1. Notebook & Pencil
If you can, keep an small notebook and pencil on you at all times. Ideas often hit at the most peculiar of times, so keep a notebook so you can write down those thoughts when they hit. Got a free five minutes when waiting for a meeting? Jot down some notes – the first things that come into your head. A blank page is an open invitation for a creative, curious mind. You don’t have to write – you can doodle or draw too.

Leonardo da Vinci is a well-known for keeping notebooks. They show his creative thought processes and are filled with the wonderous – from flying machines to parachutes to folding furniture. Not everything in his notebooks is feasible, however ideas should spawn other ideas and thoughts and before you know it, maybe you too will have a master idea just like Da Vinci.

2. Ask Questions
Question your surroundings; Open your mind to new ideas and experiences. Questions are the key to knowledge and creativity. By asking questions, you will fuel your inner creativity. Many inventions and insights have come from the simple question of “why?”, or “what if…?”

3. Read
Read everything and anything you can. Reading enhances your mental ability and opens you up to new perspectives. When you read fiction, you experience worlds through the eyes of a different person, enhancing and introducing you to new perspectives.

4. Change is Good
Seek out new experiences – learn a new skill, take a new route to work, learn a new language. The mind has often been compared to a muscle – to coin a phrase, use it or lose it. By learning or experiencing something new, your mind starts to work outside of it’s regular patterns and it expands your creativity.

5. Use your imagination!
Albert Einstein once said, “You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” A great technique to learn is to talk to imaginary people. Pick some great historical figures who have strengths you admire. Imagine you are talking to these people – ask their advice on your problems or challenges and imagine what they would say to you in reponse.

This is a fantastic way of finding new perspectives and seeing your goals and challenges from a different angle.

In western culture, the wedding dress is normally white or cream. When a bride wears a white or cream wedding dress, the wedding can be referred to as a ‘white wedding’. The white wedding dress can be traced back to the marriage of Queen Victoria and Albert of Saxe-Coburg in 1840 when Queen Victoria chose to wear white. After the official wedding photos were released, many brides followed her lead and wore a white wedding dress and this tradition has carried on through the years.

In China, red is often the wedding dress colour as red is a the tradtional colour of good luck.

In northern India, many women have red wedding dresses too as this sumbolizes auspiciousness. Green is also a common wedding dress colour as this symbolizes fertility.

One of the factors in a nice smile is white teeth and so many people try to whiten their teeth in order to gain ‘perfect’ teeth. In tooth whitening, oxidising agents such as hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide are used to achieve the tooth whitening effect.

There are two main methods when it comes to tooth whitening. The first involved applying a high concentration of the oxidising agent onto the teeth for a short period of time. This is a quick procedure, but sometimes risks chemical burns to the soft tissues of the gums. The second tooth whitening method is to use a mouthguard to hold a low concentration of the oxidising agent against the teeth for a long period of time. This is a slower process than the first whitening process, however there is less risk of damage to the soft tissues.

There are risks associated with tooth whitening methods. Some of these risks include:
- damage to the gums
- sensitive teeth
- overbleaching
- the teeth actually darkening in colour

Some toothpastes also have tooth whitening effects. Tooth whitening toothpastes help to remove surface stains by using a mild abrasive in the toothpaste itself. Tooth whitening toothpastes do not contain any form of bleach therefore cannot change the colour of the teeth themselves – they can only clean surface stains off.

There are thousands of manufacturers of t shirts and there are a myriad of designs to choose from. Some t shirts can be used a marketing tool by giving out branded t shirts to users for free – when they wear them, other people will also see the branding on the t shirt hence the company gains free exposure.

T shirts come in a variety of colours sizes so that a wide range of people will wear them. Although the classic t shirt does not have pockets etc, some fashion t shirts do have non-standard bits on them to make them more fashionable. Some t shirts also now come with long sleeves.

There are also now companies which are able to print any picture onto a t-shirt for you at fairly low prices. Special printers for the home can also be bought which will print directly onto a t-shirt.

Sunglasses can sometimes be used by celebrities to mask identity. Since the early 1950s, sunglasses have been a fashion accessory, particularly on the beach.

There are huge ranges of sunglasses to choose from. Some sunglasses are made for particular purposes, some are purely for show. It is always best to buy reputed brands to ensure that the dangerous UV light is filtered from the eyes, so that you get the maximum benefit.

Prices for sunglasses range dependent on many factors such as the manufacturer, whether they are prescription or not and what materials they are made from. More fashionable sunglasses tend to be more expensive than non-fashion sunglasses.

In screenprinting, the screen itself is made of a piece of porous material such as silk, polyester or nylon stretched over some sort of wooden or metal frame. Areas of the frame will be ‘blocked’ off with a non-permeable material. These blocked off bits are know as the stencil. Ink is then place on top of the screen and a rubber blade is used to push ink onto the screen openings. The ink passes through onto the paper or fabric below, staining it.

Screen printing can be used for making paintings. Screenprinting can also be used in things such as birthday cake designing, decals, clock faces, the electromagnetic faces of Palm Pilots, and much more.

Screenprinting is more versatile than more traditional printing techniques as the surface does not need to be under pressure, and it does not have to be planar. Lots of different materials can also be used in screenprinting therefore screenprinting can be used in lots of different industries.

At it’s most basic, scrapbooking is just a photograph album, which most people have. Many scrapbookers will go further than this and add related newspaper clippings, nice bindings, decorations and letters to the scrapbook.

Many scrapbooks are made with a particular theme or occasion in mind, such as the birth of a new child, or the history of a person, or memories of an old house when you move on.

The most important item in scrapbooking is the scrapbook itself. It can be a permanently bound book, or it can allow for the insertion of extra pages. Basic materials needed for scrapbooking include corners for mounting photos, scissors, sticky dots, glue or cellotape and coloured pens. If you are really creative with your scrapbooking, you can use things such as rubber stamps, stencils, craft punches, embossing tools etc.

There are no ‘rules’ to scrapbooking, although generally, the more creative the person, the better the pages of the scrapbook are. Imagination is the key to scrapbooking!

There are three major types of rubber stamp: rubber stamps for the office; children’s rubber stamps; rubber stamps used for decorating.

Business Rubber Stamps
Business rubber stamps are custom-made, usually showing a corporate logo along with contact details. They sometimes have moving parts to allow for dates to be stamped too. They are often used in stamping incoming mail and memos.

In Europe, sometimes signatures can be officiated with a rubber stamp. If these stamps are lost or stolen, they can be used in forgery or fraud.

Decorative (art) rubber stamps & Children’s rubber stamps
There is a larger market in the US than Europe for rubber stamps. Art rubber stamps have intricate patterns or pictures on them and are used for things such as decorating paper for letters, greetings card and other similar things. Some artists also use rubber stamps in their artwork.

Polo shirts are normally made of knitted cloth (instead of wovan cloth). Most of the time, the cloth is pique cotton, or sometimes silk, merino wool or synthetic fibres.

The most famous polo shirt is the Lacoste polo shirt. However, nowadays, many companies make polo shirts – both branded and not branded. Polo shirts are available in a range of sizes and colours and many companies will now also personalise polo shirts with company branding.

Personals are a way to meet new people and are most often used to find a partner. Traditionally, personals were placed in newspapers where pages may be dedicated to the personals section. However, with the advent of the internet, there are many personals-type sites springing up where people can most more detailed profiles of themselves and the sorts of people they would like to meet. These websites help people reach a wider range of people than a newspaper personal column typically would, and can also help narrow the search thanks to a wider range of information available on their personals profile.