.

Can we have too much inspiration, stimulation and easily available imagery? Type 'softies' into Google images and you have 147, 00 choices! It's the same with music, how do bands create such a 'new' sound when there is already a million zillion songs? They are clever, very clever.

Is it bad to know and see too much?  I feel like I need to hibernate for a decade and wake up fresh; uninfluenced, unprogrammed and empty. Ready to be my own inspiration.