Inspired Mini Series: Art Journal Inspiration to Jewelry, Week 2-A
This free 3 week series will help you feel inspired and teach you how to get inspiration and express your inspiration through making jewelry.Each week you will receive 2 prompts. The first is a journal prompt where you can write a list, journal or create an art journal page in any way you like. You can use paint, crayons, collage or other mixed media, colored pencils or simply words. I like making lists. You may want to draw or write a poem.The second weekly prompt will give you ideas to take inspiration from your art journal page and translate it into a piece of jewelry. I’ll share what I made, but I expect that your piece will be quite different because your response to the art journal prompt will be quite different from mine.Each week is full of inspiration and ideas to express yourself through making jewelry.Find the previous prompts here:
Week #2-A takes the prompt from earlier this week and draws inspiration to create a jewelry piece.Here's the video:In this video, you’ll learn how I take inspiration from the art journal page I created with the week 2 prompt, create a map for a jewelry piece and then ultimately create a jewelry piece.The steps are also outlined below if you prefer to read rather than watch the video.
Going from Art Journal Page to Jewelry:
Step #1:Look at your art journal page again. Does anything call out to you or stick out to you? Anything inspire you?In my case, I was drawn to the nature aspect of my page, although I could have chosen anything on the page.
Step #2:Just like last week, make a map of ideas.This is a starting point for your jewelry and you may find that you only follow it loosely or use it as a springboard for inspiration that takes you in a different direction.I focused on happy and nature. So on the top of a new page I wrote those words.Then I wrote these categories:
- Themes
- Colors and Stones
- Techniques
(The same categories I used last week.)And then I just brainstormed ideas. In my case I had a photo to look at. I wrote down under "themes": leaves, trees, butterflies, dragonflies and flowers. I not only used the photo but also my memories of what it's like to walk where the photo was taken.You don't need to have drawn a picture or used a photo for this to work. Just brainstorm what comes to mind when you think of the word you wrote at the top of the page. The piece of jewelry does not need to look like the art journal page you created. We're simply using it as inspiration.If you did paint or do a collage or some sort of layered art journal page, you may wish to choose colors right from it.For colors I chose muted colors, greens, browns, light pink and light yellow. As I mentioned in the video I'm not really sure where the pink came from. It's not in the photo. There are pink flowers in the area the photo was taken in the summer, but not actually in the photo.I just purchased rose quartz nuggets so I think it was on my mind. Plus, rose quartz symbolizes love and there were a lot of things I love on my art journal page, so it all makes sense. However, it doesn't necessarily HAVE to make sense. Also, you'll see that I didn't actually use yellow in my jewelry piece.I also equated brown with brass in this case. Again, I had just gotten a big chunky brass chain that I ordered, so it may have been in my mind when I was brainstorming ideas.Finally, I suggest that you come up with some jewelry making techniques that you'd like to use for your jewelry piece. There are so many options it's good to narrow it down a bit. I decided to make a layered necklace.
Step #3:Gather up supplies based on your brainstorming from above and come up with your jewelry piece.I grabbed my brass container and found a big, beautiful dragonfly piece and knew right away I wanted it to be the centerpiece.Like I said last week, this process will help you rediscover jewelry supplies that you have long forgotten about. I've had the dragonfly pieces for years and haven't really considered using them until I created this particular art journal page.I also found some beautiful gemstone chips that were green with brown in them. I knew I had the brass chain and would probably use it already. Plus the rose quartz nuggets that were on my mind when I was brainstorming.Then I just started pulling the jewelry piece together.
Have fun putting together your jewelry! You can make anything you like. It doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else. You may not look at your jewelry piece and your art journal page and be able to tell that one came from the other.On the other hand, you may have a direct correlation. Either way is just fine.Be inspired and make some jewelry! A new prompt will be coming next week!