Designing jewellery does not only look like a dream job, but for me it truly is. Getting to play with all the old and new bead shapes and combining colours doesn’t feel like an obligation. Letting the creative juices flow makes me happy and relaxed. I like other aspects of the job, too: taking pictures, drawing illustrations, writing articles and especially getting to know awesome people. Fellow beaders, editors of jewellery making magazines, bead shop owners, wholesalers and manufacturers, too.
However, when work is so similar to fun, it’s easy to get lost. To remain focused and make our job more efficient (whatever it may be) it’s important to keep both eyes open, and study which part of the process works and which part is useful only for good old procrastination, but doesn’t have an added value. So lately I was having a closer look at my daily comings and goings to find out, when and how my muse is kicking, when can I work the most efficiently and when should I rather stop and take a walk (or have a coffee) to recharge.
The result of this self-study is what I call the CREATIVITY MANIFESTO
(or when and how the muse is kicking).
MAKE A MESS
There’s no fun without bending rusty, good old conventions and a bit of chaos, and there’s no creativity neither. In my case it comes with three messy bead mats, all the “bead books” opened around me, half a dozen notepads for sketches and a handful of pink, red and turquoise pens to fill the pages.
RECORD
The notebooks mentioned above already contain enough ideas for a lifetime. But even if there’s not enough time to make them all happen, it’s important for me to keep them. I try to draw everything what pops into my mind. That’s why my handbags are like treasure chests: they contain a large number of random pieces of paper – chocolate wrappings, business cards, napkins. (Anything what gets into my hands when I’m without a decent sheet of paper. It happens, instead of the five notebooks in five different handbags.)
They are preserving the ideas for a bright and happy future when days have at least 48 hours, eternal sunshine, and there’s no housework to be done. Yeah, I know, it sounds realistic… 😀
MAKE IT CLEAR
The second when the idea hits (and through a couple more hours, until it happens again) it always feels like it’s going to be the greatest thing in my beading career. (Ou yeah.) Even if it looks tiny and simple, I often have a bigger concept on my mind. This results in the belief that three blurry lines and a bunch of quickly drawn shapes will be enough to remember all the details. Reality proved, that no, it’s pretty far from it.
After several angry, frustrated issues trying to find out unsuccessfully what the genius idea hiding behind those senseless scribble was, now I try to record everything as clear and straightforward as my miserable drawing skills make it possible. The drawings still look like the doodling of a 6-year old, but they are accompanied with a lot of written details: bead shapes, sizes, colour codes and possible variations.
PLAY
Developing a flash into something legit and reasonable requires questions, experiments and mistakes. The fear of feeding the “UFO-box” containing UnFinished Objects can nurture and kill ideas, too. Playfulness eliminates the worry about it. My childhood’s overgrown (and from today’s viewpoint) unreasonable fear of failure is slowly but surely fading away during the past year.
However, unsuccessful attempts naturally come with the need to get rid of the bi-products of the creative process. It’s good to clean (and hopefully recycle) the stuff not needed any more, but also good to remember, which experiments proved to be dead-end roads.
PUSH UNTIL PERFECT AND LEARN AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
Looking for the perfect place for every tiny bead and redrawing the tutorials until they are the easiest to understand. It requires determination, willpower and skill. All of them can and should be constantly improved, I believe.
REST AND MOVE
After cutting apart something for the fifth time or redrawing a diagram again and again (and again) it’s nice to take a rest and do something completely different. Since apart of teaching and networking my job bonds me to a chair and a desk, it’s important to regularly get up, get out and forget about all the important beading to do, before frustration, burn-out or the back pain hits.
ASK AND IMPROVE
There’s not one person who knows all the answers and finds all the best solutions. It’s fun and necessary to meet and talk to people with like-minded and differing viewpoints, too. Sometimes you get an answer, sometimes a question which pushes you a little bit further. And there are the days when you just simply grab a beer (or a coffee and a cake) together, and that can be equally important in your life.
ENJOY!
While keeping your goal in focus, and asking yourself every time if your next action will get you closer to achieve it (hanging out on Facebook surely doesn’t), it’s good to enjoy the road which leads you there. Smell a flower and hug your loved ones often. It will make you feel powerful and you will believe, that everything can be done.
How does your creative process look like? How do you find and develop ideas? And how do you feel, when you try and fail, try and fail, try and fail again?
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