Business Planning - An Odd Source of Inspiration
Posted by Leah on Oct 7, 2008
Now that my son is getting into a somewhat regular nap and bedtime schedule, I’m finding a bit more time to make jewelry - 30 minutes here and there where I can be reasonably sure I won’t be interrupted - and I realized it’s been a while since I sat down and thought about where my business is headed, what my goals are as an artist/crafter, and all that stuff that affects what I make, what I sell, and whether or not it’s profitable.
The other night after my son went to sleep, I sat down with a glass of wine and my journal and did some freewriting about what my ideal business would be like.
I helped clarify a few things for me: namely, that I’m in this business because I love making jewelry, so I should focus on making jewelry that I love above all else. Sometimes when I worry about the bottom line, I get trapped into thinking about what I make in terms of whether or not it will sell, or whether I can make multiples of it. And that can be very stifling, creatively speaking.
So, about halfway through my glass of wine, I decided no more making things that bore me just because I need a sale. No more worrying about the end result when I’m designing, since I can always take jewelry apart and use the parts in another way if it doesn’t turn out as fabulous as I envisioned.
And for some reason, all that daydreaming about the perfect jewelry business gave me a really interesting idea for a new series of jewelry, and I started sketching and freewriting about my design ideas. It was one of my most productive on-paper design sessions in…well, at least a year I guess. I got so excited about trying out my new ideas that I got out some wire and tools right there on my bed and started working on a few prototype pieces. They looked primitive, freeform, unique, exactly what I had envisioned. I was so excited I had to watch TV for an hour to get tired enough to go to sleep - something that hasn’t often happened since I became a mother!
Who would have thought a half hour of brainstorming about my business would inspire the best new design idea I’ve had in ages?
This is exactly why I have a hard time answering when people ask where my inspiration comes from. I really never know where the next idea will come from. But I’m thinking I should do some more business planning sessions if it leads to ideas I can be so excited about!
Stay tuned for photos from the new series! They aren’t done yet, but a few are close…
Monday’s Muse
Posted by Leah on Sep 29, 2008
Monday’s Muse is a blog meme to inspire creativity, started by Maternal Spark.
This week, I’d like to share a photo from my mom’s garden. She grows beautiful flowers and some of the best fruit and vegetables around - her garden is very inspiring to me, as it represents so much time and care. Plus I love the free organic produce all summer long! I snapped this photo a couple years ago, but I still love it. I got really lucky that I was able to hold the camera steady enough to get this:
Yellow Rose
Leftover Beads
Posted by Leah on Sep 8, 2008
I was just reading a recent post on Beading Daily about using up leftover beads, and I had to laugh. Since I usually buy beads wholesale, 90% of what I buy doesn’t get used up on the project or design I originally bought the beads for.
Autumn Leaves bracelet, made from leftover beads
So what do I do with all these leftover beads? Mostly, I organize them and reorganize them when I’m not feeling inspired, and usually I find something I’ve forgotten about that sparks a new idea for a piece of jewelry.
Certain types of beads that I use frequently, such as my better quality freshwater pearls, and a few sizes of semiprecious stones that work well in my designs, are organized in clear plastic divided trays. When I’m done making up a bunch of silver “frames” (that’s what I call my freeform metal pendants before I finish them off with beads), I get out a tray or two of these favorite beads and look for the perfect pearl or stone to complete my design.
Another thing I do is make up a bunch of dangles, without any finished design in mind. I grab a tray of beads, about 20 headpins, and make pairs of dangles, which can be used later on for earrings and other projects. This is one of my favorite things to do while watching Project Runway - it’s a fairly mindless task for me, since I make thousands of dangles, and then when I have a design in mind that requires bead dangles, they are ready to go.
If I’m really feeling uninspired by some extra beads, something that is fun to do is make “bead soup”. I take beads in a certain color scheme - maybe metallics, maybe greens, whatever - and mix them all together, then string them into necklaces and bracelets. Some of my favorite strung pieces have been made this way, and it’s a great way to use up beads that might not be appropriate for my metal designs.
