'The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources'

What I have to blog about, jewellery wise, are my ideas, plans and mental wanderings. Like many I've let promotion get in the way of making, and that, fellow makers, has not worked for me. Stock making, flexing of hands and squinting of eyes are now the order of the day. Eventually I'll get it all balanced, along with a rewarding job, and shine, a crafting beacon. Of which there are a number, and greatly admired by me, especially when they are good enough to share their knowledge and experience, like Haptree.

My ideas are penciled into my sketch pad which sits on my desk or by my bed. I wish it's thick creamy paper could be covered by someone with skill and with whole pictures so that it could exist to it's full potential. To assuage my guilt I have just started using my Inkscape software to doodle in vectors. Having built stocks of beads, lovely, lovely beads, I've decided that my usp (humour me?) will be wire. Not Eni Oken style wire wrapping and art, but just using different guage wires to create shapes and patterns with differing finishes and textures. Like

With Einsteins (see post title) words playing on my mind, I wasn't sure whether or not to post about my current designs. I realise there is vanity here. After all, I am not a great or well promoted (ahem) talent , so any worries of my designs suddenly appearing in shops or catwalks are a tad indulgent. However, I support the ideal that a designer should enjoy producing their own designs, and if they desire, licensing the right to copy. Even tiny, beginner makers like me. I hoped to gain the wisdom of others, but, pushed to think for myself * brain grinds away *: reckon they're only mine, no big shakes, and hey, the blog is dated with my logo on the pics...Plus i find it interesting reading other people's blogs setting out their creative process -  Diomoglass, Averilpam and amyorangejuice to name but three
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I'd also love to hear what you think. Would you consider wearing any of them of them yourself (probably not the boys)?

From the top and left to right:
Kuromatsu as it is based on the shapes of the Japanese pine. Brass or copper wire with maybe some green coated copper wire to weave through one 'head' or to wrap round the bottom of all components. Probably oxidised (with eggs!)
Plumage (?) based on 'song' but with longer 'scales'. Mix of copper and brass wire, with some oxidised and /or hammered
Mirror (?) Silver wire, repeated shape, textured but left satin or shiny. Possibly using some wee mirrors I have.
Tori - based on a Japanese print (from Pattern Sourcebook, Japanese style) and the kanji for 'bird', which shows a little beak pointed right up in the air. Probably in silver and brass, with or without a branch. Not sure yet.
Pod (?) Lovely simple geometric shapes in brass, some hammered flat, some hammered with texture and using some beads to unbalance the piece a little more. Started on this one.
Grid (?) Simple and inspired simply by wire properties - it's lengths and plasticity. Hammer flat wire bent at 90 and wrapped once round any other tracks. May use silver, with one 'track' of brass and maybe one of copper. Ends will be bent over for comfort...

Kumo - little Japanese cloud with 5 raindrops / blue sky and a shaft of sun. I've changed the design in making it, as I expect to do with the others. A simple design, but not too similar to other clouds - i checked having make the cloud shaped, so hope I'm right and not stepping on toes.
Gan - means wild geese in Japanese. Will use fine chain to link the bottom two birds. not sure which wire yet - are they in daylight, or catching the setting sunlight...?
Maze - simple large, bold spiral. Nothing else. Probably in copper - and will make today. hurrah. Probably hanging from simple copper chain.

I have components or proto-components of all, but can't wait to get making and tweaking and deciding what to hang them from - chain, cord or handmade chain like Greenfinch? Planning in Inskscape has helped me work out proportion and placing, and how and where the components might be connected.

To finish, some other quotes on creativity:

In the spirit of a recent thread on Folksy - on worry and perfectionism:

“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”

Oscar Wilde

 

Something, maybe, for the banking and investment institutions and those in power who perpetuate the myth.

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”

Einstein

Cough ... stepping down from my soap box,

“The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.”

Frank Barron - a civil engineer, i think.

 

A prod for me to get making...

“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.”

Rita Mae Brown, writer

Cat