On the Table

I normally have 3 or 4 pieces in the works at any given time. I’ll start working on one idea and will have another idea that gets sparked. There is a back and forth between them all until one creation gets to a place I can say it’s finished. No jewelry project ever really feels finished to me, but at some point I have to walk away. A finished product gets hung up in front of my work table so I can feel inspired by seeing something I made and riff off of some of the ideas I’ve already used. 

My workspace might seem like a mess, and it honestly kind of is, but I work better when I can see everything spread out in front of me. I need to be able to pick everything up, hold it together with other components, and try different configurations out. There might be some material or vintage jewelry component that I’m really excited about so I need to have it out so I can really see it and play with it. I sometimes get a little precious about certain items that I want to incorporate into a design. I get nervous that I’m not using it in the best possible way, or that there might be some perfect way to pair it with another piece that it can sometimes paralyze me. All of the vintage jewelry and dissected pieces start out organized in trays in a drawer, but then entropy takes hold as you’ll see with the pictures of my current work area. After a while I reorganize everything, but eventually the chaos creeps back into my work area and I’m in a never-ending cycle that I have to accept!