Project Runway
Posted by Leah on Aug 14, 2008
In case you’re one of the two people alive who doesn’t know about Project Runway, it’s a hugely entertaining reality show about fashion designers. I love it. Especially when the contestants have to do really bizarre challenges, like make outfits out of food, or design WWE costumes. A few actually make things that look great and make sense given the constraints of the challenge, and the rest generally make ridiculous looks that the judges rip apart for our entertainment.
Fans of the show might enjoy reading Project Rungay, a blog by a couple of really funny gay men who critique all the outfits. It makes me laugh every time I read it.
However, I have to disagree with a point made in this post about Blayne. He’s 23 and he’s never heard of Sgt. Pepper…and they say that’s okay because the music came out two decades before he was born. Well, I’m 29, which isn’t THAT much older than 23, and I grew up listening to the Beatles. Did something change in the six years after I was born, and suddenly parents stopped liking the music they grew up listening to? I just don’t see how it’s possible not to be familiar with Beatles music, even if you aren’t a fan of oldies. I’m not particularly a fan of Elvis, but I’m familiar with his music, you know? Every karaoke bar I’ve ever been to is full of Beatles and Elvis songs, and lots of young people attempt to sing them….
Anyway - my opinions about music and pop culture aside - Project Runway is a really fun show, and it’s inspiring to me, as a designer, to watch what people come up with, and how well (or not) they execute their ideas. I think it would be really fun to get a bunch of independent jewelry designers together and do little Project Runway-inspired challenges, with prizes. Not that I have time to organize it right now, but it’s on my to-do list for someday….
Dream Inspiration
Posted by Leah on Jul 21, 2008
I love/hate it when people ask me where I get my inspiration. If you are a regular reader, you know that it can come from bizarre things like a broken dvd player, or rusty old coins, in addition to the more typical sources, like art and nature.
My favorite, and often most useful, source of inspiration is one that I have no control over - my dreams. Last night I had a dream about an exhibit of my jewelry at a cool gallery. In the dream, I happened to be there and forgot that my jewelry was there, so I was surprised to see that all the beautiful pieces I was looking at were made by me.
After looking at all of my beautiful jewelry (which I remembered well enough to sketch this morning & start to figure out a plan for creating), I decided to go swimming with some friends at an indoor lake, and then we went trick or treating and I ate some candy. Funny how the subconscious mind works. 
A few years ago, I had a dream about jewelry which led me to create a bunch of really interesting freeform pieces, so when I have jewelry dreams, I don’t ignore them - a gift like that from my subconscious is by far the best source of inspiration for my work, but it’s very rare that I get it that way.
The dream jewelry last night was all necklaces, some multi-stranded, with little sparkly stones, chain, and other elements. Centerpieces were slightly off-center, everything had a little funky edge, while still looking feminine and delicate. Really great designs, I think, if I can execute them.
I love dreams like this. I wish I knew how to have them more often - I do think that keeping up the habit of writing in the morning, which I’ve picked up from doing The Artist’s Way, helps me to remember and document my dreams, even though most of them are just crazy stuff (like the indoor lake and the trick or treating) or obvious references to recent events that I must have been thinking about when I drifted to sleep.
Rusty Old Coins
Posted by Leah on Jul 20, 2008
Old Coins
My husband recently found some rusty old coins from around the world. Some of them are probably very common, and are from english-speaking countries like Australia, but others like the one pictured above have interesting writing on them that we can’t read, so we can only guess where they are from. They are mostly from the 60’s, so we think the person who collected them was some kind of world traveller in the late 60’s.
I’ve been imagining the kind of person he was, and all the fascinating trips he went on - through Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and even Africa, bringing back a coin or two from each country he passed through. What kind of occupation did he have that required him to do such extensive travel? Or was he just lucky enough to have the money and time to travel all over the world for fun? Of course there’s the less romantic idea that maybe he was just a coin collector and didn’t actually go to all these places - but since the coins were stored in a jar and not particularly well cared for, I like to think they were souvenirs.
