Michon Jewelry Blog

One of my favorite things to do to get inspired is spend some time browsing at a good bookstore. There is a pretty good one near my house that has a huge selection of magazines, including a pretty good craft section and a pretty good art/photography section. There is also an aisle full of craft books, so there’s always something new to look at.

I always leave itching to make something. With so many great books and magazines to look at, it’s almost impossible not to feel inspired. Yesterday I flipped through a fun book on making jewelry with found objects (of course I can’t remember the title now), a book of hideously ugly crochet patterns, and a couple books of knitting patterns. Most of the time I don’t want to make the majority of the projects in craft books and magazines, but I have a great time looking at them. The ugly crochet book was amusing, and showed me a lot of things to try to avoid doing! The jewelry book gave me some ideas on how to incorporate certain kinds of elements into a piece, and definitely made a case for the messy-on-purpose look, which the author did really well.

Now the only problem is finding time to try all these things…at the moment, I have so many projects in progress that maybe what I need is less inspiration rather than more. It’s definitely possible to get overstimulated with so many ideas. I have beads to make into something great for the Jewelry on Etsy team summer beading challenge, I have a package of new jewelry that needs to get labeled and boxed and sent off to Exhibit One (including those two rings I was trying to decide what to do with), I’ve been swatching with lace weight and even finer yarns and have some necklace ideas, I have photos to edit of earrings I finished yesterday, and I’ve recently gotten into using my graphics program (PSP) to design banners and stickers and things (the new banner on this blog was a first attempt, which I like but want to refine a bit more). And now I want to do some found object assemblage jewelry, since I have the DVD guts lying around and I got inspired by that book yesterday….