Category Archives: Creativity

Creativity, Metal Work, Necklaces, Pendants, Wire Work

Thinking Creatively

July 16, 2010 Karen

A series of short articles I recently wrote for Magpie Gemstones (www.magpiegemstones.com) on creative thinking in design instigated several new necklaces. If you have interest in this topic you can find these at the following addresses:

http://www.magpiegemstones.com/creative1.html

http://www.magpiegemstones.com/creative2.html

http://www.magpiegemstones.com/creative3.html

http://www.magpiegemstones.com/Creative4.html

In making these necklaces, I was trying to apply creative thinking techniques to my preexisting skills rather than coming up with a new element to add. The question was “In what ways might I create interesting pieces through relatively simply techniques?” The first piece is a simple strung tiger eye necklace. I added small wire flowers that I had been making as earrings and used them as spacers.

I seldom use a single color or type stone in a piece, but this one seems to work OK.

The next photo shows a simple strung necklace using glass beads. The easy pendant is made from a filigree piece to which I attached a small flower bead.

While the next necklace was more complicated, it simply combines processes I already knew. By the way, as we learn in creative thinking training, I used happenstance with regard to the copper “sticks” on the back of the bezel. They were not planned, but when I was trying to torch two straight pieces of copper wire, they fused themselves together. So I went with this mistake and used it in the design. The last photo shows a simple piece derived from thinking “what if?” I just kept adding things to the basic piece of etched copper and ended up with a very long pendant. Although you can’t see it in the photo, there is a flower etched on the copper portion of the pendant. This pendant started as a bracelet and ended (at least for the moment) as a necklace. I think “resistance to closure” which is also practiced in creativity training worked well for this bracelet/necklace.

I guess the message I’m trying to send today is that easy methods can produce innovative designs. While I will continue to practice newly learned techniques, applying creative thinking skills to those that I have previously learned is another positive avenue for innovation. I hope you will read the short articles at the above addresses and apply them to whatever form of work you are doing. Have fun, laugh often and create for life.

Creativity, Metal Work, Necklaces, Pendants

Different by Design

July 9, 2010 Karen 4 Comments

Last month, our wire workers group committed the meeting to Steampunk style jewelry. Steampunk might be described as a combination of technology and romance and in the case of jewelry this could be vintage pieces combined with mechanical parts such as cogs, wheels or watch parts. The bulk of my customers have just looked at me strangely when I asked if they liked Steampunk jewelry and when I described it, they were pretty sure they didn’t want any. Yet, trying to learn from every new opportunity, I tried to make a Steampunk necklace. It wasn’t bad and although I didn’t have any watch parts or cogs to use in it, the vintage parts came together nicely and on its first trip out to the stores, it sold. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of that piece.

Today, I decided I should give Steampunk another chance. The first necklace shown here is based on the theme of flowers and is quite eclectic. The second piece wasn’t planned as Steampunk, but rather influenced by it. I didn’t have any beads that specifically matched the bezeled cab I made, so I let my experience on the first necklace free me to use complimentary beads rather than perfect matches on this second piece.

I applied this same “almost anything goes” approach to the meatloaf I fed the men at noon and it turned out pretty good as well. A little of this with a little of that covered with plenty of barbeque sauce and it was fine. Yet, I think I should drop this approach immediately since I preparing to do some etching. Playing with adding just any old chemical to muriatic acid would most likely spell disaster. I think I’d better follow the right recipe for this process.

Creativity, Diversions, Metal Work, Pendants, Philosophy, Wire Work

Summer Camp

June 14, 2010 Karen

It’s hard to think about summer without remembering going to summer camps both as a child and later as an instructor. My favorite camp experience was the annual gathering of Creative Scholars in Louisiana. Each year, students who rated high scores on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking were invited to join together for a two week learning experience. Initially we met in Natchitoches and later in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I was fortunate to be among the small group of instructors working with these students who were sixth graders or older. We wrote and shared our own creative thinking curriculum.

We instructed students in three basic creative thinking strategies, Synectics, Lateral Thinking, and Creative Problem Solving. Students also took electives that included inventioning, book writing, song composing and many others. The students always challenged us as only high creatives can do, but we loved it. I conducted my masters degree research with the first group of students and used a good deal of my learning there to set up my doctoral experiment. Therefore, it’s hard not to think of Creative Scholars in June each year.

While throwing out items from my files, I came across a list by the man who first dreamed of developing the Creative Scholars program, Dr. E. Paul Torrance. Although Dr. Torrance is now deceased, his words still ring true to individuals all around the world who value creative thinking.

