Finding Inspiration in Everyday Objects

Creativity doesn't always require exotic materials or elaborate setups. Often, the most innovative ideas come from looking at familiar objects with fresh eyes. Learning to find inspiration in the everyday items around us can transform our creative practice and lead to truly unique craft projects.

The Art of Noticing

In our busy lives, we often move through our environments on autopilot, barely registering the objects we interact with daily. To find inspiration in everyday things, we must first train ourselves to truly see them. This practice of mindful observation—what writer Jenny Odell calls "the art of noticing"—is the foundation of everyday inspiration.

Practicing Deliberate Attention

Try these exercises to enhance your ability to notice the inspirational potential in ordinary objects:

• Five-minute focus: Choose a common household item and examine it for five full minutes. Notice its shape, texture, color, weight, and how light interacts with it. What design decisions went into making it? How does it feel in your hands?
• Material exploration: Select an everyday material (paper, fabric, plastic) and list all its properties—is it flexible, transparent, durable? These characteristics might suggest creative applications you hadn't considered.
• Form study: Look for recurring shapes and patterns in your daily environment. The spiral of a phone cord, the honeycomb pattern of a speaker grille, or the elegant curve of a spoon handle might inspire your next design.

Transformation Techniques

Once you've developed the habit of truly seeing everyday objects, you can begin to transform them through various creative approaches:

Context Shifting

Taking an object out of its usual context can reveal its creative potential. Consider how Marcel Duchamp's famous "Fountain" (a repurposed urinal) challenged perceptions of art by changing an object's context. In your own work, try:

• Placing utilitarian objects in unexpected settings
• Using kitchen tools for art-making
• Bringing outdoor objects inside (or vice versa)
• Scaling objects up or down dramatically

Material Juxtaposition

Combining ordinary materials in unexpected ways can create extraordinary results:

• Contrasting natural and synthetic materials (wood with plastic, stone with fabric)
• Pairing hard and soft textures
• Mixing high-tech and traditional craft materials
• Combining materials with different temporal qualities (ephemeral with permanent)

Functional Transformation

Reimagining an object's purpose opens new creative pathways:

• Converting containers into light fixtures
• Transforming flat surfaces into three-dimensional forms
• Using fasteners (buttons, zippers) as decorative elements
• Repurposing structural elements as standalone pieces

Everyday Objects as Creative Springboards

Let's explore how specific everyday items can inspire different creative projects:

Paper Products

The humble materials we use for communication and packaging hold immense creative potential:

• Newspapers and magazines: Beyond collage, consider their structural properties for paper weaving, beads, or 3D constructions
• Cardboard tubes: These can become sculptural elements, sound instruments, or architectural models
• Receipts and tickets: The thermal paper's reactive properties can be used for heat-based mark-making
• Packaging: Embossing, debossing, and folding patterns from commercial packaging can inspire textile designs or paper art

Kitchen and Food Items

The kitchen is a treasure trove of creative inspiration:

• Utensils: The ergonomic forms of spoons, whisks, and spatulas can inform jewelry design or sculptural elements
• Food packaging: Netting from produce, coffee filters, and egg cartons all offer interesting structural starting points
• Food itself: The patterns in sliced vegetables, the crystalline structure of salt, or the color gradients in spices can inspire surface designs
• Containers: Jars, bottles, and tins can be reimagined as elements in assemblage art or transformed with various surface treatments

Personal Items

Objects we carry or wear daily can spark innovative designs:

• Keys: Their shapes, patterns, and symbolic meaning make them powerful design elements
• Eyeglasses: The mechanisms of hinges and the optical properties of lenses offer both functional and aesthetic inspiration
• Coins: Surface textures, edges, and metallurgical properties can inform metalwork and jewelry
• Buttons and fasteners: These small functional items contain rich design history and mechanical ingenuity

Developing a Creative Collection Practice

Many artists and designers maintain collections of everyday objects that serve as ongoing sources of inspiration. Creating your own inspiration collection can be a powerful creative practice:

Thoughtful Gathering

Rather than accumulating randomly, consider these approaches to building an inspiration collection:

• Theme-based collecting: Focus on objects that share a material, color, function, or origin
• Constraint-based collecting: Limit yourself to objects under a certain size, cost, or from a specific location
• Temporal collecting: Gather objects from daily walks, weekly markets, or seasonal changes
• Documentary collecting: Instead of keeping physical objects, photograph everyday items that catch your attention

Arranging and Revisiting

How you organize and interact with your collection affects its inspirational value:

• Create unexpected groupings based on formal qualities rather than function
• Periodically rearrange your collection to see new relationships
• Document combinations that spark ideas, even if you don't use them immediately
• Schedule regular "play sessions" with your collection without the pressure to produce finished work

From Observation to Creation: A Process

To move from noticing everyday objects to creating something new, consider this process:

1. Deep Observation

Select an everyday object and spend time with it. Sketch it from different angles, write about it, or photograph it in various lighting conditions. Document its physical properties, emotional associations, and cultural context.

2. Abstraction and Analysis

Break the object down into its essential elements: What are its defining shapes, patterns, textures, or functions? Create simplified drawings or diagrams that capture these essential qualities.

3. Transformation Explorations

Use techniques like exaggeration, repetition, fragmentation, or material substitution to push beyond the original object. What happens when you repeat its form 100 times? What if it were made of an entirely different material?

4. Integration

Consider how your transformed understanding of the object might be applied to your craft discipline. Could the texture of a pinecone inform a knitting pattern? Might the hinged movement of scissors inspire a jewelry clasp?

5. Reflection and Iteration

As you create, maintain a dialogue between your source inspiration and emerging work. Return to the original object periodically to see what new aspects you might notice.

Conclusion

Finding inspiration in everyday objects isn't just a creative technique—it's a way of moving through the world with greater awareness and appreciation. By developing the ability to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, we not only enhance our craft practice but also enrich our daily experience.

The objects that surround us—from paperclips to teacups, from bus tickets to doorknobs—each contain worlds of design intelligence, cultural meaning, and aesthetic potential. When we learn to unlock these qualities through mindful attention and creative transformation, we gain access to an inexhaustible source of inspiration that's available to everyone, everywhere, every day.

The next time you find yourself searching for a creative spark, remember that inspiration might not be found in dramatic landscapes or exotic materials, but in the humble, overlooked objects you use without thinking. In the words of William Blake, we can learn to "see a World in a Grain of Sand"—or perhaps, in the simple form of a spoon, the texture of a brick, or the shadow cast by a houseplant.