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Showing posts from June, 2012

Where Does Inspiration Come From?

Paul tinkles the ivories with the Beatles 'Let it Be' Artists Inspire Artists  I was at my brother's piano recital yesterday and had a very interesting conversation with his 92 year old piano teacher and one of her students.  The student, who was an artist and had only started learning to play the piano, was talking about how she used sound to teach painting.  A long stroke was a 'shoosh' and making short, staccato brush movements went 'bup, bup, bup'.  I smiled and thought about how all creative types overlapped, embracing all elements of culture to enrich one's specific area of skill and passion.  A sculptor or painter often creates to music and, as a writer, I definitely pull from my cultural experiences, whether it's a symphony or an art gallery, to help formulate descriptions of feelings and senses to lay out on a printed page.   Nature Inspires Creative types see the world around them just a bit differently, which leads to the creation

Pinterest Skeptic Turned Convert

Pinterest Business use Still Minimal (photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net) Yesterday I decided I would participate in a webinar on Pinterest.   I have to admit, before yesterday I didn’t get it, didn’t want to and had enough on my plate, actually several spinning plates, that I didn’t need to add one more social media platform to my already crowded set of dinnerware.  Really… who wants to see a mish mash of photos of someone else’s favourite products?  I went for a walk just before it started and didn’t rush because I was still averse to the idea of being part of the herd.  What a bunch of lemmings , I thought.  But, I couldn’t ignore that it had quickly entered the top three most used social media platforms and as a professional communicator, I could no longer resist.  So, I signed up for Melanie Duncan’s ‘How to use Pinterest for your Business to get Traffic and Customers,” hosted by Carl White of Social Marketing Animals . I was late, but fortunately there were stil