"The truth is that work can dry up because it is going so well."
Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way
Has this ever happened to you? You're on a roll making earrings for a craft show or making daily progress on your short story and then all of a sudden, everything screeches to a halt. You can't make one more wrapped loop or write another sentence. What happened? It was going so well!
This has happened to me many times and it's still a shock every time. You think that whatever creativity you had is now gone forever. It's not. It just needs a little nourishment.
In her book, The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron talks about how we draw from the images in our inner well. We need to replenish this well with new images or we will find ourselves blocked. She recommends listening to music, dancing, or repetitive actions like driving or chopping vegetables. Artist's dates, where you go out by yourself for an hour or two and spend time at a museum, shop, or park, are another way to keep your well stocked with images.
I'm fond of thrift stores, where you need to see not what the item is today, but what it could become tomorrow. (A broken watch or cool earrings?)
I also like slightly disorganized home decor shops: dishtowels next to key chains and stationery and frying pans. It's that clutter of unlikely items that can inspire something new, maybe the color of one item and the pattern of another.
Walks outdoors can work, too, even in the winter. I notice more when I'm not distracted by the bright colors of spring and summer; I notice subtle shades of rocks or unusual shapes of branches. I've found color schemes for projects in Italian restaurants, story ideas on the sides of buses, and jewelry display ideas in office supply stores. I don't plan these finds; they just happen.
Spending so much time on Facebook and Pinterest, you'd think we have an overabundance of images and our creativity would be on overdrive all the time. For me, there's something different about the images I find in the real world. Online images can feel flat, empty, distant, posed, artificial. If you're active online, but still feeling blocked, I'd highly recommend a field trip to the real world.
Quotation source: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, p.21 (in the chapter "The Basic Tools")
Pictured here: The Mysterious Messenger Bag (Interweave Felt, 2007) that I made after a thrift shop visit, inspired by a man's wool sweater and an old leather belt. I was deep into jewelry and beading at the time, but stepping away momentarily and trying something completely different was very refreshing. (If you download the project, be aware that it's just brief notes about my process and not full step-by-step instructions. There is no knitting or crochet involved, just a little felting, sewing, and embroidery.)