Where do I get my inspiration?
Where do I draw my thought process?
Where do these creations culminate
from?
Now I could give some elaborate story
explaining some process about sitting, meditation, or day-to-day ritual that I
do to inspire ideas, but that is not the case. To be brutally honest these projects
just come to me. I can be surfing on YouTube, looking on TikTok, watching TV, be
in the garden, or even just at work, it is just something that can pop into my
head, but it’s not necessarily something that I will do right away. Now I will
admit that I more than likely have a touch of ADHD, where I will be doing a
project, nearing the end of it and then all of a sudden I get an idea for
something else and I start diving into another project at the same time, that
can be a good thing and a bad. There can be pieces to bring it together but aren’t
ready or a better way of assembling it hasn’t yet been uncovered and I have a
little bit more work in that department to do. so, I have to sit the new idea on
the back burner and come back to it later, but at the same time still I’m
working, I’m Thinking about the project and what it has to do with what I’m
currently working on and what it would coincide with it.
I will admit I get inspired by some
music. What I listen to goes all over the spectrum. From Pagan, country,
R&B, soundtracks, jazz, you name it I listen to it, all that goes into the
melting pot and what comes out sometimes is great and I will admit sometimes it
misses the mark. Now that does not mean we scrap it right away. Not necessarily,
we might have to come back to it to redesign it, modify it, but it does not
necessarily mean that the project is done and over with.
Over the years all the skills that
I’ve learned, mainly by teaching myself, watching a few videos, have been a
process to themselves and each new skill has been added to the skill chest as
it were. I can then later pull that skill back out of the safe and try again
and be like I can do this now. Its finding the right time and place. I might
stop to think “I wonder if this would apply to the previous project”. I will
say that I am not by any means an expert. I think there are individuals out
there with far better skill sets than myself or better knowledge for the craft
even though for all the compliments and praises that I receive, but I think
that goes with every artist. We tend to critique and say what we’ve missed on
project rather than except what we have achieved.
Creators, like ourselves, can be very
critical when we get an idea. It goes through my head, and I start picking it
apart.
Do you really think you can do that?
I will admit that there have been
times that a project comes up and I’ve discouraged myself from doing it, because
I don’t think I have the skill set, and I don’t think I know how to do it. After
a little bit encouragement and a little bit of negotiating with myself a lot of
times I can pull out and come up with some very interesting and unique
projects. I must admit, it can be similar to others. It is not always like
you’ve never seen it before, but I tend to do a different spin on it as much as
I mix contemporary and modern skill sets. There are some things that modern
machinery is for and you need to use that handcrafting skill set. I still try
to incorporate the handmade side whenever it can be done without machine. I
have a laser engraver in the same token, depending on the project, depending on
how creative I will be sometimes. Again, It comes down to time and place. Do I want
to use the machine, or do I burn it by hand? It all depends on what strikes me
and it all depends on how detailed and how involved the project is. That is
what then dictates what I can and cannot handle.
Back to the point of what inspires
it. It’s mainly listening. Now there are times where I will admit, I’ll go for
a walk in the woods or I’ll sit have a cup of tea and just sit and listen.
Maybe listen to the thoughts in my head. maybe listen to the birds. maybe just
sit and listen to music, kind of let the brain rinse itself out, and have a
list of questions that run through my head, sometimes they are different, but I
have noticed that the majority of them run like this:
What do you need?
What do you want to make?
How creative do you want to be?
What do you want to make?
And more often than not
What useful thing do you want to try
to build?
Now I will admit not all of my
projects are useful. Sometimes I make something that is clearly just for art, it
is just for entertainment. but then again there are times where I make
something just for the fact to see if I could do it. a few times I’ve made
wooden mallets, I’ve made clamp horses, I’ve even gone out of my way to make a
shave then I can shave branches down for a table or legs or arms for a chair.
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Now why would I do this? It would be
just as easy to go to the store and buy the dowels for the job than to take
limbs from the woods and cut them down and shave them for the project.
But I think that there in lines the
answer, it makes it that I’ve done it from start to finish. I have worked with
and tried to incorporate the elements of my surrounding environment to my
projects.
To me, that is an aspect of my
projects that I never want to lose because I enjoy both nature and natural
elements in my artwork and my projects, but that gets back to my own style.
