Michon Jewelry Blog

This is the first in a series of articles on creativity, specifically for jewelry makers. These articles will cover creative burnout, developing a style or a line of pieces with a similar look, sources of inspiration, thinking outside the box, etc, and I hope to include exercises to help jewelry makers get out of their comfort zone and start using their creative potential.

So here is Part One of the series: Where do you get your ideas?

People often ask me where I get ideas for new jewelry designs, especially with the abundance of magazines, books, and online tutorials about jewelry making. It often feels like everything has been done, which makes it very hard for a lot of people to think outside the box and come up with their own unique designs for wearable art jewelry.

It is a difficult question to answer, because a lot of the time when I get an idea for a piece of jewelry, I’m not completely sure where it came from. However, I have come up with a few tips, based on things that seem to help me when I’m having a creative block:

• Don’t worry about what other people are doing. If possible, don’t even look at the jewelry other people are making while you are working on finding your particular niche or style.
• Try a technique that you think is way beyond your capabilities. Sometimes happy accidents, and things you learn while trying to learn something completely different, become key to developing (or coming up with) a new design idea.
• Find inspiration in something completely unrelated to jewelry: lots of people are inspired by nature, architecture, colors in a painting or a flower, a sculpture, etc. Collect images that really grab your attention, and keep them somewhere that makes it easy to flip through them. I use 3-ring binders with sheet protectors, and slip pictures and articles from magazines into the sheet protectors.
• Jot down ideas whenever you have them. If possible, keep your notes and sketches with your collection of images that inspire you.
• Try to remember your dreams. A lot of people have creative flashes while they are asleep - and the more you get into the habit of thinking about your dreams each morning, the more you’ll be able to remember them.
• Play with your materials. Clear a space to work, and just arrange stones in different ways, mix up different color combinations of beads, or mess around with metal scraps, to see if anything sparks an idea. Or make a few ‘boring’ things. Sometimes the process of getting out an assortment of different beads for simple earring dangles reminds me of a really cool stone I have, or reminds me of a color combination I’ve been meaning to try.
• Practice techniques, without a finished product in mind. It’s hard to be creative with a technique if you aren’t really good at that technique. I had to make myself saw lots of straight lines, angles, and curves before I ever got a good idea of something to make that utilized piercing with a jeweler’s saw. And when I did finally get an idea, it was because I was practicing the technique on some copper sheet and realized that I had started making some very cool looking shapes, just by practicing making angles followed by curves.
• Instead of following tutorials to make a specific piece of jewelry, just do the technique parts of a tutorial. For example: you like the way a famous designer incorporates wirework into her designs, so you find a tutorial to make, for example, a pair of chandelier earrings using that exact technique. Instead of making the earrings, follow the instructions *only* for the wire technique you want to learn, and then try to come up with a way to turn what you’ve just done into the centerpiece for a bangle bracelet instead. Creative problem solving is a skill that you will absolutely need when making your own designs, so learn it however you can.
• Think about the things you like and dislike about jewelry. Do you love soldering, but hate the look of bezel settings? How else could you set a stone, that might be more appealing to you? Could you solder together mixed metals instead of setting a stone? Do you love the idea of wrapping your favorite cabochon in gold filled wire, but don’t like the particular way you’ve seen other people wrap cabochons? What would you change about a particular piece of jewelry you own? What about some of the recent jewelry trends: how do you feel about found objects or alternative materials? Are diamonds a girl’s best friend, or do you prefer colored stones? Are pearls amazingly beautiful or too classic for your taste? If you can define specific things you prefer about jewelry in general, you’ll be that much closer to defining the look of your jewelry. You don’t have to do it all - it’s okay to just make things that you like.
• Sometimes you have to just stop trying to force it. Get some exercise, clean your house, or do something creative but completely unrelated to jewelry: paint, sing, or play an instrument, for example. Or, if you are successful enough as a jewelry maker that you have orders to fill, work on those orders and be happy that you are earning money doing something you love. Stressing out is not conducive to creativity, so I also recommend making an effort to do relaxing activities, like taking a yoga class or going for a walk, or enjoying a cup of tea or a hot bath. This way, when you do get an idea, you’ll have energy to spare to start working on it.

That’s it for my tips on getting ideas, at least for now. For me personally, ideas have come from specific images like: the shape of a flower, twig, or leaf, the lines in a picture from an architecture or interior design magazine, shapes or colors in a piece of abstract art, the texture of a basket or textile art, and the way ocean plants and animals look. Sometimes I’ve gotten an idea because I noticed that a technique someone else uses would work really well with the freeform style I work in most of the time. A lot of the time, though, the ideas seem to come naturally while I’m doing something else, especially when I’m working on replacing stock or filling an order for designs that I can make pretty easily.