How To Grow Up Creatively Gifted

Don’t be afraid to “fall in love with” something and pursue it with intensity. (You will do best what you like to do most.)
Know, understand, take pride in, practice, develop, use, exploit and enjoy your greatest strengths.
Learn to free yourself from the expectations of others and to walk away from the games they try to impose upon you.
Free yourself to “play your own game” in such a way as to make good use of your gifts.
Find a great teacher or mentor who will help you.
Don’t waste a lot of expensive, unproductive energy trying to be well-rounded (Don’t try to do everything; do what you can do well and what you love.)
Learn the skills of interdependence. (Learn to depend upon one another, giving freely of your greatest strengths and most intense loves.)

The above manifest by Dr. Torrance makes more sense to me with each passing year. He certainly made it OK to be creative.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that other side of summer camp – BUGS. If you didn’t get bitten by something or have a rash or get sunburned, it just wasn’t summer camp. There were always lots of varmints around ranging from snakes that the guys used to scare the girls, to turtles. Those varmints are much tamer in today’s jewelry studio as shown by the one I made this morning.

Ah, the good old days of summer camp. Alas, I think I’d rather stay in by the air conditioner for now. I’m not sure I could still handle the exuberance of those sixth graders.

Bracelets, Creativity, Necklaces, Techniques, Wire Work

Swirling

June 1, 2010 Karen 2 Comments

Summer makes me think of home in Medford, Oklahoma, where my two best friends and I spent much of our time twirling. I don’t know if we really thought one of us would be the next great drum major, but twirling those batons was great fun. Unfortunately, I was clumsy and sometimes when I threw my baton too high and I didn’t catch it properly, it would smack me on the head. (I can hear my immediate family saying “now we know what’s wrong with Mom.”) I had a similar whacking problem when I tried to twirl two batons at once. Luckily, I survived those head bumps and lived to tell about them.

The best I can do now is swirling rather than twirling. I’ve been working with this basic swirl for a series of short articles on creative thinking for Magpie Gemstones (www.magpiegemstones.com). If you don’t already subscribe to the newsletter from this site, I think you would enjoy it. I’ve made all manner of different swirling shapes for the upcoming articles and tried to find new ways to use them creatively by applying fluent, flexible, original and elaborative thinking. I’m enjoying wearing a couple of bracelets that I made with swirls. These are quite plain and layer nicely with other bracelets.

bracelets two

Additionally, playing with how to use these swirls in necklaces has been more of a challenge. These pieces fit nicely and mold well to the neckline. It is, however, somewhat difficult to display them. I’ve worn a couple of these and people seem to like the way they look.

View Full Album

I guess I’ll stick with swirling in lieu of twirling as one of this summer’s activity. Alas, with age, we should put away childish things and I do still remember a bad bump I got across the bridge of my nose,. (But isn’t it good to stay young at heart? I wonder where that baton went.)

Bracelets, Creativity, Wire Work

Fluency and Flexibility

May 3, 2010 Karen 2 Comments

In a previous post, I commented on FFOE and elaboration in particular. Today, I’m focused on FF, fluency and flexibility. Over coffee one day last week, my friend drew a bracelet that she has made saying I could try it. I think it is particularly nice that most wire workers don’t mind sharing information and designs and I truly thank my friend for the pictured bracelet idea that she calls “winding road”. Fluency obviously has to do with the production of many ideas while flexibility deals with the ability to think in different categories, from different angles, or to see things from a new perspective. I was fluent in making many bracelets of the same design. While simply adding different beads to exactly the same shape would NOT have required very flexible thinking, I was somewhat flexible by changing the basic shape and type of elaboration. Slight variation in the placement of the beads as well as the selection of the size of the beads is indicative of flexibility.

These bracelets can be made fairly quickly and although I see the “winding road” they also make me think of Cleopatra with one of these in gold above her elbow. It also makes me think of a serpent round the wrist. (I was careful to properly file the ends of these so that serpent doesn’t sting!)

The next plausible step with this bracelet will require originality. How can this idea be modified so that it leads to something new and different? I’ll have to leave that for another day.

Bracelets, Creativity, Metal Work, Necklaces, Philosophy, Wire Work

FFOE

April 20, 2010 Karen

The letters in the title do not stand for a secret society or club; rather, they represent the four major constructs of creative thinking: fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. While the first three are needed to develop a solid and unique design, the latter, elaboration, is often shorted by highly creative individuals who are eager to move on quickly to the next great idea. The opposite can also be true if that creative is a perfectionist. The individual may find it difficult to move on because the piece is never just right.