When I originally started this And I
was just starting out, I made knives. They were few and far between. I was over
critical of what I did and then I started drifting into doing a little bit more
with the woodworking and the leatherworking. I had done woodworking before
growing up, and leatherworking hit or miss, but then, when my first project,
after the knives, is when I started doing the incense burners of the Viking
longboats. I began to think of not only what I could make, but what other
people would be interested in. Now this started down a rabbit hole. while
thinking of what others would want and would like to see, that becomes a
slippery slope of are you making it because you want to or are you making it
because you have to? sometimes there are situations where we all do things that
we don’t necessarily want to do and it’s for the benefit of everyone else, but
the whole point of this business is what I do isn’t just to make things for
everyone else, but a chance to be creative. to experiment, to learn, to share,
to provide a service, to provide an experience for others. now that may be a
vague and broad answer to anyone, but it’s the truth. Now I don’t mean to
diminish any other artist and what they would do or any other craftsman would
put their talents to go around. But just constantly searching whatever everyone
else needs only is in my view that you’re no longer putting your whole self
into it. You then run the risk of getting down a slippery slope of now I must
make this because nobody wants what I make. I’m just working, and that’s not
the point. Now there are things that I produce, ideas that I experiment with,
to see if anyone has an interest. There have been times where I’ve been given
from previous customers, family members, friends, Do you think you could make
this or do you think you could make that? then more often than Not I do and it comes out
very nice. but then there are a few times that come up that’s beyond my skill
set. Then I have to go “I really don’t think I could handle that”. You must
make the judgment and backout of it. If you’re not in somewhat control, you’re
not doing what you love but only doing what you have to. I preach all the time
that you constantly have to have Balance. You can’t build for just whatever
everyone asks for at the slightest whim, but you can’t just build all the time,
and no one has an interest in it then you’re just making it for yourself. Now if
you produce that rare chance, that’s great. but as much as it is something I like
to do I have to have the business sense to incorporate that would someone want this
and how can I make it useful that someone would like to share this, honestly that
is where my can koozie designs have come from.
I personally wanted one myself and I
thought it would be nice since I was getting into the leather work to have a
leather can Koozie and I saw how expensive they were online. I am like how much
would that actually cost. I will do a separate intro and step-by-step of what I
do to work on them at a later date. Anyway, after making one for myself a few
people saw it and wanted some for themselves. This is where just the thought of
trying something new just for me would lead to a stock for others to have.
Any type of craftsman would tell you
that most of the time we come up with something and then just let it out there,
we put it on display whether someone stops over and sees or it just adds fuel
to the fire, in the end it sparks an idea, a thought, and then we run with it.
Not all of them work, some of them
fail, but some of them succeed. It’s a lot of trial and error.
When someone asks me how they could
better produce their own ideas or get better inspired themselves, I would
recommend this. listen to that voice, to play music, if you need to meditate,
if you need to pour yourself a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or just shut everything off and just stare out the window
and let those thoughts, that mess of a brain, wash out and rinse itself. Let
the ideas come out naturally, don’t criticize yourself.
Most importantly write it down.
I keep a small notebook on me at all times and I’m constantly writing down different ideas whether it’s a project for the shop, a blog, a podcast, a woodworking tool, whatever it is I write it down. no idea is necessarily a bad idea. there might be the wrong time, but if you write it down you can flip back and be like hey I can’t do that now but maybe down the road I’ll be able to do it later. and hang onto that notebook, it might not be today, it might not be tomorrow. but the next time you go to have a cup of coffee, and there’s no voices running through your head, and nothing is coming out of your mind. pull that notebook out and flip through it to see what you wrote down days, weeks, months or maybe even years ago that you completely forgot about. Now is the time that you have the skill set or you have ambition, or you just have that spark that gives you the drive and gives you the desire to take a chance to roll the dice on something new.
You never know when inspiration will strike.
Starting this whole business came as an inspiration that fed from me just
tinkering with some odds and ends. It became Something I had to take the chance
on. I roll the dice almost every day that this is going to succeed. I have no
idea. All I know is when I go and make a cup of tea, go out to my shop, open
the windows, light a few incenses, it’s my happy place. It’s where I can build.
It’s where I can create, it’s where I can express. where I can share. -
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