Inspiration is the spice of life!

One thing that really does hinder a designer is ideas! There will be days, when nothing you do can get you motivated to create something new. Believe me, I have those days all the time. It's hard to come up with new and exciting ideas, that no one has discovered before or have been created before.

So how do you stand out in this sea of jewellery?

For me, it's what surrounds me.

You can get inspiration for everyday objects. Geometric designs, like spheres, squares, octagons and so on. Even children's building blocks have that unique geometric clean designs.

For example, my nephew's building blocks and their clean lines help to create that straight-edged geometric shaped jewellery. Great for creating pendents, a single shape or duplicate shapes that sit on a single sterling silver chain. It really does stand out.

Another thing I have started doing is to take my phone everywhere with me, so that if there is something interesting, I'll just take a photo for reference.

I'm lucky to have an energetic Labrador, that insists on his 3 walks a day! He is really is the love of my life besides making jewellery!

Loki Hadfield

Every time I take him out, there is something new to photograph on my walk. Like the way the tree branches span out from the trunk, the cloud shapes in the sky, down to all the different kind of leaves that have fallen to the ground. My pup always manages to find the most amazing things. Like ghostly leaves and empty snail shells (which incidentally I have to drag him away from!)

On the left is the photo of the leaf skeleton and the right is the rolled leaf pattern on the sterling silver pendent I made

As it's coming up to spring now, the leaves shed over winter are starting to disintegrate leaving behind those skeletons leaves you may have seen scattered around forest floors.

They make fantastic templates for rolling onto silver sheet metal. In fact, there is so much material around us in nature, that you don't have to look far to find something that can really make an impact on the way you incorporate them into your jewellery designs. Some things are so beautiful that is hard to imagine why you didn't notice them before.

Which really does make it exciting as you really have to look deeply at the natural beauty that surrounds us in our everyday lives.

It's not just natural beauty, it's also things that are used everyday in our home. Some which have their practical uses but also when you look closely, you would realise what fantastic shapes and design they have. I have used everyday objects, like a hex nut, which is used on pipes etc, and incorporated that into a ring design.

The same thing can be said for pattens. They can be found everywhere. Fabric, carpet and even bricks. All these things create the most amazing patterns in metal jewellery. By bringing texture and life to an object that was originally plain and boring.

I create mood boards and also have a notebook with me (which I have mentioned in my previous posts), as well as my phone as I mentioned earlier, so that I can jot down ideas and draw designs. It's a fantastic way to keep your ideas fresh, ready for when you are ready to start your jewellery designs.

I would love to know what inspires you and how you record your ideas. Here's a bit of my mood board and notebook to give you an idea of the kind of things I use for ideas.

Happy hunting and keep making beautiful jewellery.

My next blog will be about some exhibitions that I will be attending in a week or 2. So check back to see the latest designs from well-known designers in the UK and abroad. Before I forget, there is an amazing jewellery exhibition that has been running this year and will be starting again from the 11th of April at the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum). Details are below:

https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/jewellery