Jewellery Making Supplies Blog

Joanne Varney gives her tips on how to kick start a new range. She holds a BA (Hons) in Jewellery and Silversmithing and is part of the Cooksongold team.

The sky is dark, it’s pouring with rain and the wind is whistling down the chimney. It’s the start of a New Year and time to think about the months ahead and what you intend to achieve in them. If, like many others you are feeling a bit flat and uninspired after the retail buzz of Christmas, don’t despair.  Over the next few paragraphs I’m going to share with you a few tips I use to kick start my design ideas when inspiration is a little short in supply.

Ideas Book – Many of you probably keep one of these as standard but for those who don’t, this is simply a notebook or box where you can store your sources of inspiration as you find them. These can be in almost any form from magazine cuttings and photos to found objects such as leaves and stones.  It’s great to keep these items in one place so that when you’re ready you can quickly refer back to a previous idea and start to expand upon it in the form of a mood board or sketch book.

Colour – Colour can be a great starting point for a new range as it can be evocative of so many different things.  For example if you are drawn to cool blue tones, what images do they conjure up? Today, if I think of blue tones, I think of clear blue skies and warm seas which in turn lead on to soft fluid images of ripples, waves and clouds. By this point I am already thinking of smooth, rounded shapes in cool silver tones, so very quickly, as a jeweller, I have converted those initial thoughts into the beginnings of a new range. This of course is only a simple illustration of how to get started and in practise far more consideration and research would be given to each stage, but you can see how easily colour can be a terrific trigger for new design ideas.

Texture – Texture can very easily be transformed into fantastic pieces of jewellery once it has been captured in metal. This can be achieved relatively quickly by casting direct from the object using either PMC or plaster of paris and then wax to make a mould. (If you are lucky enough to own a rolling mill, varying textures can be rolled onto metal, providing the objects used won’t damage the rollers) I’ve had some fantastic results in the past using objects as mundane as household tin foil. Once crumpled up it takes on an interesting texture which I captured using molten wax. I then got the wax cast into metal which I cut into simple shapes to make a selection of pieces. I have also used stone and miniature tyres from a toy car both of which worked really well.

Form – Perhaps the most obvious source of inspiration, form can be taken from absolutely anywhere be it natural or manmade. Whether you choose a literal or abstract interpretation, the key to success is in how you bring that form together into a piece.  I have found that looking at things with a restricted or distorted view can bring some interesting results. For example, just by cutting a hole in a piece of paper and placing it over a drawing, you will be able to look at the image differently, perhaps picking up new details that might otherwise have been missed.  Distortion can also give some great results, try looking at objects through patterned glass or even through a mass of bubbles and you will soon have some fascinating new imagery to work with.

Working as a designer/maker can sometimes be a lonely and difficult experience especially when you’re stuck for ideas. Learning to become resourceful using the objects around you is a great skill to have and will help you through those inevitable periods when the designs just won’t come.