Daily Wire Jewelry Tip – 12/26/2009
Daily Wire Jewelry Making Tip
December 26, 2009
Question:
How do you keep from getting discouraged when you’ve designed something you think is going to be an original and then see a piece very similar in a magazine or for sale on a web site? I always seem to be too late with my ideas.
Answer:
At a recent, national classes event, another instructor and I were discussing just this same subject. We agreed, that from our experience of talking and working with students from all over the world, that it is entirely possible and definitely probable for two or more people to have come up with similar designs at about the same time.
This is all about the natural learning process. You spend hours looking through magazines; books and/or the Internet, looking at different design ideas, colors and combinations that remain in your head. Then as you work through several months of patterns and ideas, suddenly you decide to combine two or more designs or single out one technique from a complicated pattern. And you think, “Voila! I’ve never seen this before, it must be new and it’s mine!” Only to open a magazine that same afternoon and see that someone has already been published with something similar (that they had to have submitted for publication a minimum of 4 to 6 months before). Bummer!
This same situation happens to most of us often. Don’t be discouraged; instead praise yourself for having come up with the idea ‘on your own’! And keep on playing and designing, knowing that you’re progressing in the right direction.
Answer contributed by Dale “Cougar” Armstrong
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It is extremely hard to re-invent the wheel and sell it. We are all influenced by what we see and read, etc. My father-in-law once told me that he was strictly a “pattern person” and not a creative person. He couldn’t think up on his own anything but give him a pattern and directions and he could turn the item out one after the other.
We are all a blend of things, some of us can read a pattern and grasp it and get to work. Others, like myself, can sit there and read those same directions a 100 times and still not get it. Show it to me and duh, it makes sense. I am a visual folk.
I think you should celebrate anything that you create with your own hands, regardless of the fact that someone may have already created it as well and published it. So many designs have been around for so long that no one remembers who did the first one, etc.
I think you should also do some research into ancient civilizations and their jewelry styles and you will see just how long the same ideas and designs have been around and simply redressed by all of us.
Also, remember that you are making something with your own hands, and designing from your own self; it doesn’t matter what others might make or have made. It is yours.
I have the handicap of not really having a designing bone in my body. I can sit at the bench for hours just looking for a color combination for designs I already have. Unless my wife, who has great color and combination sense, comes and rescues me, I get nothing done!
However, if I can see how a design is made, or sometimes just see the design, I can duplicate it, often putting a twist or element of my own into it. I am more a craftsman than artist.
I knew a wood carver who whittled birds from pieces of spruce. I asked him how he did it. He told me to whittle away everything that didn’t look like a bird. I got a piece and whittled, ending up with a pile of wood chips. When I asked where I went wrong, he said “you gotta be able to see the bird in that piece of spruce!”. I simply cannot make out the bird in the piece of spruce.
Be very glad and thankful that you are able to come up with unique designs, whether someone “scoops” you or not. You are very blessed.
thank you
Thank you so much for your words of encouragement and I am very excited about where my designs take me and look forward to the journey.