Take your creative projects to the next level with a mood board printed on the SELPHY Square QX10

Mood boards are used by designers, artists and pretty much anyone who has ever had to plan a creative project or find inspiration for an event or holiday. Essentially, they're a collage of ideas that can help you to sharpen your creative vision and bring your plans to life.

Whatever your project, whether it's redecorating a room or a final year fashion design assignment, gathering inspiration is key. You might be inspired by a ceramic pot in the perfect shade of blue for your interior design mood board or a bold patterned fabric that could take your dress designs to the next level.

Here, we'll look at how to create a mood board, some ideas for how to use it, and the ideal tools for printing your inspirational images.

You might already have lots of images on your camera or phone that could work as a starting point for your mood board. When you're out and about, make sure you capture shots of anything you see that inspires you. Think about colours and patterns and how they might work together. If you're planning to redecorate a room, maybe there's one key accessory that you really love, such as a vase in your favourite shade of blue. Use that image as a starting point, and then build your mood board around it, maybe with images of colour charts, soft furnishings or other accessories that might work well with your scheme.

Images paint a better picture than words alone and a physical mood board – photographs stuck to a wall, arranged on a pinboard or mounted in a scrapbook – provides instant visual impact (rather than having to spend several minutes searching through the photo library on your phone or computer each time). The Canon SELPHY Square QX10 is the ideal tool for creating high-quality prints of the colours and styles that inspire you. It produces 6.8x6.8cm square sticker images with a captionable border so you can add notes or comments about your ideas. The prints are rich in detail with impressive colour reproduction. Ink and paper for the SELPHY Square QX10 come in a set, too, making them easy to replace when you need to.

Your design inspiration is not limited to photos. A mood board for a fashion design project might also include fabric samples, coloured threads and buttons or fastenings. Combining textures with instant prints of your own favourite shapes and styles will all help to focus your thinking and really 'feel' your project. Think about how you display the items on your mood board to achieve the best effect, and how you arrange them so that they work together as a whole.

If you're working on an idea with other people, you might want to share your thoughts. Perhaps you're planning to come up with a new logo design and you need to decide on colour schemes, graphics and fonts or maybe you just want to discuss themes for a celebration. The Canon SELPHY Square QX10 is small, portable and wireless, so you can take it with you and print wherever you and your friends/collaborators are. You don't have to worry about leads or cables either, the SELPHY Square QX10 is simple to charge via USB and capable of printing up to 20 prints on one charge. If someone else has an image they'd like to add to the project, they can share it with you online and you can print it instantly.

The Canon SELPHY Photo Layout app enables you to personalise your prints with stamps, filters, borders, text and overlays. The app, which is free to download from the App Store for iOS devices or Google Play for Android devices, offers multiple layout options. You can shuffle images of different aspect ratios to create a collage or divide the paper evenly into two, four or eight photos a page.

Mood boards can be used in all sorts of fun ways. The anticipation of a holiday to somewhere you've never visited before can often be as exciting as the trip itself. You could collect images of the sights you'd like to see or the food you're hoping to try. Anything that sums up a general idea or feeling, such as the geometric pattern on a Moroccan tile or images of ornate Moorish architecture, helps to create a sense of place.

You can still incorporate print into your mood boards, even if you don't own a Canon SELPHY Square QX10. Canon PIXMA TS Model printers, such as the PIXMA TS5340a, TS6340 and TS8340, are capable of printing square photos using the Easy-PhotoPrint Editor app and square paper, such as Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II, which is available in 13x13cm and 8.9x8.9cm formats. Or why not try printing on Canon Magnetic Photo Paper and create a mood board of kitchen design ideas on your fridge? Simply connect your smart device via AirPrint (iOS) or Mopria (Android) to print photos straight from your phone.

Whatever your next creative project, compiling a mood board is the perfect way to gather your ideas and fine-tune your vision – give it a try and let it take you on an inspirational journey.

Written by Andrea Ball