Take a moment to relax with illustrator Ilanit Shamia's perfect morning ritual

What do you do in the morning? Scoff down some breakfast while frantically getting dressed before you dash out the front door? Even though it can feel like there's never enough time to prepare for the coming day, Ilanit has found a way by pausing in a nearby cafe, sipping on a coffee, and taking a moment to read newspapers and magazines.

And it's this perfect morning ritual she has illustrated in her project Coffee:Reading, an endearing series of images that pair a cup of coffee with a choice quote she read while drinking it.

"For some people, having a cup of coffee is not more than a casual hang out, but to me, the morning coffee especially is a short period of solitude, a meditative act," she tells Creative Boom. "It frames a few moments where I can sit still and clear my mind, just before a new hectic day is about to burst in."

She adds: "I like having my morning coffee in a cafe, for two reasons. First – making good coffee at home is such a hassle that it ruins the moment for me.

"Second, I need to be surrounded by the sounds of the city to find my inner peace. I have no reasonable explanation for that matter. It is what it is. Me."

The project begins during Ilanit's time at art school. One day, she found that a new cafe had opened on the ground floor of her building, so she started visiting it before taking the bus to the campus. "It was the right place at the right time because I needed an hour of quiet (inner quiet) before I headed to yet another day of stress at school."

Then, one Friday a few months ago, she was served a coffee in such a beautiful cup that she had to take a photo of it and post it on Instagram. "I casually laid the cup on the newspaper, so the obvious caption was 'coffee reading' - the double meaning made me laugh because everyone who knows me knows I'm far from taking any spiritual path."

Shortly afterwards, she received a text from a friend pushing her to do something with this amusing pairing of words and images. Having longed for a new idea, Ilanit ran with the suggestion and started the daily project Coffee:Reading (or in Hebrew translation: Koret-Bacafe).

"Every day, I illustrate a different cup of coffee, I also take out of context some words from an article I read and found interesting or poetic, and I'm adding the link to the article," she explains. "It's that simple. I've illustrated more than 100 cups of coffee in the past months, and I'm still passionate about it."

Stay up to date with what Ilanit is drinking and reading by following her Instagram account, Coffee:Reading. Who knows, maybe checking in on it will become part of your perfect morning ritual?