Elaboration is the noun form of elaborate, which Webster (1995) defines as “planned or done with careful attention to numerous details or parts” . . . The application of the term elaboration to a discussion of creativity suggests that an idea has been embellished, developed, polished, or enhanced. (Meador, Creative Thinking and Problem Solving in Young Learners, Libraries Unlimited/Teacher Ideas Press (Available at Amazon.com)

Elaboration requires scrutiny of the original idea and, just as a writer adds adjectives to a sentence to make it stronger, a jewelry designer may add more detail to the basic piece with stones or wire work. In the picture examples, one photo shows elaboration of the original wave necklace that I started making a couple of years ago which is shown in the other photo. These look like very different necklaces and while one person may prefer the original, another may like the elaborated piece.

The point is not to make a judgment regarding which piece is the “best”, but rather to use elaboration to vary a piece so that a basic design gets plenty of mileage. I find it easier to elaborate upon an idea than to develop a totally new one.

While my definition of elaboration above written years ago is sound, I’m now using the elaboration step in creative thinking for a second purpose. It’s possible that a design can be overdone and have too much embellishment. I want to use the creative process to also determine if something should be removed or made smaller in a design. Creativity gurus would cringe at my use of the word for this, but we all know that sometimes “less is more”.

The final picture in this blog entry is of a basic bracelet. I worked through fluency, flexibility and originality to get to this point. Now, as I consider elaboration, I don’t know if it is better left alone or if it needs some detail. I’ll be playing with this design for a while. Currently, I believe the answer is YES and NO regarding detail. Some people will like the simplicity of the piece while others will find it uninteresting. Through elaboration, perhaps I can made something for both tastes.

Bracelets, Creativity, Necklaces, Pendants, Philosophy, Wire Work

Organic-Good or Bad?

April 7, 2010 Karen 4 Comments

More than once in the past weeks, my pieces have been described as “organic”. It reminds me of when I wrote an article for a gifted education periodical and the editor described it as “pithy”. I had to go look that one up and still wasn’t sure whether or not the term was complimentary.

When my work is described as organic, I usually just smile and agree with the comment, but perhaps it’s appropriate to examine this nomenclature more carefully. Synonyms for the term include the following: natural, whole, unrefined, untreated, crude and macrobiotic. Most of those do apply to the bracelet pictured on the right, but I’m not sure what to think about the term “crude”. I think I’ll just move on from that one.

The dictionary further elaborates that organic describes something that occurs or develops gradually and naturally, without being forced or contrived. This certainly describes the work on these pieces. I begin twisting the wire in hopes that something unique and palatable will arise. Sometimes it does; yet, more often it does not. I think the important part of the process is knowing what to keep and what to let go with the latter being the most difficult part. Since I know from years of teaching creativity thinking that sometimes great ideas fall upon the design floor, I’m often reluctant to let something go. Lately, however, I find this easier since I now have a “whatsit box”. I’ll bet those of you who design also have one of these. It’s that place where you throw things that didn’t seem to work. When you peer into it days later you say “What IS it?”

Organic also means “being made of parts that exist together in a seemingly natural relationship that makes for organized efficiency”. It is this definition that fits with my belief that the designs that are unique, but flow naturally together may, indeed, be the best. While I attempt to be fluent and flexible creating more than one idea before selecting the best, it is usually the one that is unique yet emerged the most naturally that gets the nod. Forcing the design to work usually brings unpleasant results.

Both pieces pictured herein are made of sunstone and carnelian from Magpie Gemstones. The schiller on the sunstone, which can’t be seen in these photos, is quite nice and really grabs attention. Are they organic? Is that a good thing? As long as I can leave out “crude” I’ll accept the comments.

Bracelets, Creativity, Wire Work

Winding Around

November 24, 2009 Karen

Growing a bit tired of making the popular wave bracelets that I’ve done for months, I’ve been fiddling with other ways to form wire armatures for bracelets. I’ve attempted to apply the core of creative constructs, fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration; but got a bit stuck on the first f. My goal was to find as many different ways as possible to create a cuff armature to hold gemstones using a single length of wire. I wanted the bracelet to have at least three rungs to make it interesting. Armed with lots of wire, I began in an attempt to be fluent. Alas, I wasn’t very! The difficulty popped up in figuring out what to do with the ends of the wire. Although I created several ways to shape the wire, few of them were usable. The first picture shows a bracelet adapted from one shown in Beautiful Wire Jewelry for Beaders by Irina Miech. I’ve made this bracelet before and it is popular. Previously, I constructed these with deeper curves and more stones and they were nicer.

The second usable idea came quite by accident from a casual customer comment. When I showed her one of my large round collage pendants, she plopped it right down on her wrist, commenting that she’d like it as a bracelet. Of course, I went straight home and made one. (or two . . . or three . . . ) Two of the bracelets and one armature are shown here. I think the armature looks like a fish.

