Colour, Design and Butterflying (by sarah)
It has been a long time i.e. the time of the head bang, that I have been unable to think of a zillion ideas all at once. Where I have been able to learn a skill and cross threaded it back on itself and mix and match it with my existing tool kit of skills.
But it is happening again 🙂
Very very much happening again though I am needed some help in my visulisations. This means that Alaric ended up spending two hours working on a template for me and we are not done with it yet. What we are working on is going to fit into the colourful pouches at the top. These I have folded by hand and the project is designed to nicely fit 🙂
No you can not yet know what it is.
I've also settled on a style of fancy box for the sweets and things at Mary's birthday party so will have to get folding them too 🙂
Now I don't mean that I have not been having ideas at all since the head injury or that I have not designed things because I have. I made a colouring book for adults for goodness sake and created a lots of colouring for kids and so on.
But that is not butterflying - yes I think I might have made this term up or maybe nicked it from the poly community where it refers to lots of partners or something?
Anyway butterflying is where I have a thought cascade, I get so many ideas and possibilities that I have to splurge them all out as little prototypes or write/sketch great big long brain dumps, just so that I can see clearly what all the ideas are!
In my mind they are all superimposed on one and other but once out I can see them and then the design process can really begin. I suppose it's design and development to nick jargon from the business world. I begin tweaking things and making them fit together, I have lots of bits, lots of building blocks and I know they will fit together but they can fit together in an almost endless mirade of things... not all of which are going to produce some thing I can use.
So I whittle and I add and I change things and sometimes things get bunged in a box for 3 yrs at this point, half formed and impotent and I worry that I wasted all that time and money. Then one day: BING! The idea flashes and pops and I scurry upstairs to find it all and hope it's not perished (fimo is really the only stuff I've had problems with storage but mainly because I had the problem with it so therefore now check shelf lives ie resin and mould stuff shelf life is small, felting materials need protection from moths... and so on).
And then we can begin and it all slots into place and BOOM I have five new things for workshops and sales and presents.
However this is often not the finishing line, no not at all. I often use junk, scrap or low grade materials to work out how something should go together... these are not mock ups as such but rather mk 1, 2, or 3 - I can't really make "practice" things, if I think of it as such then I can't actually get my head round making it. But if it is something made with the kids or an upcycling project then that is fine.
Once I've gotten all of this done then I can start thinking about colour and materials and embellishments. Sometimes this process takes years... sometimes it takes half an hour for the whole lot.
Art and Craft | sarah | 
Sun 8th Jan 2017 7:01 pm
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