Creative Is My Middle Name

After you look at jewellery long enough, you get bitten by the creative bug. A little of the old "I can do that - but way better" strikes you. Believe it or not, it's actually a bit more difficult than you'd first think.

Charm bracelet - pretty, but not technically challenging

First, you have to figure out what you're going to make - necklace, brooch or bracelet? I'm not including the charm bracelets I currently make in the artistic category - it's not that technically difficult to thread beads on a bracelet (I know, shocking to learn isn't it?), even though some days the beads are little escape artists. The creative part is making the whole bracelet look pretty and not like a bunch of beads bunged on any old how.  I'm fairly good at that part, but it rates close to a zero in the technical challenge department.

So, what do us artists do when we want to create our art? We go shopping! An artist must have pretty much any type of material to hand, in order to design and create said artwork - in this case, hand made jewellery. Once all the materials are in the "studio", then it stands to reason that the artistic juices flow and beautiful jewellery is the result.

The shopping part (which I flew off to do quickly) was completely daunting. Do you know how much jewellery stuff is out there? Three hours later I came home with the most pathetic little bag of goodies imaginable and then had to put it out of sight because I was so traumatised by the whole experience.

I found this very similar to shopping for fabric - I'm female therefore I must know about fabric, right?  Wrong - I don't sew, I know nothing about fabric, and find all the women making a beeline for the exact thing they're after quite scary.  How do they know what to get? And an even bigger question - how do they know what to do with it all, once they have it? Were they born with a fabric gene, whilst I got the tree climbing one?

And so it was with me and jewellery bits and pieces...er, jewellery findings. I do apologise for using technical terms, but us artists struggle with speaking the language of the ordinary mortal world.

Eventually, after about a month (I did mention I was traumatised didn't I?), I sneaked a peek in the bag of beads and findings.  Yep, they were still there.  Just checking.

The very first item of jewellery I created

Not too many days later, I just bit the bullet, tipped the whole lot across the work bench in my studio (i.e. kitchen table) and took a good look at what I'd carefully selected.  Wow, grabbed a few really nice things in my panic. And so, feeling inspired, I set to work. 

Half an hour later I had created my first piece and I WAS STRUTTING! Doing the finger point happy dance around the kitchen for my admiring fans.  Strut strut, finger point, "who's gooood!", strut strut, "oh yeah, artist at work babeeee", finger point finger point...

My fans were just so adoring that it was truly humbling. The dust bunnies came out for a closer look, and the fly on the window sill (that I really thought was, well...dead) waved a leg at me. Swear to god, it waved it's little leg and saluted me in admiration before it waved no more.


Now there's no stopping me. Creative is my middle name, and truly - an artist is born.

P.S. If anyone has an almost dead fly they don't need anymore, could you please let me know - my audience is a little thin this week.