Knotty, knotty

Anybody caught selling macramé in public should be dyed a natural color and hung out to dry.- Calvin Trillin (Source)

Oh, drat. And me without any of my sought-after macrame jewelry pieces on hand…

One of my first businesses (along with selling a self-published short story and my very profitable babysitting lifestyle) was making friendship bracelets for classmates. After discovering macramé as an adult, I’ve been known to have a little fun designing pretty wearables with everything from hemp to embroidery floss!

It’s a great way to pass an afternoon and completely fascinate random strangers. Almost better than knitting chains, actually.

A jewelry designer’s toolbox

There are so many reference guides for the all-around crafter, but I have yet to find one I like for the organized jewelry designer so I thought I’d kind of share what my own looks like.

Actually, my “jewelry designer’s toolbox” is scattered across a couple of areas because of storage issues, but that really hasn’t proven a hindrance yet.

My kit

• Sketch notebook
• Mechanical pencils
• Colored pencils
• Wire in various gauges and colors
• Jump rings, grouped by metal, gauge and inner diameter
• Findings, organized by intended use of finding (all my clasps live in the same bin, all my earring findings like in one bin)
• Beads in various shapes and colors, mostly grouped by shape than anything else
• Wire components that I use frequently in my designing
• Wire jig
• Two pairs of round-nosed pliers
• Two pairs of bent-nosed pliers
• Two pairs of needle-nosed pliers
• Two sets of wire cutters
• Cleaning cloths
• Display tray (I use it as my workspace. It’s great for keeping components from escaping.)
• Tape measure
• A travel beading bag that is filled with components for pieces I’m currently working on. My tools live in this bag for the most part.

I keep nearly everything organized in large fishing lure boxes and then move what I need to the bins in my travel bag when I’m working. It’s been great, and helps me get a lot done, even if I just have all my boxes open and lying around me while I work.

Feeling riffed

I guess derivative work must really be on my mind these days. I treated myself to a bookstore crawl last week, and in one of them I made the strangest find.

In a book on contemporary designs for chain mail, I found a picture of one of my very first designs…except the chain had amethyst in it, and I definitely was not the person behind it.

It was a bit disorienting.

I first created the box chain with beads embedded in February 2002. It was my second attempt to modify a chain pattern I had just learned. In mid-2004, I wrote out an instruction sheet, intending to use it with students in a hosted jewelry class that never materialized. In late 2005, I even put it online.

The picture was dated 2004.

It just amazes me that someone else came up with the same idea, although it really shouldn’t. The modification is a pretty simple one, a natural extension of the original box chain.

But it’s left me feeling unoriginal again…

Derivative works

In thinking about Creative Commons and derivative works, I started looking toward my own jewelry.

I don’t mess with the copyright on my jewelry designs. Given my love for the ease of encouraging others to build on a theme, it really seems hypocritical to not want to share my jewelry. This actually ate at me for a couple of days, and then it occurred to me why I’ve been afraid to lighten up on these pieces.

My pieces are, to some extent, derivative works themselves. I saw a pattern or a real piece of jewelry and thought, “That’s pretty cool, but what if…” For whatever reason, I decided that if my work is derivative to a point, then I probably had no right to offer it to be further derived from.

This is silly. I’m one step in development by deriving, by inspiration. When I don’t open my pieces to be derived from, I break the creative chain.

That just doesn’t match with the artist I want to be.

It’ll take a bit, but I’m going to work toward sharing all of my jewelry and instructional guides under Creative Commons licenses.