Inspiration and Jewelry Design - Process Part 2

As I’ve been making jewelry, I've found my customers love to hear the story of my pieces. With that in mind, I've begun a series to share my process with you from start to finish. This is part two of that series, to share my inspiration and design. You can find part one here, on how I choose the perfect stones for my jewelry! Once I’ve chosen the stones for my pieces, I move into the inspiration and design phase of my process.

Finding inspiration and determining the design for a piece can be one of the most lengthy steps of the process of creating a piece of jewelry, and other times it can be the quickest. Sometimes, stones that I've chosen instantly inspire me and I have a design in mind for them immediately. Other times, it takes a bit more work. Sometimes I’ll even take to my sketchbook and trace the stone to help my brain along in coming up with a design. If you follow me on Instagram at @inthepinesjewelry, you might have even seen a bit of my design process in my stories, and I share a lot of my inspiration as well.

If you know even a little bit about me, you’ll know that I find my biggest sources of inspiration in nature, and some of my very first pieces were inspired by pine trees, hence my business name, In the Pines. Inspiration comes to me from a variety of sources—time spent in nature, memories from trips like our time spent in Idaho at Christmas, or when we lived in Japan, or even from beautiful photographs and poems about the beauty of the earth.

Sometimes, I'll have a theme in mind for a collection; for example, a recent collection, ‘Blue Skies Ahead,’ was inspired by the color palette of the skies. My fall collection last year, the 'Cabin Collection,' was inspired by my time spent with family in a cabin in the mountains of West Virginia and the beautiful autumn leaves and soaring mountain peaks. Occasionally, I'll see something like a field of wildflowers or a deep green forest scene that will spark the inspiration for a piece.

Design, for me, goes hand in hand with inspiration. Once I've chosen the stones and found my inspiration, I usually take time to sketch out my designs in my sketchbook, but from time to time I will start immediately building the piece from my imagination. Stay tuned for my upcoming blog posts to learn more about my process. Next time, I’ll share how a design transforms from a sketch into a piece of jewelry!