So the weather’s heating up and so are my obsessive temperature checks! arghh summer at last. It’s gone up 3 flipping degrees in our bedroom… I know!

Its amazing how different my job is as to what I thought it would be… such glamorous notions of swanning around exhibitions – museums traveling to different countries cocktails – they featured heavily in my make believe plan – it turns out I’m in my STUDIO – Working on my computer finding the time to get to go out of actually make something new!

But when it does happen its just amazing….. I can be sat eating my dinner with E and we’re having a nice chat at BOOM, I have an idea ( I often like to have my dinner whilst my jewellery is in my peripheral vision for this reason) its like it waits for my brain to have a “moment” to do something normal like eat my dinner, talk to my boyfriend about his day before my creative part of my brain goes GO GO GO!!!! NOW!!! NOW’S THE TIME HIT HER WITH IT!! Knife and fork go down straight over to my workbench and create the 1st sample BISH BASH BOSH (sort of).

This has always been the case with me, I don’t sketch endlessly, umming & erming over ideas – I just make them. In fact, if I think about an idea for to long (like a day) I’m already bored of it and convince myself its rubbish. I have to have it in my hands. Even if its made of card and sellotape and my model is my dad! (Yes ~Crystal Collar’s first sample model was my dad – I still have the photo’s!)

I think when you’re at University – you are dictated to as to how your or “the” design process should be, obviously so they can mark you accordingly. But it’s ridiculous really isn’t it? I remember freaking out (along with a certain friend, who consequently is now a successful designer/maker) and basically photocopying stuff I thought someone else might find appropriate and perhaps relevant to my “design process’ so I would be able to tick the box of “research” for my project  – I would be left frantically and mindlessly sticking the effectively random pieces of paper into a sketchbook – then hand it in as “research” as that was part of the course criteria.

I’m not sure if I was just not confident enough with my own process  – enough to fully put it across as “valid” or the systems just shit? I think some people are good designers and some people are just good at university…. it’s just common sense that everyone’s approach to design & art is peculiar to them & therefore the practice is vast I just wanna be clear I DO NOT DESIGN SKETCHING IN A SKETCHBOOK – SHOCKINGLY THERE ARE OTHER WAYS OF GETTING A DESIGN OUT OF YOUR HEAD.

I am a fully working, business owner, self employed, jewellery designer maker. My methods have worked! Although I work in a tip, I am messy, in fact messy is probably an understatement, I love the stuff around me – yet I am forever embarrassed when new people see my studio. My jewellery is clean, considered, immaculate, measured, – intricately made. I can spot a mistake immediately – but if I knocked over a bunch of stuff in the process – I use a windscreen wiper action and just “clear it away”  – WOOSH! – and I’m totally fine with that!

FYI – studio 20 degrees