I unleash creativity in a number of ways. The most successful for me is to buy new beads and findings on speculation. By that, I mean that I have no clear idea of what to do with them at the time I make my purchase. I take them home and throw them on my desk and let them move around and suggest to me what I should do with them.

Occasionally, I will have a specific design in mind when I buy something only to find that when I get it home, it tells me to do something else entirely.

Color plays such a big role in jewelry making (even if you are working just in metals), that sometimes I will just sit and look at clothing catalogs and then inspiration strikes.

I have a day job in a jewelry supply shop and the thing I hear most from new customers is that they would like to make jewelry but that they are not creative. We all have creativity inside of us. We just have to find the right key to unlock it.

lapidarygirl:

The most successful for me is to buy new beads and findings on speculation. By that, I mean that I have no clear idea of what to do with them at the time I make my purchase. I take them home and throw them on my desk and let them move around and suggest to me what I should do with them.

Occasionally, I will have a specific design in mind when I buy something only to find that when I get it home, it tells me to do something else entirely.

Lapidarygirl and I are alike in this respect.  I also tend to get inspiraiton in the middle of a project.  I have planned to go in one direction with the piece, but in the middle of it I'll have a flash of a what it might become if I were going in a different direction - or sometimes something in the design I'm working on will inspire a different design totally unrelated.  Because of this I will keep a notebook nearby so I can grab it and draw out a skeletal with notes on the idea so that I don't forget it later. 

Sometimes I get inspiration from my own work, as silly as that sounds.  I will pull out a piece that is one of my favorites and think about what makes it special to me.  Then I use my imagination and imagine what these pieces might have looked like it I had taken different directions with them.  This is a good way to get my creative juices flowing.

I usually go to one of the local bead stores and look at stones and beadsI buy  what I really like and add to my collection in my studio when I sit down to work on a piece It just all comes together. I also have ideas for polymere beads and pendants and at the time I dont know what the finished piece will look like, but I know that I will use it eventially. I never plan or write down designs, because when I do It dosen't turn out the way I invisioned.  Everbody is different. For me experimenting with clay is so much fun. I;m getting excited just thinking about making jewelry. I'm out of state visiting my son and I won't be able to bead for a whole week.  but I am planning on hitting some bead stores out here in Montana.  To look for something different.

For me it is also the beads that spark the creativity.  Visiting the bead stores is always a double edge for me.  Sparks of creativity but then my getting in trouble on my spending. . . . . Di