CREATIVITY - HOW TO?

Keep a journal, whether it is a notebook or a file on a computer. 

Every time you see an image, a texte or an object that seems interesting, you need to register it, either by taking a picture, by saving a screen shot, or by writing a description.

The purpose is not to copy something already existing, but to make a collage (in your mind or on paper) of all this documentation. Some might call it a mood board others an inspirational board, but what ever way you want to make it, you need to start that way.

During my cross stitch designer years, I would spend hours in a store called Maisons du Monde (Homes of the World), it's a store to decorate your home. I would just look at the frames, the boxes, the furniture and imagine what cross stitch I could create on them. I bought a gardening jug and cross stitch a jug design and glued it on the jug. I bought the mechanism to make a clock and made the four seasons around it. I bought some glass soda bottles at the supermarket, loved their shapes and made a cross stitch banner around them.

What will happen when you start using your imagination on how to adapt your work with everyday objects is that you will develop your imagination, and it will start flowing in your mind.

Always gather material, never stop whether you use it there and then or later.

Once I went to a flea market and found a big box of small white buttons, I designed a cross stitch heart with circles, but when I made it I didn't stitch the circles but replaced them with the buttons.

I also was inspired by the linen that I used, I would always use natural color linen, but I then discovered a linen that was woven in two colors. The logic was to stitch on the thread that had the same color, but I decided that I would have stitches that would overlap both of the colored threads.

The secret is to not stay stuck in the box, and try things out of the box. That is what will make you original. And trust me, once you try things out, then it really gets interesting.

Even if designing seems to be something for only the few, it isn't.

Designing implies analyzing the environment, trying things out, doing and undoing, and most of all working on it all the time. I don't mean having a pen and paper and making things, it is having your mind wonder away when you are looking at something.

I agree that some are more talented than others, so you have two possibilities, you either take it on you to try things out and create on your own, or you can join a school and learn the basics to get you started.

I never went to any art school, as I always considered my cross stitch as a hobby and never I had thought of making it my business, but I did come around to launching Alice and Co.

My imagination was running wild and I was having lots of fun. I managed to get a fabric collection out in 2011 with a Japanese company called Lecien. My fabric line was inspired from my cross stitch patterns. I tried to get some more collections out but got rejected several times even though swatches of those collections had been printed. I therefore decided that I had to have some kind of diploma to persuade me that I wasn't a fraund and that I had abilities to use the word "designer".

So I joined a school and my scholarship lasted three years, at the end I obtained the satisfaction of performing a 16,5 over 20 average.

I am now using my imagination to develop a new project of online classes.

I am working on the theme "Designing a Quilt" in the clearest way possible with workbooks and videos.

I have been working on it for the past five years as my strong point is not only designing patterns but it is making fun, understandable, everyday use documents for beginners or teachers in shops.

CREATIVITY is accessible to everybody, whether you think small or you think big, there is no reason not to give it a try.

You just need to start with a pen and a paper and writing your ideas down and getting started.

But if you need help for that first try, I am there for you with DESIGNING A QUILT 101.

Emmanuelle