Soar: Art Journal Inspiration to Inspired Jewelry Piece

Last week I shared my art journal pages so far in my new art journal this year.This page, "Soar," is one of those pages.  In that blogpost I also shared my layering technique for each of the pages and what materials I used to create each page.Today I wanted to share a jewelry piece that was inspired by that art journal page.How I went from art journal page to jewelryWhen I use an art journal page as inspiration for a jewelry piece, I have a process that I call "mapping."I look at the page and look for themes, colors, shapes and textures that I can pull out of the page.  Then I think of techniques I can use to translate those ideas into jewelry pieces.Then I sketch jewelry ideas and choose which idea I want to pursue.  (And, of course, save the other sketches for another time.)For this piece, I choose blue because it was very prominent in the art journal page.The quote that is the most important to me on the page is, "Not only could she fly, she could SOAR."  And the page has a lot of birds on the page as well. So I choose feathers as a symbol of flying - and soaring.  I added a bird to the clasp that I made myself as well.Materials I used for this piece:

• Recycled sea glass beads in a gorgeous blue color that I made into wire wrapped bead links and connected with jump rings.
• Feather charms.  The charms had a hole on each side and they actually came in a chain that I took apart so I could use my own jump rings
• Jump rings that I made myself.
• Chain.
• Clasp that I made.  It's a hook clasp and the other side is a wire wrapped bead link made with a little bird bead.

The result is this lovely necklace that isn't just beautiful, but it's really meaningful and inspiring to me.  When I wear it I remember to not only fly, but to soar.I often take inspiration from my art journal pages to create jewelry pieces.  I love the process so much that I created an entire eCourse around it called Inspired eCourse.In Inspired eCourse, I give you creativity prompts and art journal prompts to create your own art journal pages and then take you step-by-step through the process of how to get inspiration from your art journal page and map out and sketch jewelry design ideas.In the class there is a jewelry project each week.  Students typically create their own jewelry designs and complete them each week, but I provide the jewelry tutorial as inspiration and instruction for perhaps new techniques that you don't already know or to give you ideas for your own piece.If you're new to art journals, Inspired eCourse's introduction is an introduction to art journaling.  And even if you're not new, you may learn some fun new ideas and techniques.After the intro there's 4 weeks of class with each week having art journal and creativity prompts, creating art journal pages, pulling out inspiration from art journal pages and making jewelry.Learn more and sign up for inspired eCourse here:  Inspired eCourse.