This blog entry may be hard to write, because I’ve never really given my creative process that much thought. However, it was requested by a faithful Instagram follower so I’ll give it my best shot.
For me, the first step in the process of creating something new or different is inspiration.
Tap the photo to my Pinterest account to enter the contest!
For my triangle shelves and my geometric planters (right) it was as subtle as an idea. Triangles…Geometric…Angles… I had seen some products on Pinterest and Etsy that didn’t quite scratch a mental itch that I had. Most of the time, I have to actually seek inspiration, which I do by looking around me. I look at shapes in nature, wonder how household items could be made more beautiful, scroll around on Pinterest, or ask myself how a certain type of wood would pop if used against some contrasting background, and how I might execute that. Most of my lasting product ideas come from mornings where I have about 20 ideas, and one or two of them stick with me and last the rest of the process and make it onto my shop.
Next comes the percolation phase. This one doesn’t require much thought or action…ideas just have to percolate. Sometimes if an idea is vivid enough in my mind, I skip this phase and just build it, but other times this phase is one of the most important. For my concrete and black walnut edison lamp, this phase took a long time. Usually it ends when a solid idea just appears in my head, which is a final draft of many mental rough drafts. I’ve come to realize that this subtle mulling over ideas, which sometimes takes a couple months, is key to the creative process for many of my products.
Sometimes I get lucky and jump straight from inspiration to the creation phase. This one is pretty self-explanatory, but not always simple. In the case of my hexagon edison lamp, my inspiration (Hexagons…Black walnut…Color contrast) went straight to creation and the first draft became the one that I photographed! The geometric planters, on the other hand, have perhaps become one of my favorite products because of how long the drafting process took. I built jigs to run the individual triangles through my table saw, scrapped those jigs, built new ones, and even then they still weren’t quite right! The angles are fractions of degrees, and getting it all to line up was a challenge. Then, clamping during gluing was almost impossible, so I had to build some braces for that. Then I had to figure out a solid water-proofing technique for the inside, which I eventually found to be a layer of caulk in the cracks, and truck bed liner on top of that.
Faceted Black Walnut Bud Vase
Quite often, my products will gain their eventual “selling factor” during the creation phase. It surprises me how often that happens. The faceted hardwood bud vase was round, not faceted, in my head. I’m always thankful when those last minute, improvised design changes hit me and it works!
I’m doing a promotional giveaway of my geometric planters on Pinterest, partially because I want to celebrate the fact that I recently launched “buyable Pins” on my Pinterest account, and partially because I’ve just really been digging these planters this week. Go to my Pinterest page and find the Pin to enter! (It’s in my “CREATE || fernweh woodworking” collection)
Check out the below blog entry by Etsy writer Audrey Manning, it’s excellent and has helped me think about the way I think. https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/10-tips-for-making-more-time-to-make/22611596303
The post A note about my creative process appeared first on Fernweh Woodworking.