When I traveled around Europe the summer after college, I kept a few coins from each country I went to. I later drilled holes in a few of them and made myself earrings as mementos of my trip. Somewhere, I also have an envelope full of Mexican coins from a summer I spent in Mexico City. Something about the different look and feel of coins from other countries makes something that might only be worth a few cents seem much more valuable as a souvenir, so I never bothered changing the last of my money back to dollars when I left countries I’d visited. I imagine the man who collected all the coins we found doing the same thing, but about 40 years ago - and with significantly more funds, since he made it to so many countries that I’ve only seen in pictures.
Little things like coins or ticket stubs or old photos are great for using in mixed media jewelry and art. I’m not going to turn a 40 year old coin collection into earrings without first trying to find out if any of the coins are worth anything, but looking at them got me thinking about designing with found objects again. It’s been a while since I did a found object resin piece, and I still have some circuit boards from my former dvd player that I want to do something with…
Inspiration at the bookstore
Posted by Leah on Jun 29, 2008
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….
the guts of a dvd player
Posted by Leah on Jun 25, 2008
Have you ever wondered what the inside of a dvd player looks like? Honestly, I never had. But then my (cheap) dvd player broke, with a netflix movie stuck inside it. So…I took it apart.
One of the screws was on so tight that I ended up breaking the plastic exterior, and then I figured it was beyond repair, so I took apart all the stuff inside. Turns out dvd players have a lot of fancy circuit boards inside that look like the insides of a computer hard drive. (Bud dvd players are easier to take apart. If you’ve never tried taking apart a hard drive, you won’t fully appreciate just how difficult they are to dismantle - tiny, supertight screws, and thick metal casings - they are definitely built to last.)
I once got a bunch of free hard drives that someone was going to throw away because I thought pieces of the circuit boards would look really cool embedded in resin. But I quickly got frustrated with how difficult it was to get them apart and gave up on that idea.
Fast forward to last week, when my cheap dvd player broke. I finally have some circuit boards to make into jewelry! This one is going to look so cool once I get it cut into little pieces and covered in resin….
Inspiration in my backyard
Posted by Leah on Jun 18, 2008
People always want to know what inspires creativity, and it’s really hard to pin down. Lots of things can be inspiring - a conversation with someone, a beautiful piece of art, something in nature, and too many other things to list here.
I recently got inspired looking at what’s growing in my backyard.
A plum, not much bigger than a cherry, and still green. There are others that are bigger, but I don’t know how big they will get, or what color they will be when they are ripe. There is one plum tree in our yard, and another in the neighbor’s yard that hangs over our fence. I’m curious to see if they are the same kind of plums.
A little tiny pear. It will probably be a lot bigger when it’s ready, but right now, it’s about the same size as the little plums. There are hundreds of these on the tree right now.
Two walnuts growing together. A lot of people don’t know that walnuts grow inside a green pod, but there was a walnut tree at the house I grew up in, so I am familiar with how they look. We have two walnut trees at the house we live in now.
I’ve never been much of a gardener, although I would like to be one, so it is really fun for me to have these trees at the house that are already established and producing so much fruit. It’s like a mini farmers market in my own backyard!
Odd sources of inspiration
Posted by Leah on May 15, 2006
A couple weeks ago I got a really weird idea for a pendant. My thought process was basically, “so many people are making those circle pendants, but all they are is a fused or soldered jump ring, and that’s really boring. Wouldn’t it be funny to melt a bunch of my silver scrap into a circle shape and call it a fused jump ring instead of a circle pendant?”
Really random things sometimes spark an idea, and in this case, I’m really glad I decided to make the piece - in spite of the fact that it really isn’t funny at all. I ended up with a really interesting version of a circle pendant that’s nothing like the simple rings everyone is wearing on chains around their necks these days.
A couple months ago I found some really interesting rocks with holes in them. I don’t know how the holes got there, but there were a bunch of these rocks at the beach, and I took a few home and have been wearing them as pendants. It’s even simpler than the circle pendants - a plain old rock - but sometimes thinking of an object in a different way is all it takes to be a little creative.