While working on these bracelets, I’ve had to challenge my thinking about practicing to learn. I’ve always thought that bigger was better while learning. For example, we use large letters and large musical notes in the initial teaching of reading. When I learned to do seed bead work, I started with larger seed beads until I learned a technique and then gradually worked down to the tiny one. Therefore, I figured that with wire, I could start with the big stuff and then refine it. That was the thought until my hands started to ache. With wire work, of course, bigger means heavier gauge wire that is usually more difficult to bend. Painfully speaking, I think I’m going to experiment with a lighter gauge and then graduate to the heavier wire. That said, I can only surmise that there are no absolutes in learning. How to go about it varies not only with the person, but also with the medium. I’m realizing that more pre-thought before jumping in might yield a more “comfortable” practice.

I’m still winding wire as I attempt to find the perfect cuff armature. Let’s hope another customer provides a good idea today.

Creativity, Metal Work, Necklaces, Pendants, Wire Work

Mixed UP Metals

October 10, 2009 Karen

In an attempt to complete some pieces that have been on the design table way too long, I worked with a copper piece today. It was one that I must have cut over six months ago. Several weeks ago, I picked up this piece and tried to do something with it by adding fine gauge wire and some gemstones. After making numerous holes in the piece, I realized that I didn’t really have a plan and just let the wire and stones meander across the surface of the copper. It looked all “mixed up” to me, but a kind friend saw it and admired it. “OK”, I thought, “maybe I shouldn’t throw it away.” Instead, I put is aside AGAIN! Today, I picked it up, added the chain and put it on leather. It’s finally complete. I believe in creative incubation, but I think this was excessive! The learning I take from this piece is that perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to throw something out. Some of my work may just need to go to the time out bin.

The second metal pendant resulted from a continuation of my efforts to make mixed metal pieces. I added one of Ralph’s Rocks from Wildtype Ranch (mentioned in an earlier post) to this piece and am pleased with it. The rock hangs atop a copper shape with sterling silver rondells wired to the side. It has a hammered brass circle at the top. I’m finding it difficult to include the brass with the other metals and am hoping to get used to working with it. Brass doesn’t seem as “earthy” as the other metals, but I think small amounts of it may work in the designs.

As I continue the mixed and/or mixed up metal work, I hope to include more gemstones as accents and more unusual shapes and color combinations. While it seems my hope should be that whatever hatches is pleasing and wearable, I know from my educational training that this goal could hold back the creative process. It’s better to remain open to all possibilities and then later alter the ideas to fit the need. A bad case of the “too”s, as in “that would be too big,” that would make it too bright,” that would be too crooked,” etc. can hold back creative function. So for now, I’m leaving the word “too” in the same wastebasket at “can’t”.

Bracelets, Creativity, Philosophy, Wire Work

Diverted

October 1, 2009 Karen

What does it take to come up with a new idea and a new design? Tomes of literature exist regarding how to stimulate the creative spirit and encourage it to develop something new. W. J. J. Gordon and Tony Poze working with Synectics as well as thinking guru, Edward DeBono, Lateral Thinking, have made a small fortune training corporate industry thinkers all over the world on how to develop new ideas.

While this blog could easily become a dissertation and list numerous ways to develop something new, today’s focus is on only one, diverting attention. There are many examples in the literature of instances wherein a designer, researcher, or developer spent intensive study attempting to develop a problem solving idea, only to finally give up and move to another activity. Perhaps the individual went for a walk, watched a TV show or, as in my husband’s case, drove the tractor for hours. In other words, the person diverted attention from the problem at hand. Amazingly, when the developer focused on something totally alien to the idea development, an “aha” moment occurred.

It’s hard for many of us, particularly in a time crunch, to take the time for a diversion. There are all manner of excuses. “This is going to the store TOMORROW!” “If I don’t get this done today, it will never been finished.” “I don’t like to give up.” Go ahead, I’ll bet you can add ten more reasons. Yet, most sensibly, we should try diversion.

I have been attempting to do some sewing for my little grandson for a couple of weeks. Finally, yesterday, while stuck on a design problem, I stopped and worked on his little shoes. I became so interested in the task, that I forgot all about the jewelry problem and enjoyed my diverted work. I was not even deterred when someone told me the shoes looked like slippers. OK, that’s probably true, but wait until you see them in leather! The child is only 9 months old; I think slippers are OK.

I must admit that I did not have any great “aha” during my diversion. Sometimes, the diversion simply refreshes you, as was the case yesterday. Following the shoe/slipper diversion, I went back and very quickly finished several pieces with which I had been piddling. A couple of them are below.

So, when you’re stuck, try diversion. I like that term better than “relax!” Type A personalities divert better than they “take a break”. Maybe one day I’ll learn to do the latter.

Dreamcatcher Designs