Some of you might know that last year I spent the year drawing a pair of earrings every day. It was a nice project that got me hooked on being creative every day. And by the end of the year I had 365 drawings of earrings! Some of them were awesome, and I ended up making them and taking some through to production. Some of them were a little bit crazy, and were never really meant to be made. But the process of taking time every day to think about earrings was definitely worthwhile.
This year I set myself the challenge of actually making a piece of jewellery from recycled glass beads every single day! This time it was different. This time it was for real! Not only was I making something every day, but I was sharing my finished piece (or prototype) with the world via Instagram, Facebook and my website. Talk about accountability!
When I started I thought it would be hard at times. Gosh, was I right? Some days I have been literally sitting in my studio saying to myself “just make something, anything”! Some days it has been the first thing I have done, some days it has been the last thing I have done. But pretty much every single day I have found the time to make something.
Some days I feel like I will never run out of ideas for new pieces. Some days I have absolutely no idea what to make. Always I say to myself “what is the worst thing that can happen?”
Yesterday I set a little challenge to make a piece of jewellery from the beads that people had picked out for me at the artist demonstration that I did at Pepper Street Arts Centre. It was awesome, because I made a necklace (prototype) that I would probably not have made this year if I hadn’t taken the opportunity to put myself out there a little bit!
Today I wanted to take an idea that I’d had floating around in my mind for a while. I wanted to see what it actually looked like in real life!
The result is below. It’s not perfect (far from it), it’s actually not very good at all…but it’s great because it has meant that instead of an idea bumping around in my mind, it is now out there and I can see what I might do differently next time.
Daily challenges are so good, for so many reasons. I could have drawn this necklace, and I might have liked the drawing too, but to actually make something, that gives me something to really work with.
