Great Minds: The Muse Gets Around
Have you ever had an idea that you’re sure is unique only to realize you weren’t the only one with that idea? Sometimes the muse is patient and lets an idea marinate. Sometimes she wants it done YESTERDAY. And when she wants the idea out there, she’s going to make it happen.
As a creative professional, I’ve spent a lot of time considering the idea of “the muse.” In mythology, the muses were a part of the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses and were believed to inspire art, literature and scientific discovery. I tend to align a bit more with Elizabeth Gilbert’s view in her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. She presents the idea of inspiration as an external force that comes and goes, something we partner with rather than own.
I like to think of the muse as the creative flow state we find ourselves in as artists. Sometimes it comes as a lightning-in-a-bottle stroke of genius. Other times, it's a shared creative wave that sweeps up multiple artists at the same time.
While I definitely have moments of immediate inspiration and creation, the process for creating nail art tutorials and looks for the blog (and my personal artistic fulfillment as well, lest we forget) is much more intentional.
It starts with looking forward to the months ahead. I’ll start gathering inspiration online, especially Pinterest, and in the wild when I’m out and about and see a garment, piece of art, texture or color palette that speaks to me. I start thinking about the trends for the months ahead and how I want to influence, partake in or create them, which honestly could and probably will be a blog unto itself because I’ve got big opinions on that.
I start thinking about the product launch pipeline for my own brand, Vacation Nail Shop, as well as the brands I regularly partner with, like KOKOIST. Once I’ve gathered everything, I look for common threads, organize everything by concept and create mood boards.
Once the mood boards and concepts are locked in, I start workshopping the nail art looks, taking note of what’s working and what isn’t. If I feel like a concept is particularly strong but I’m just not the artist to execute it, I pass it to one of my friends who I think can do it justice.
When the concept works, I take a picture and make notes on the process and the things I want to highlight in the voiceover. I photograph and write down my entire product list so that when I go to film the tutorial, I’m moving at a fluid pace.
This is the process BEFORE I ever film a tutorial or write a blog.
So, imagine my surprise when the tutorial I had just workshopped, told nobody about and was so excited to film showed up in my Instagram feed. Same orange and black stripes. Same little ghost peeking through. Fully filmed and executed almost identically to the way I had workshopped it. They even included the exact same inspiration image I had saved to my private Pinterest board. The artist, Kurtie (@sipsntipsbykurtie) did a wonderful tutorial video (click here to watch), that you should definitely check out and give them a follow.
Thankfully, I hadn’t filmed my tutorial, so the time lost was minimal. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a little internal fist shake and laugh at the muse, who clearly decided to visit at least two of us at the same time.
Alas, we retire the striped peek-a-boo ghost nails to the concept graveyard (pun intended), and although I didn’t get a cute tutorial out of it, the muse still found a way to inspire this blog post.
Now I am curious, how many of us had that exact image saved to our Pinterest boards?
