CraftyHope: ideas

If you stopped by here yesterday, you saw my photo for the prompt "Words." I spent a portion of the previous day considering what my subject would be before settling on the canvas I made Pat.

Before making my decision, one of the main subjects that kept coming back to me was my sketchbook.

There are A LOT of words in there. I've found that it's imperative that I have some writing materials near me at all times because ideas will just pop into my brain no matter where I am. And if don't get these ideas written down (play epic disaster music with lots of drums now,) they just FALL OUT OF MY HEAD! It doesn't matter how enthusiastic I am about these ideas/designs or how much I swear I won't forget them, if I don't write it down it's gone. Sigh.

Now don't get me wrong, my book is not just full of jewelry ideas, but marketing ideas, blog topic suggestions (this was one of them), color combinations, craft experiments, poetry, doodles, straight-up journaling, links or websites to remember, lists of supplies, and so much more.

If I don't have my exact sketchbook with me, I'll just draw something out on anything. The other day I was in my car in the bank drive through when an idea came to me. Fortunately, there was a slip of notebook paper in the seat next to me to get the stroke of inspiration written down.

Since I know that I have a horrible memory, I write down just about everything I can. However, sometimes the ideas and memory-jogs that go into the book don't translate as well later. I've got quite a few design ideas that I just can't seem to decipher. It's a shame really because I'm sure I was really excited about those ideas when they came to me.

Right now I'm trying to keep up the momentum of getting all my ideas in the book, no matter how tiny they are or how out of this world. So it's filling up faster than usual. I like that. As well, I'm in the process of going through my sketchbook and attempting to actually make the ideas and designs come to life. I've had some successes as well as some failures.

Many of the successes (or what I consider a success) end up in the shop.

Bubbles Ascending Necklace

Many of the bad ideas never get made, but some have to be tried in order for me to discover what a bad idea it was, like this necklace.

I was going for a waterfall effect, but it just keeps tangling.

As I work through my sketchbook and ideas, I may be sharing some of them with you here. For now, though I'm just going to keep plodding through it.

Today I'm working on one of those inspirations that just HIT. You've probably seen them before, my Shabby Beads. My painted fingers were the perfect subject for today's February Photo A Day Challenge prompt.

Day 3: Hands

Also, there's a few GIVEAWAYS going on that I thought I'd share:

Pips is offering up some of her Petal and Flower Capped Beads for just leaving a comment. So easy!!
Over at Second Surf, there's a massive leather giveaway going on with several ways to enter. Get to it!

What do you do when inspiration strikes? Do you have a sketch/idea book too or do you have other methods? I'd love to know.

I'm not feeling well today, but I've got all kinds of things swirling around in my head that I want to get out before the weekend. So here goes nothing. I pray it all makes sense.

The first two subjects I DESPERATELY want your opinion on.

First, I finished making the above bracelet this morning. As I was making the little text donuts I found myself REALLY enjoying the process. I posted that picture on facebook earlier today and had a comment or two about them. As such, I'm considering possibly making more to sell in the shop. What do you think? I should probably do some research first to see what the market for these currently is. But, I'd love to hear your opinion.

Secondly. . .Pat and I have been watching a lot of Food Network lately. He's more of a Good Eats fan while I enjoy Chopped more. Anyway, as I was watching a Chopped marathon the other week, I was struck with an idea. Now, I don't know if you are familiar with the show or not. . . but basically chefs are given a mystery basket of ingredients that they MUST include in a dish. It starts with four chefs and one is cut each round. There's an appetizer, entree, and dessert rounds and three very picky judges. But, that's not important. What interests me in this context is the MYSTERY BASKET. I was thinking how fun it would be to send out a few mystery baskets of my own design and see what the jewelry chefs out there can create. Now, if you've seen the show you know that the items in the mystery baskets are not your run-of-the-mill ingredients. Often they include something(s) the chefs have never heard of or have no idea how to even cook/use. I'm not interested in the judging or 'chopping' portion of the show, just the mystery basket and creation portions. This probably has a lot to do with the anticipation that's going on right now with all the Bead Soup. In any case, would anyone at all be interested in joining up for this? As you can probably tell, I haven't thought this through completely. I just figured I'd through it out there and see what kind of response I get before I do anything else. Let me know!

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

There's quite a few giveaways flying around this week that I need to go ahead and let you know about.