Daily Wire Jewelry Making Tip
December 26, 2009

Question:

How do you keep from getting discouraged when you’ve designed something you think is going to be an original and then see a piece very similar in a magazine or for sale on a web site? I always seem to be too late with my ideas.

Answer:

At a recent, national classes event, another instructor and I were discussing just this same subject. We agreed, that from our experience of talking and working with students from all over the world, that it is entirely possible and definitely probable for two or more people to have come up with similar designs at about the same time.

This is all about the natural learning process. You spend hours looking through magazines; books and/or the Internet, looking at different design ideas, colors and combinations that remain in your head. Then as you work through several months of patterns and ideas, suddenly you decide to combine two or more designs or single out one technique from a complicated pattern. And you think, “Voila! I’ve never seen this before, it must be new and it’s mine!” Only to open a magazine that same afternoon and see that someone has already been published with something similar (that they had to have submitted for publication a minimum of 4 to 6 months before). Bummer!

This same situation happens to most of us often. Don’t be discouraged; instead praise yourself for having come up with the idea ‘on your own’! And keep on playing and designing, knowing that you’re progressing in the right direction.

Answer contributed by Dale “Cougar” Armstrong

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