If you've been checking my photo page, you know I am deep into snowy Bohemia this week. I am on a one-week tour through Vienna-Prague-Budapest and it happens to coincide with one of the biggest snowfalls this part of Europe has ever seen. It is very magical and appropriate for a trip to see the Christmas Markets of Eastern Europe, but not so convenient for travel and city sightseeing!

But you know, creative people find inspiration in the unexpected, so I've been enjoying the opportunity to photograph the countryside and the city with a delightfully picturesque blanket of thick snow.

Today was very special, because I got to visit a museum for an artist whom I have admired for decades: Alphonse Mucha. ("MOO-ka") To be able to see the original paintings for his famous posters up close and in person – to see his brushwork and even the faint trace of a pencil in the underdrawing – and to see his layout sketches next to his final paintings – was a thrill beyond words.

http://mucha.tyden.cz/index.phtml?S=home&Lang=EN

Mucha used photography in his work, like a director sets a scene. He would dress his models in costumes, set them up in poses and direct their facial expressions, and sometimes Mucha himself would model for his photo studies. It is easy to see how he drew and painted the heavy sculptural folds of the models' gowns, from these theatrically-inspired photo vignettes.

His "Slav Epic" is housed in another museum, and he used these photography techniques extensively for this huge project.

http://www.pricejb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/slav-epic/Gallery.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10929889

Quilters can use photos to inspire their own work too, whether it is a design motif drawn from architecture, a color story drawn from a famous painting, or an applique idea drawn from a garden photo. I hope that you will enjoy the photos I am posting this week (and next!), because they are the images that have most inspired me too!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luanarubin/

If you look through our eQuilter Art Nouveau category, you will see many designs that are inspired by Mucha's highly stylized illustrations of figures and flowers. Amy Butler's new group has some obvious Art Nouveau inspiration, and even my Joie de Vivre collection was inspired by this genre of art. Wanting more visual references of this romantic style, I bought a locally produced coffee-table (heavy!) book of his work, and dragged it around Prague for the rest of the afternoon. Ah, what we do for love.

This morning we visited the St. Vitus Cathedral up at Prague Castle complex, and saw Mucha's gorgeous stained glass window…a segment of which is featured in this week's Creative Nudge. You can see the photo of the larger stained glass window on my photo page, along with other creative inspiration photos.

Tomorrow we drive from Prague/Czech Republic, to Bratislava in Slovakia, then on to Budapest in Hungary. The stories of these former Soviet/Communist countries is heartbreaking, but it is wonderful to see the heart and soul of these nations exploding forth, 21 years after the Velvet Revolution.